QuickDash

A simple dashboard for tracking course-redesign work, replacing spreadsheet color-coding with real status tracking and a per-user activity log.

What it does

• Courses yet to be done — a live list filtered to "not started" / "in progress" work, with color-coded status badges (red / amber / green, matching the spreadsheet convention) that also carry a text label.
• Live updates — the dashboard and Admin page push changes to every open browser instantly (via Server-Sent Events): when one person claims or finishes a course, everyone else's screen updates with no reload.
• Claim & update — a user claims a course, moves it to "in progress", then "done." Every claim and status change is written to an activity log.
• Per-user activity logs — each user sees their own history on the dashboard; admins see everyone's, filterable by user, on the Admin page.
• Login accounts — admins create a login for each person from the Admin page. A temporary password is generated and shown once, for the admin to hand off; the user sets their own password on first login.
• Spreadsheet import — drop in .xlsx, .xls, or .csv directly, no need to save as CSV first. Columns title/course, category/program, crn/section, and instructor (folded into the title, e.g. "EA 111 — Tanya Fleck", so a course code repeated across sections tracks as separate rows instead of collapsing into one) are recognized. Safe to re-run with an updated export — a row matched by title to a course that already exists never has its status, priority, assignment, or notes touched (so a claim or in-progress mark always survives), though its category/CRN do get backfilled if the import has a non-blank value for them. A preview step (with a row-by-row breakdown) runs before anything is written, so a row cutoff can be chosen — e.g. to leave out trailing notes rows — and an optional Replace mode can additionally delete existing courses that aren't present in the file, for a sheet that's been audited down to fewer courses (their activity history is kept regardless).
• CRN — courses with a CRN (an actively scheduled section, as opposed to a placeholder) sort above ones without, right under anything marked priority.
• Reads cell color directly for .xlsx/.xls — no status column needed. Green fill → done, any other fill → marked priority, white/no fill → not started (a text status/color column is used instead if the sheet has one). Handles Excel's theme-color + tint shading, not just plain RGB fills, and per-row color doesn't have to span every column.
• Program brand colors — admins can assign a color to a category/program (e.g. all "EA" courses) from the Admin → Brand colors tab; it shows as a small swatch next to the category everywhere. This is separate from the done/priority status coloring above — it's just a visual label.
• Admin overrides — admins can set any course's status directly (including rolling "done" back to "not started"), release someone's claim ("Unclaim"), or mark/unmark priority, all from the Admin → Courses table.

Getting started

npm install
npm start

The server starts on http://localhost:3000 (override with PORT).

On first run, since there are no users yet, a default admin account is created and its credentials are printed to the console:

username: admin
password: <random or ADMIN_PASSWORD env var>

Log in as admin, create real user accounts from the Admin page, and change the admin password (top-right menu → Change password).

Environment variables (optional)

Variable	Purpose	Default
PORT	HTTP port	3000
SESSION_SECRET	Signs session cookies — set a real secret in production	dev placeholder
ADMIN_PASSWORD	Password for the seeded admin account on first run	randomly generated, printed to console

Letting other people use it

This is a normal client-server app: one running instance holds the shared data and pushes live updates. Everyone needs to point their browser at that same instance — running separate local copies on separate machines gives each person an empty, unsynced database.

• Same office/Wi-Fi: run npm start on one machine, everyone else visits http://<that machine's LAN IP>:3000. No extra setup beyond finding the IP and allowing the port through the firewall.
• Reachable from anywhere: run it on an always-on host (a small cloud VM, a spare server) behind a process manager (pm2/systemd) so it survives restarts, with a real SESSION_SECRET and HTTPS in front of it (e.g. via Caddy or nginx) since login passwords travel over the network. See DEPLOY.md for a concrete, free walkthrough on a Google Cloud Always Free VM.

Data storage

Data lives in data/db.json (a single JSON file, via lowdb) — no external database required. This file is gitignored since it holds account and activity data; back it up if you need to persist history across deployments.

Project layout

server.js          Express app + session setup
db.js               lowdb setup, default-admin seeding
middleware/auth.js   requireAuth / requireAdmin guards
routes/              auth, users, courses, activity endpoints
public/              login, dashboard, and admin pages (vanilla HTML/JS)

Notes on the workflow

• A course can be claimed by one person at a time; once claimed, only that person (or an admin) can advance its status.
• Deleting a course does not delete the activity history already logged against it.
• Admins can reset any user's password (generates a new temporary one) or disable an account without deleting it.