AI-Powered HR Operations & Employee Experience Challenge

📱 WHAT THIS APP DOES PulseHR AI is one HR platform with two connected apps sharing live company data: an Employee app and an HR/Admin app. Sign up as HR to create a company (get a 6-char join code); sign up as Employee using that code to join it. From there, every shared action updates both sides in real time — no refresh, no polling delay. Modules (all real, working CRUD — not mockups): • Leave — apply, cancel, HR approve/reject, live balance computed from actual approved requests, team calendar • Attendance — check in/out, history, monthly summary • Helpdesk — raise a ticket, AI pre-chat triage, HR moves it Open → In Progress → Closed, employee notified instantly • Company Feed — HR posts announcements, everyone sees them live (employees can't post — enforced by database rules, not just UI) • Notifications — real-time feed from actual events: leave decisions, ticket updates, new payslips, new feedback • Payroll — HR issues a payslip (gross/deductions → net), employee sees it appear instantly • Performance — peer-to-peer feedback (real, live), not a fabricated star rating • AI Assistant — Gemini-powered chat that reads live company data (leave, attendance, tickets) and can autonomously file a helpdesk ticket from a plain-English request like "my laptop is broken" • Employee directory — live company roster, searchable by both roles 🎯 PROBLEM HR teams juggle leave approvals, attendance, onboarding, and helpdesk tickets across disconnected tools. Employees get no visibility into their own requests, so they follow up by email/Slack, and HR spends time on routine status questions instead of real work. ⚙️ HOW THE SOLUTION WORKS Every shared record (leave, attendance, tickets, payroll, feedback) is written with a real companyId + employeeId. Both the employee and their HR/Admin subscribe to the same data live, so an HR approval or an employee submission is visible on the other side within seconds — demonstrated in two side-by-side tabs (see HOW TO TEST above). Security is enforced at the database level (Firestore rules / a local-mode equivalent), so one company can never read another's data — this isn't just hidden in the UI. The AI Assistant is grounded in this same live data: it never invents a number it can't actually see, and can take real actions (like filing a ticket) rather than just chatting. 📈 EXPECTED BUSINESS IMPACT • Fewer manual status-check interruptions for HR (leave/ticket state is visible to employees in real time) • Faster leave/ticket turnaround since approvals push instantly instead of waiting on email or portal refreshes • One dashboard instead of five disconnected tools for HR to monitor attendance, leave load, and open tickets • AI-assisted ticket triage reduces manual intake work 🔍 SCOPE — BUILT VS. NOT Real: auth, company/employee model, leave, attendance, helpdesk, announcements, notifications, payroll issuance, peer feedback, AI assistant, all enforced by real security rules. Not built (explicitly labeled "Coming soon" in-app, not faked): QR/biometric check-in, OCR/resume parsing, real payroll tax processing, transactional email/SMS/push delivery — each needs a paid provider or hardware API beyond a frontend build.