Timesheet Management on the Blockchain

Contributors: Alex Rosen, Nishi Nidamarty, Ratnakar Asara, Ramesh Thoomu, Mohan Venkataraman

Introduction

The Hyperledger/Fabric is an implementation of blockchain technology, leveraging familiar and proven technologies. It is a modular architecture allowing pluggable implementations of various function. It features powerful container technology to host any mainstream language for smart contracts development. Chaincode (smart contracts) or blockchain applications run on the fabric. Chaincode is written in Go language

The original intention of this application is to understand how to write a Go application on the Hyperledger/Fabric. This initial version was written to understand the different chaincode api's, the boundary that separates what goes into the blockchain and what lives within the enterprise application, usage of database features, error management etc.

Application Description

This application deals with Workforce and timesheet management on the block chain. The blockchain makes sense here as there are many different stakeholders and can leverage the benifits of the "Network Effect". This application deals with the following stake holders:

• Clients such as IBM, MCI, MetLife
• Banks
• Vendors such as IT People, Insight Global, Signature Consultants etc.
• Projects and Assignment Managers
• 3rd Party Service providers such as ADP, Fidelity
• Resources such as Freelance Consultants, Office operators such as Regis etc.

The Blockchain registers all the stakeholders after validating them against a "IDaaS" chain. Vendors seek Clients and assign employees or Resources to work on them i.e. Assignments or Projects. They agree to a certain bill rate, travel and lodging expenses and paid time-offs.

As resources work on projects, they enter their time which is recorded on Blockchain. The distributed trust mechanism ensures that stakeholders agree to the work performed and the time charged. At the end of each month, Billing Calculations can be made. Vendors would initiate calculations to produce the monthly bill for each cleint for each worker. Similarly, clients can initiate billing to show how different resources from multiple vendors charged to the project or assignment. In this sample application, a Worker can work on many projects within or across clients.

The typical business process is shown below

Chain Code APIs

Invoke Functions

            PostWorker
            AssignWorker
            PostTime
            CalculateMonthlyBill

Query Functions

            GetWorker
            GetAssignment
            GetTSForDay
            GetWorkerListAtClient
            GetTSForMonthByDateAndWorker
            GetTSForMonthByWorker
            GetTimeSheet
            GetTimeSheetForMonth
            GetTSByDate
            GetBillForMonth

Environment

Please review instructions on setting up the Development Environment as well as the setting up the Sandbox Environment to execute the chaincode.

Cloning the Application

• cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric
• git clone https://github.com//timesheet.git

Running the Chaincode

Terminal 1

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer
$ go build
$ ./peer peer --peer-chaincodedev

Terminal 2

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric
$ cd ./examples/chaincode/go/ts_obc
$ go build ts_obc.go
$ CORE_CHAINCODE_ID_NAME=mycc CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:30303 ./ts_obc

Terminal 3

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer
$ ../examples/chaincode/go/ts_obc/ts_invoke
$ ../examples/chaincode/go/ts_obc/ts_query

Open Items

In the subsequent releases we do plan to explore * Role Based Access * Integration with IDaaS * Integration with HRIS applications * UI/UX Enhancements