Lab Steps

In this Lab, you will create an Annual Salary Calculator ASP.NET Web application using Visual Studio.NET.

For the Labs, you will use the Microsoft Visual Studio software application. You have two options for using this application:

You may use a copy of Visual Studio that is installed on your local PC. If you do not already have this software, there is a link in the Syllabus (in the Textbook and Required Materials section) that you can follow to obtain a copy at low or no cost through the DeVry Student Software Fulfillment Center.

or

You may run Visual Studio over the Web from the DeVry Lab (Citrix) server. Instructions for using the Lab (Citrix) server are on the Lab page under the Introduction & Resources Module.

Throughout this course, you will be creating a Web application for a fictitious company called ACIT (Academy of Computing and Information Technology). To get familiar with the development environment, follow the Lab Steps to create a simple Annual Salary Calculator ASP.NET Web application. You will be adding to this application each week.

Overview of Fictitious Company

The Academy of Computing and Information Technology is a mid-size indie (independent) film studio that is in need of a payroll system. We have outgrown our current system, a simple spreadsheet, to the extent that it takes three people over one week to pay everyone on a timely basis.

Overview of Our Company

We have over 2,000 full-time and part-time employees. We produce comedy, fiction, and science fiction films with budgets of $250K$20 million. We have produced over 50 films since we first began 20 years ago.

We are very profitable and have strong links to many of the industry's most powerful people.

Current Payroll System

Our current system consists of mostly manual processing using an MS Excel spreadsheet to control who gets paid.

The system consists of the three payroll staff members reviewing each of the full-time staff members' wages, calculating how many hours they worked based on their hourly rate, and paying them by issuing a check.

The check needs to be entered in another worksheet for each of the people who were paid so that we can tell when it went out, how much it was for, and if it was cashed or not. If a [Date_Cashed] is entered, we deduct that amount from our working payroll capital account to track how much money we have for payroll.

This process is then repeated for all part-time staff and independent contractors.

Our Needs

We need a more automated way to pay our staff. We need to use the same logical flow as a basis, yet improve on it by having a way to

easily calculate the projected annual salary based on rate and number of hours;

search, enter, update, and delete staff and independent employee information in one place;

search, enter, update, and delete payroll automation information for the employee to set up recurring payments or one-time payments;

produce reports to show the following: (a) summary of who got paid per week, (b) summary of all payments per week, (c) details of any employee to-date (allow entry of a specific employee ID);

allow transactions to be rolled back in case we pay someone too much;

make use of transaction processing in case the system unexpectedly shuts down;

ensure the system is secure (logins required);

allow only authorized payroll personnel to control all aspects of the system;

allow only authorized payroll personnel to view transactions and user activity;

allow only authorized payroll personnel to e-mail reports to users using the e-mail on file; and

incorporate error handling into all processes in the system and e-mail any errors to the technical support people.