TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Introduction
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Description of Problem
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History of Project
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Project Requirements
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Installation Instructions
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Acknowledgements
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INTRODUCTION
This project is an extention of a project I started a long time ago. This project aims to reduce the work for the employees of Gibson County Ambulance Service (GCAS) (AKA Gibson County Emergency Medical Service [GCEMS]) to fully, completely, and accurately complete their time sheets.
GCEMS is a small 24 hour county owned ambulance service. We work 24 hour shifts, which introduces complexity into the time calculations. Add, on top of that, our union contract, and the calculations go to a whole new level.
- DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
According to United States federal law, people who work 24 hour shifts can be docked 8 hours of sleep time provided these people have the reasonable expectation to be able to get at least 5 hours sleep. During that 8 hour sleep time, if they are required to work then they must be paid for their time. If they do not get their 5 hours of sleep, then the employer must pay them for the entire 8 hours. Our union contract stipulates that we employees will be paid at a rate of 1.5 hours of our base rate.
We also have paid time off (PTO) days. The categories for our PTO days are sick days, vacation days, and personal days. In addition to these common PTO days, we also have little used days such as bereavement days.
Our holidays are also complicated. For starters, each full-time employee gets 8 hours of holiday pay on the day of the holiday. If the employee works on a holiday, the employee will be paid at a rate of 1.5 times the base rate in addition to the 8 hours of holiday pay.
Considering all of this, we have yet to discuss the issue of overtime. Hours spent at work, over 40 hours in a week, will be paid at a rate of 1.5 x base. The 8 hours of holiday pay and the PTO days do not count towards the 40 hours, so they have to be tracked separately.
Prior to the completion of this project, we use pen and paper to complete our time sheets. We have a standard time sheet form which is filled out. We then do the calculations by hand. At the end of the pay period, the time sheets are collected by the Director of Operations. He then audits the time sheets for accuracy and completeness. After this, he must produce reports to send to the Auditor's office who then calculates taxes and issues paychecks.
- HISTORY OF PROJECT
In the 1970's, when this service was first started, they started using the system mentioned above. As technology progressed, a few people attempted to move the system to spreadsheets and to word processor forms. These had their own set of issues which kept them from being widely used. I was one of those people.
In 2017, I took an introduction to programming class through Excelsior College (https://excelsior.edu). After that class, I discovered JavaFX. To help me learn more about Java, JavaFX and programming in general, I sat out to create way to make the above process easier. I started building a JavaFX app which would simply take the data from a two week pay period, as entered by the employee, and produce a report in a format similar to the paper form. The app was going to do all of the calculations needed for the two weeks, but there was going to be no way of saving the data or transfer it to the Director for his use.
A few months later, I took an introduction to database class. In that class, we had to do a project. I decided to expand on the time sheet project. I completed the class and had a working MySQL database but no user interface. Easy enough, I thought. I would simply take the JavaFX front end and adapt it to the database.
After talking to some of my co-workers, I decided I wanted this project to be web based. During my research for making my JavaFX project web based, I ran across an article on Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com) that the web based function- ality of JavaFX was being deprecated. Now, I had to start over, once again.
After a month of research, trial and error, and false starts, I decided to write the front end using PHP. That is where I am today. I am learning PHP and writing this project.
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PROJECT REQUIREMENTS
PHP 7.x (This project has not been tested on earlier versions.) Apache 2.4 with RewriteRules Mod enabled MySQL 5.7 or compatible database (the included .sql file was built with MySQL 5.7. If you want to use another database system, it will be your responsibility to convert the included .sql file to your system's needed format)
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INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
clone the repo to you local environment (Instructions for Cloning) change the file named "config_example.php" to "config.php". Edit this file entering the information appropriate for your environment. Import the database schema "GCEMS_empty_db.sql" into MySQL Insert a new record into the table "employees" containing values for 'username', 'email', and 'Employee_Number' Insert a new record into the table "employee_securityroles" using the same 'Employee_Number' and assign a 'Security_Role_ID' = '2' Open up the website. Browse to "Login" and click "Forgot password" Follow the instructions to reset the password. Log in with the new user. Install PEAR note I had to use "php -d phar.require_hash=0 go-pear.phar" to download pear pear install Mail pear install Net_SMTP pear install Net_Socket pear install Mail_Mime
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PHP and MySQL Web Development Fifth Edition, written by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.
https://www.martinstoeckli.ch/php/php.html#passwordreset
Special thanks to: https://github.com/flapjack17 Sean Roche for his invaluable assistance on making the time entry page work as intended.
For the image gallery: http://startbootstrap.com/template-overviews/thumbnail-gallery/ https://github.com/BlackrockDigital/startbootstrap-thumbnail-gallery (Updated Sept 16, 2018)
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