Shared weekly schedules for groups — with roles, reminders, calendar sync and an AI assistant.
English · Українська
The API runs on a free Render instance that sleeps after ~15 minutes idle — the first request may take up to a minute to wake it.
GroupTime is a scheduling app for groups of people who share a timetable — a university course, a team, a club. One person builds the week, everyone else sees it, and the app takes care of the parts that usually live in a chat thread: who is allowed to edit, when everyone is free, what changed, and getting it into the calendar people actually use.
A schedule belongs to a group, and every group member has a role — Owner, Admin, Co-admin, Member, Student — that decides whether they can view the schedule, create events, or change group settings. Alongside group schedules, every user gets a personal schedule: a private, hidden group that doesn't count against the group limit and behaves like any other week grid.
Two kinds of events cover both halves of real life: static events repeat inside a cycle of weeks (a class timetable that rotates over 2–3 weeks), while dynamic events sit on one specific date. On top of that sit weekly recurrence, per-event reminders by email and Telegram, .ics import/export, a read-only public link, and an AI assistant that can answer questions about the week and create events from plain language.
The main screen. Days across the top, hours down the side, events in the cells. Events are moved by drag-and-drop — drop one on another day or hour and it is rescheduled in place. Cells with several overlapping events stack them into colour-coded bands so a busy morning still reads at a glance. The visible time window and the group's time zone are group settings; each viewer sees the grid shifted into their own GMT offset.
The same data, zoomed out — a calendar overview of the month built from the cached week feed, so switching Week ⇄ Month costs no extra requests. Useful for spotting the shape of a month before planning inside it.
Create a group, invite people by e-mail, and give each member a role. Group parameters control the member limit and which role is required to view the schedule, create or delete events, and receive e-mail notifications. Group cards show your own role at a glance.
An event carries a name, a type (colour-coded, created on the fly), tags, teacher, location or platform with a link, duration, description and file attachments. It can repeat weekly — every week or every N weeks, up to a chosen end date — and carry reminders delivered by e-mail and Telegram before it starts.
Saveable filter presets narrow the grid by event type, tag, teacher, location/platform, schedule kind or group. The Free time finder goes the other way: pick several groups or individual members and it shows the windows when everybody is actually free.
Ask about the schedule in plain language ("what do I have tomorrow?"), run /analyze to have the assistant look for problems in the week — collisions, overloaded days, gaps — or use /magic to create and edit events by describing them ("create a Lecture on Monday at 10:00"). Which commands a member may run is itself a group setting.
Message contents are blurred in this screenshot — the conversation contains real names.
Import a .ics file to bring an existing timetable in, export the group's schedule as .ics, or take a subscription link and add it to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar so the schedule keeps itself in sync. A separate public link exposes a read-only copy of the week to people without an account — handy for a course page — and can be regenerated to revoke the old one.
Ukrainian and English throughout (the default is Ukrainian), per-user GMT offset, an onboarding tour that replays from the "?" button, avatar upload with cropping, e-mail confirmation and password reset.
| Front-end | React 18, Vite 6, Redux Toolkit + redux-persist, React Router 6, SCSS modules, i18next, @dnd-kit (drag-and-drop), react-joyride (tour), react-markdown |
| Back-end | Node.js + Express 4, MongoDB + Mongoose, JWT with refresh tokens, Joi validation, Agenda + node-cron (reminders), nodemailer, AWS S3 (files), Groq SDK (AI), pino logging, Swagger UI |
| Tooling | Vitest, Playwright (e2e), Jest + supertest + mongodb-memory-server (API), ESLint, husky + lint-staged, Docker / docker-compose |
GroupTime/
├── Front-end/ React SPA (Vite)
│ ├── src/pages/ route components
│ ├── src/components/ feature components by domain (Schedule, Group, Profile…)
│ ├── src/UI/ reusable presentational components
│ ├── src/api/ fetch wrappers per domain
│ ├── src/redux/ slices + thunks
│ └── src/i18n/ uk / en locales
├── Back-end/ Express API
│ ├── router/ route wiring
│ ├── controller/ request orchestration
│ ├── middleware/ validation, permissions, resource loading
│ ├── service/ business + data logic
│ └── model/ Mongoose schemas
└── docker-compose.yml Mongo + API + front-end
Needs Docker and a Back-end/.env file (see the table below).
docker compose up --build| Front-end | http://localhost:3000 |
| API | http://localhost:5000/api |
| API docs (Swagger) | http://localhost:5000/api/docs |
| MongoDB | mongodb://localhost:27017/grouptime (volume mongo-data) |
Compose supplies MONGODB_URL, PORT and FROENT_URL itself; everything else comes from Back-end/.env.
Requirements: Node.js 20+ (node-ical needs the v regex flag), and MongoDB — either running locally or a free MongoDB Atlas cluster.
git clone https://github.com/MainMi/GroupTime.git
cd GroupTime
# API
cd Back-end && npm ci
# create Back-end/.env — see the variables below
npm run dev # http://localhost:5000
# Front-end (second terminal)
cd Front-end && npm ci
cp .env.example .env # VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api
npm run dev # http://localhost:3000Back-end/.env:
| Variable | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|
MONGODB_URL |
yes | MongoDB connection string |
PORT |
no | API port (default 5000) |
FROENT_URL |
yes | Front-end URL — used to build links inside e-mails |
SELF_URL |
for .ics |
Public URL of the API itself, used for absolute calendar-subscription links |
JWT_SECRET, JWT_SECRET_REFRESH |
yes | Long random strings |
ACTION_SECRET_FORGOT_PASSWORD, ACTION_SECRET_CONFIRM_EMAIL, ACTION_SECRET_CONFIRM_ADD_GROUP, ACTION_SECRET_INVITE_USER |
yes | Long random strings, one per e-mail action |
NO_REPLY_EMAIL, NO_REPLY_EMAIL_PASS |
for e-mail | Mailbox that sends confirmations and invitations |
S3_REGION, S3_BUCKET_NAME, AWS_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECRET_KEY |
for files | Avatars and event attachments |
GROQ_API_KEY, DEFAULT_MODEL |
for AI | AI assistant |
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID |
for Google sign-in | Google OAuth client |
Front-end/.env needs one variable — and it must include the /api suffix:
VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api
Vite inlines
VITE_*variables at build time, so changing this value requires a rebuild, not just a restart.
# Back-end — Jest + supertest against an in-memory MongoDB
cd Back-end && npm test
# Front-end — Vitest unit tests, Playwright end-to-end
cd Front-end && npm test
cd Front-end && npm run e2e
# Lint both workspaces from the repo root
npm run lintA walkthrough of the app from an empty account.
Sign up on /sign (or use Google sign-in), then confirm your e-mail from the link you receive — most features stay locked until you do. Forgot the password later? The same page has a reset link.
Go to Groups → create, give it a name and an avatar, and set the group parameters: the member limit, and which role is needed to view the schedule, create/delete events, and get e-mail notifications. You become the Owner.
Invite members by e-mail from the group page. Each invitation is confirmed by both the invited person and a group admin. Afterwards, change anyone's role — Admin, Co-admin, Member, Student — to widen or narrow what they may do.
Open Schedule, pick the group in the selector, and open the settings (gear icon, admins only):
- Display range — the hours the grid shows.
- Group time zone — event times are stored as the group's wall-clock time; every viewer sees them shifted into their own GMT.
- Static weeks — if your timetable rotates over several weeks, create them here and reorder them as needed.
Press Create event and choose the kind:
- Static — repeats inside the cycle of static weeks (a weekly class).
- Dynamic — happens once, on a specific date.
Fill in the name, type (pick a colour, or create a new type inline), tags, teacher, location or platform with a link, time and duration, description and any files. For something that recurs, turn on Repeat weekly, choose every week or every N weeks, and set the end date. Add reminders to be notified by e-mail or Telegram before it starts.
- Drag an event to another day or hour to reschedule it.
- Click an event to edit or delete it; click a crowded cell to see everything inside it.
- Switch Week ⇄ Month with the view button.
- Use the filter bar to narrow by type, tag, teacher, location or group, and save the combination as a named preset.
- Select All groups in the group selector to overlay every schedule you can see at once.
Open Free time, pick the groups or individual members, and the app lists the windows when nobody has anything scheduled — with the option to show or hide the busy blocks around them.
Pick My schedule in the group selector. It is created on demand the first time, stays private, and doesn't count toward your group limit — a place for everything that isn't the group's business.
From Import / Export:
- Import an
.icsfile — re-importing the same file won't duplicate events. - Export the group's schedule as
.ics. - Get a subscription link from the schedule settings and add it to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar for automatic sync.
- Share a public link to give a read-only view of the week to people without an account. Regenerate it to revoke access.
Open the assistant, choose the groups and the time range it should look at, then:
- Ask in plain language — "what do I have tomorrow?"
/analyze— have it inspect the week and report problems it finds./magic— "create a Lecture on Monday at 10:00" — and confirm the change it proposes.
In Profile: avatar (upload and crop), your GMT offset, and Telegram for reminders. The language toggle sits at the bottom of the left nav, and the ? button replays the tour for the page you're on.
The project runs on free tiers: MongoDB Atlas (database) + Render (API, Docker) + Vercel (front-end). The API ships a Dockerfile (root directory Back-end); the front-end builds with Vite to build/. Both deploy from main.
Private project. All rights reserved.