SmartDesk

A full-stack university management platform with role-based workflows, operational dashboards, and feedback analytics.

SmartDesk brings student services, academic administration, campus operations, and analytics into one system. It combines an Express + MongoDB backend with a Next.js frontend to support dashboards, announcements, attendance, finance, library workflows, hostel management, and AI-assisted insight generation.

Overview

Universities often manage academic data, student services, and administrative workflows across disconnected tools. SmartDesk aims to centralize those workflows in a single platform so institutions can:

• manage multiple roles from one application
• reduce operational friction across departments
• surface actionable insights from student feedback and reporting data
• provide a unified experience for students, faculty, and admins

Features

• Multi-role access for admins, academic managers, faculty, students, librarians, and other campus staff
• Unified student dashboard for courses, attendance, fees, library activity, events, and announcements
• Admin modules for users, topics, configuration, finance, hostel, infrastructure, and academic workflows
• AI-assisted insights powered by local Ollama integration for feedback summarization
• Role-based authentication with JWT, secure cookies, rate limiting, and security headers
• Seeded demo users for local evaluation and onboarding

Demo / Preview

• Live frontend: https://client-tau-lemon.vercel.app
• Screenshots: add dashboard screenshots here
• GIF walkthroughs: add short admin/student workflow demos here

Installation

Requirements

Requirement	Version / Notes
Node.js	20+
npm	bundled with Node.js
MongoDB	local or cloud instance
Ollama	optional, only needed for local AI summary features

One-command installers

Review remote scripts before using pipe-to-shell installers in production or shared environments.

Linux / macOS:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notysozu/smartdesk/main/install.sh | bash

Linux / macOS with wget:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notysozu/smartdesk/main/install.sh | bash

Windows PowerShell:

iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notysozu/smartdesk/main/install.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex

Useful installer options:

• START_APP=0 skips launching the app after install
• SEED_DB=1 seeds demo users after dependencies are installed
• INSTALL_DIR=/custom/path clones the repo into a custom location

Example:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notysozu/smartdesk/main/install.sh | START_APP=0 SEED_DB=1 bash

Manual setup

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/notysozu/smartdesk.git
cd smartdesk

2. Create environment files:

cp .env.example .env
cp client/.env.example client/.env.local

3. Install backend and frontend dependencies:

npm install
cd client && npm install && cd ..

4. Start the backend and frontend in separate terminals:

npm run dev
cd client && npm run dev

5. Open the app at http://localhost:3000.

Environment setup

Backend variables live in .env.example. Frontend variables live in client/.env.example.

Typical local values:

MONGO_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/smartdesk
JWT_SECRET=change-this-secret
CLIENT_ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:4000

Usage

Local development

Backend:

npm run dev

Frontend:

cd client && npm run dev

Seed demo data

npm run seed

Default users after seeding:

Role	Username	Password
Admin	admin	admin123
Student	student	student123
Librarian	librarian	lib123
Hostel Manager	hostel_manager	hostel123
Finance Manager	finance_manager	finance123
Academic Manager	academic_manager	academic123
Faculty	faculty	faculty123

Test and build

Run backend tests:

npm test

Build the frontend:

cd client && npm run build

Tech Stack

Layer	Technologies
Frontend	Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS
Backend	Node.js, Express
Database	MongoDB, Mongoose
Auth & Security	JWT, cookies, Helmet, express-rate-limit
AI	Ollama
Tooling	npm, Nodemon, GitHub Actions

Project Structure

smartdesk/
├── api/                  # Vercel serverless entrypoint
├── client/               # Next.js frontend
│   ├── components/       # Reusable UI pieces
│   ├── lib/              # Frontend API utilities
│   ├── pages/            # Route-based pages
│   └── styles/           # Global styles and theme
├── server/               # Express backend
│   ├── ai/               # AI helpers and Ollama integration
│   ├── controllers/      # Request handlers
│   ├── data/             # DB connection and seed logic
│   ├── middleware/       # Auth, security, validation
│   ├── models/           # Mongoose models
│   └── routes/           # API route definitions
├── tests/                # Backend test coverage
├── install.sh            # Bash installer
├── install.ps1           # PowerShell installer
└── package.json

Status

SmartDesk is actively functional and deployable. Core authentication, admin workflows, student-facing views, seeded demo data, CI, and Vercel deployment are already in place.

Current focus areas:

• expanding automated test coverage beyond health/config helpers
• improving frontend lint compatibility with the current Next.js setup
• adding richer screenshots, walkthroughs, and contributor templates

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. For local setup, coding standards, testing expectations, and pull request conventions, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Community expectations are documented in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Security

Please report vulnerabilities privately according to SECURITY.md.

Additional Docs

• Contributing Guide
• Code of Conduct
• Security Policy
• License

License

Licensed under the MIT License.