UKG - Unified Inbox Website

Timeline: February 10, 2022 - May 6, 2022

INTRODUCTION

Spring 2022 of university, I enrolled in a software engineering course that received a project charter from Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), an American multinational technology company specializing in workforce management and human resource management services. The charter tasked students with developing a minimum viable product for a unified inbox service. Teams of up to 10 operated under an agile scrum framework in weekly sprints. The demo below showcases my team’s login screen, serving as a testament to how the project charter facilitated our contribution to UKG’s ideation process.

PROBLEM

UKG aims to provide the best human capital management solution where customers can mix and match their software suite to pay for what they need and not for what they don’t. Their current solutions are outdated, not easily scalable, and have many points of failure. As part of their journey to break apart their solution into more microservice-based ones, UKG wants to build out a new addition to their suite – a unified inbox service.

CONTRIBUTIONS

As a front-end developer, I designed the task dropdowns on the main page and used GET to retrieve stored data.

As a back-end developer, I initiated the relational database schematic using PostgreSQL.

MVP Screenshots

Click to interact with UKG’s live demo

Click to view project code on GitHub

MVP Features

  • Admins, managers, and employees can view their inbox

  • Inbox items can move through various states: To do, In Progress, Completed

  • Employees can request and submit performance reviews from other employees

  • Employees can request personal time off (PTO) from their managers

  • Managers can approve or deny PTO requests

  • Admins can assign required training to employees

  • MVP uses a modern technology stack

  • MVP is scalable and “cloud ready”

Tech Stack

  • HTML / CSS

  • React

  • ExpressJS

  • HTTPS

  • Sequelize

  • PostgreSQL

  • Heroku

  • Git & GitHub

Architecture

Wireframe

REFLECTION

For most of my experience, academic projects mainly called for individual proficiency. This project charter showed me how to work effectively within a team. There were times when back-end bugs blocked progress in front-end development, leading to wasted time and frustration. However, I learned to seek help from teammates specializing in those areas and communicate blocks sooner rather than later, fostering teamwork efficiency and improving mutual understanding.