Architecture & capabilities

Overview

The Time Entry Manager is built on five capabilities that together take an employee from historical reporting pattern through to a submitted, employee-verified timesheet: Intelligent Timesheet Generation, Activity & Report Code Validation, Employee & Team Processing, Working Hours Awareness, and Automated Time Submission & Notifications. This article covers those capabilities, the process they share, integration points, and how the system keeps an employee in the loop before a manager ever sees the entry.

Agentic Skills

Intelligent Timesheet Generation

Identifies the project activities an employee is most likely to report and estimates hours for each one, using historical time reporting patterns. Selection of likely activities and report codes is based on recency and occurrence, ranking what an employee has reported most, weighted toward what they’ve done most recently. Estimated hours are based on the available historical reporting evidence.

Activity & Report Code Validation

Ensures every generated entry uses activities and report codes that are valid for the employee and the target date. Historical activity is used to rank and estimate entries, but it never overrides activity or report-code validity for the date in question: codes expire and assignments change, so validity is checked fresh each time.

Employee & Team Processing

Supports time reporting for the signed-in employee, named employees, and managers acting on behalf of their direct reports. Each employee and target date is processed independently, allowing team timesheets to be handled in parallel: a failure for one employee never stops the remaining timesheets from being processed.

Working Hours Awareness

Considers scheduled hours, existing reported time, and the target working day when generating time entries, keeping estimates limited to what’s actually left to report for that day rather than double-counting time already captured.

Automated Time Submission & Notifications

Submits generated Project and MCPR time entries directly to IFS Cloud, taking into account existing reported time, absence requests, and available working hours. Submission outcomes, successful, partial, or failed, are reported independently for each employee and date. Once entries are ready, a confirmation email communicates the resulting time entries and submission outcome to the employee, with an embedded button to review and edit before the entries move on for manager approval.

Time Entry Workflow

The following table outlines the process from historical pattern analysis through to a manager-ready timesheet.

Stage	What the System Does	Action / Output	Channel
Scope Resolved	Resolves the signed-in employee, a named employee, or a manager’s direct reports	Employees and target dates identified for processing	IFS Cloud
History Ranked	Reads actual reporting history, ranks activity/code combinations by recency and frequency	Likely activities identified per employee	IFS Cloud
Codes Validated	Checks each suggested code against what’s valid for the employee and date	Invalid or expired codes excluded	IFS Cloud
Hours Estimated	Weighs scheduled hours and time already reported	Estimated hours limited to what’s left for the target day	IFS Cloud
Entries Submitted or Held	Submits ready entries; holds back timesheets with unresolved employees or missing information	Project/MCPR entries submitted, or held incomplete	IFS Cloud
Employee Notified	Sends a confirmation email with the submitted entries and an edit link	Employee alerted to review the entries	Email
Employee Verifies	Employee reviews and corrects any incorrect line	Verified entries ready for manager review	IFS Cloud
Manager Approves	Verified entries are sent on for manager approval	Timesheet approved	IFS Cloud

Integration Points

IFS Cloud: The primary system of record. The Time Entry Manager reads employee, project, activity, report code, and historical time reporting data, and submits generated Project and MCPR time entries directly into IFS Cloud.

Email (Microsoft Outlook): Used to send the confirmation notification to the employee, including an embedded button to return to their time entry page and make edits.

IFS Loops communication channel: Used for human interaction where required, alongside email notifications.

Human-in-the-Loop Design

The Time Entry Manager is designed so that entries generated from historical patterns are always verified by the employee before a manager sees them, and anything that can’t be resolved automatically is held back rather than guessed at.

The system submits automatically when:

• An employee can be resolved and required reporting information is available

• Suggested activities and report codes validate cleanly against what’s valid for that employee and date

A timesheet is held back when:

• An employee can’t be uniquely resolved

• Required reporting information is unavailable

An employee is brought in when:

• Entries have been submitted and are awaiting the employee’s verification, since entries are submitted, not confirmed

• A line the Digital Worker generated needs correcting, which the employee does directly before the timesheet proceeds

Requiring employee verification prior to manager approval ensures every entry is appropriately cross-checked: the employee who did the work has the final say on what the record says they did, before their manager ever reviews it.

Feedback and Continuous Improvement

Submission outcomes are reported individually for every employee and date processed, successful, partial, or failed, maintaining visibility across both individual and team-level runs. Because each employee and date is processed independently, a failure or a low-confidence estimate for one person never stops or delays the rest of the team’s timesheets. Limited or unavailable reporting history results in fewer suggestions or lower-confidence estimates rather than a forced guess, keeping the system’s output honest about what the historical record actually supports.