Just In Time Application for UNC Nursing Staff and UNC Center for Nursing Excellence
This is a mobile app where users (nurses) can receive useful information updates such as policy changes, new resources, and other information that is necessary for them to perform their job. Administrators can use the admin portal to add new posts to send to the nurse users.
Link to admin: https://just-in-time-5698c.web.app
Link to Firebase database console: https://console.firebase.google.com/
Adminstrators can login to the website through the link above using any web browser and add, change, and remove posts. Administrator accounts need to be given access through the Firebase console and request can be accessed by emailing anhhuynh@live.unc.edu or abyerle@gmail.com.
The mobile app is currently not deployed and needs to be deployed to the app store or some other platform to download. In the meantime, the app can be run by pulling the repository and then run through the Expo Go app. Instructions on how to setup Expo Go can be found here by first following the "Installation" guide and then "Create your first app". After creating an Expo Go account, email abyerle@gmail.com to add your account to the account owner's expo account members. This will grant permissions for running the mobile app. In the future consider creating an organization to further customize account permissions
An old video detailing how to set up and run the application can also be found here. Here is a newer video example running the app on a physical IOS device using the Expo Go app.
The app is written in JavaScript, with the React framework for the web admin portal and React Native for the app. It is compiled with Expo and has a Firebase Realtime Database back-end system used to query data.
To continue technical work on the project, you will need a web browser and a Simulator (preferably a macOS device with an iPhone available) with Expo Go downloaded on the phone. Node.js will be needed for package installation. We recommend VSCode as the development environment of choice. After the cloned repository has been downloaded on the computer, you can open the folder in VSCode and run the command npm ci --legacy-peer-deps from the VSCode terminal to download the needed packages to run the application. Additionally, run npm install in both application directories. Add --force if needed. This will need to be done within the proper directories, which means after cding into both the admin-app directory and the JustInTime Mobile App directory.
Add the necessary setup files containing some server credentials for firebase.
In the admin app directory, run npm run dev to and navigate to localhost:3000 in the browser.
In the mobile app directory, run the command npm start to run the application with Expo Go. From the mobile app, a QR code can be scanned with a phone or opened with a simulator app, after which development can continue. If there are any issues trying to load the app, make sure the expo account is added to the members page discussed above and run Npx expo login to connect your expo account to the project.
Mobile app push notifications are only compatible with Android applications because the client still needs to buy an apple developer account. After purchasing and IOS developer account, IOS notifications can be added and the app can be be deployed to the app store. Notifications for android can be run with an android simulator run from android studio application or a physical android device. The Firebase Cloud Messaging library enables sending notifications from the admin portal to the mobile app. Notifications can only be run from outside of the Expo Go app. This process can be completed by creating an Expo development build. This involves installing the Expo Go cli and running the corresponding eas build command eas build --profile development --platform android in the mobile app directory. See our push notification demo for steps detailing how we set this up.
After installing the development build, uncomment all lines in /JustInTime Mobile App/src/notifications/notifications.js to use the firebase messaging library. These lines were commented so that the app would load successfully without the development build installed. Finally, run npx expo start --dev-client to run the development build.
After toggling selected notification preferences from within the mobile app, navigate away from the mobile app so that it is in the background before sending a notification message from the admin portal.
Here's a demo of the push notifications in action: https://youtu.be/L6MCmkCnrYc
The web app is done in pure React.js and can be deployed from a local terminal. To do so, you need to have Firebase tools installed with npm install -g firebase-tools, npm run build to create a build directory, firebase login with your Firebase credentials, npm run build && npm run export and lastly firebase deploy. Example of how to deploy Next.js to firebase hosting .
If you want to deploy the app onto an App store, you will need to run a build process as described here, which should automatically generate the ios and android directories. These can then be loaded with XCode or Android Studio to run and deploy them into apps that can then be hosted on the respective app stores. To do this, you will need to set up an iOS developer account and a Google developer account and go through an app verification process.
We do not expect any copyright, intellectual property, or HIPAA conflicts since the client mentioned that all data is publicly available and not linked to any patients.
The client chose panopto as the desired platform for sharing videos. Panopto is used widely by UNC faculty and hosts videos for free. Panopto video links that are sent from the admin portal are parsed by the mobile app using the React Native Webview library to create embedded videos visible from the mobile app. This way, the user does not need to be redirected to the browser to watch a video.
For now, everyone can sign up to the system and view the web portal. However, only certain authorized users will be able to make changes and edits. To start the process, first let the user sign up to the web admin. Then, as an administrator, log into the Firebase Console. On the left side panel you will see a "authentication" tab. Switch to the authentication tab, and a list of all authenticated users will be available. Every account comes with an indentifier (the email), and an UID. If you want to give edit access to a specific account, copy the account's UID. Then go to the 'realtime database' tab, and just create a new entry {UID: true} under the "admins" subtree. Just replace UID with the one you copied. Afterwards, the user who was granted access can log in as normally, but now can make changes to the database. If you need more control over the access of the database, go to the 'rules' tab on the realtime database. But this would need further understanding of Firebase's documentation.
What's left to do? This app is relatively close to deployment - with another semester, it is very likely that this can become a fully functional and hosted application.
- Because user authentication is not set up, notification preferences selected within the mobile app are not saved or persisted. This needs to be added when a user's profile is created.
- Admin portal polishing. There needs to be added an option to store credentials into localStorage and provide the option to sign out, in addition to better validation and checks for security. The author tag should also update accordingly, with a username field added to the database admins
- Firebase analytics. The mobile app can be configured with Firebase analytics to get data on page views and app interaction. This can be a great way to understand how the app is being used.
- Creating developer Apple/Google accounts. A paid subscription will be needed to host the app and let nurses download it.
- A more thorough testing suite. Currently, there are Jest tests that can be run with
npm test -- --watchAllin the mobile app directory. However, navigation and interaction were harder to capture and test programatically, and will need more time to test and debug.
If you have any issues or questions about further development/use, feel free to open a GitHub issue and reach out!
User with Full (View/Editing) Access
Email: theosteiner@gmail.com
Password: lskmfdl
User with Restricted (View Only) Access
Email: restrictedemail@gmail.com
Password: dweiufbewifbei