BLFC Volunteer Shift Tracker System

Tracker is an at-con time clock system for volunteers at BLFC. Volunteers can clock in and clock out for their shifts to log their hours, ensuring they get the rewards they deserve. Staff can manage volunteers and run reports on volunteer hours.

Features

Tracker is an evolving system and has many planned features and improvements on their way, but here is a semi-comprehensive list of the current features implemented.

• Log in with ConCat or quick sign-in codes generated by the Telegram bot
• Volunteers check in and out for department shifts on authorized kiosks only
• Staff check in and out from kiosks or their own devices
• Time bonuses (multiplies earned volunteer time during a certain period for specific departments)
• Automatic shift closing at end of day
  • Catches forgotten checkouts
  • Credits only 1hr
  • Notifies to visit the volunteer desk to get corrected
• Manager dashboard
  • List of recent check-ins/outs
  • List of longest ongoing shifts
  • Volunteer search
  • Volunteer time viewing/editing
  • Reward claiming
• Attendee logs
  • Appoint any volunteer to be a gatekeeper (able to log attendees)
  • Quick & painless logging of attendees as they enter the door
  • Basic support for barcode scanners (for scanning badges)
• Reporting
  • Volunteer hours
  • Department summary (hours, volunteer count, shifts)
  • Unclocked users (volunteers that got automatically checked out at the end of a day)
  • Volunteer applications (ConCat report, displays all volunteer applications in a more convenient table)
  • Application department summary (ConCat report, totals the assigned volunteers and desired hours per department)
  • Audit logs (all actions within Tracker are logged)
• Alerts/notifications (when signing in and via Telegram)
  • Reward available
  • Reward claimed
  • Forgot to check out after a shift
• ConCat integration
  • Authentication (for both volunteers and staff)
  • Volunteer reports
  • Automatic logout for kiosks
• Telegram integration
  • Quick sign in codes
  • Time/shift/reward status
  • Notifications

Docker Setup

Docker is recommended to run Tracker, as a Docker Compose file and corresponding Dockerfiles are already built to make the process as easy as possible. Certbot-based Let's Encrypt automatic SSL renewal support is provided out-of-the-box with the default production Compose file.

1. Clone this repository whereever you will be building/running the Docker containers
2. Copy all of the *.env.example files in .docker/env to just *.env (in the same directory). .docker/env should have app.env, certbot.env, nginx.env, postgres.env, and redis.env.
3. Modify the .env files in .docker/env for your configuration. Specifically, you should ensure the following keys are updated at the very least:
   • app.env: APP_KEY, APP_URL, DB_PASSWORD, REDIS_PASSWORD, CONCAT_CLIENT_ID, CONCAT_CLIENT_SECRET, TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN (see details in the development section for the ConCat and Telegram config keys, as well as for generating a key for APP_KEY the first time)
   • certbot.env: LETSENCRYPT_DOMAIN, LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL, LETSENCRYPT_DRY_RUN (clear the value for this once confirmed working)
   • nginx.env: NGINX_HOST
   • postgres.env: POSTGRES_PASSWORD (should match DB_PASSWORD in app.env)
   • redis.env: REDIS_PASSWORD (should match REDIS_PASSWORD in app.env)
4. Run docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml build to build the necessary (app and nginx) images
5. Run REDIS_PASSWORD=<redis password here> docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d to run the images in the Docker daemon
   • Defining REDIS_PASSWORD is sadly currently required to start the Redis container properly due to the way the variable is obtained
6. Once everything has started up, the application will not yet be functional if it's the first time running. Follow these steps once the containers are up:
   1. Run docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app php artisan migrate to run migrations on the database
   2. Wait for output from certbot in docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml logs certbot to confirm that the dry-run succeeded
   3. Clear the value for CERTBOT_DRY_RUN in certbot.env
   4. Run docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml restart certbot
   5. Log in to Tracker to make sure a user is created for you
   6. Run docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app php artisan auth:set-role to set your user's role to admin

Updating

A convenient update script is provided at /.docker/scripts/update.sh. In this order, that script does the following:

1. Pulls the latest changes from the repository (git pull)
2. Builds the updated image (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml build)
3. Restarts the containers with the updated image (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml down && docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d)
4. Ensures the log volume's file permissions remain consistent (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/storage)
5. Enables Laravel's maintenance mode (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app php artisan down)
6. Runs any new database migrations (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app php artisan migrate)
7. Disables Laravel's maintenace mode (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec app php artisan up)

These steps can be completed manually if preferred or if any tweaking is desired.

Postgres upgrades

Whenever the Postgres major version is updated in the Compose file, Postgres needs to be manually upgraded beforehand. If not done, an error like this will likely be encountered at the startup of the Postgres container:

FATAL:  database files are incompatible with server
DETAIL:  The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 15, which is not compatible with this version 16.1 (Debian 16.1-1.pgdg120+1).

Reverting the project (or at least the Compose file) to the previous version should allow the server to start again. Follow this procedure to properly upgrade the database (starting with the server running the old version):

1. Run ./docker/scripts/postgres-dump.sh to dump the contents of the database to pgdump.sql in the project directory
2. Stop the Postgres container (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml stop postgres)
3. Find the correct volume for the Postgres container in docker volume ls - it should be something like projectname_postgres
4. Delete the volume of the Postgres container (docker volume rm postgres_volume_name)
5. Start the Postgres container (docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml start postgres)
6. Run ./docker/scripts/postgres-restore.sh to import pgdump.sql into the new Postgres version
7. Verify that the application is running properly and all of the correct data is in place

Manual Setup

Requirements

• A web server, such as Nginx or Apache
• PHP 8.2+ with the following extensions:
  • PDO + your database extension of choice
  • openssl
  • ctype
  • filter
  • hash
  • mbstring
  • session
  • tokenizer
  • ZIP
  • GD
• Composer to install backend dependencies
• Node.js & NPM to install frontend dependencies
• PostgreSQL, MariaDB, or MySQL (8.0+) server as a database
• Your event's instance of ConCat to allow volunteers and staff to authenticate with the system
  • All users log in to the application using ConCat with OAuth.
  • You will need Developer access to your event's ConCat instance to create the OAuth app. Specifically, you will need the oauth:manage permission. Alternatively, have someone else create an OAuth app in ConCat for you and have them provide you the client ID and secret.
  • The OAuth app itself will require the volunteer:read and registration:read application permissions for OAuth Bearer tokens, which are used for generating the Volunteer Applications reports and retrieving badge details inside Tracker.

Installation

1. Clone this repository in your web server's document root (or download a tarball and extract it to it).
2. Run composer install --no-dev --classmap-authoritative to download all production backend dependencies and optimize the autoloader automatically.
3. Run npm install to download all frontend dependencies.
4. Run npm run build to bundle and optimize the frontend assets.
5. Copy .env.example to .env and update the values appropriately.
6. Run php artisan key:generate to generate an encryption key and automatically fill in the APP_KEY value in .env. This key should be kept the same between all instances of Tracker connected to the same environment (production, QA, etc.) and should only be regenerated when absolutely necessary (compromise, improved algorithm). Regenerating or using a different key will result in any encrypted (not hashed!) values in the database or cache becoming unreadable.
7. Run php artisan migrate to run all migrations on the database.
8. Log in to the application in your web browser via the OAuth flow to make sure a user gets created for you.
9. Run php artisan auth:set-role to set your user's role to admin.
10. Run php artisan telegram:set-commands to send the list of bot commands to Telegram.
11. Run php artisan telegram:set-webhook to inform Telegram of the bot's webhook URL.
12. Add a cron entry to run php artisan schedule:run every minute so that reward notifications can be triggered and ongoing shifts automatically stopped at the configured day boundary.
    • Example crontab entry: * * * * * cd /var/www/html && /usr/local/bin/php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1'
13. Run php artisan queue:work in a separate process (using supervisor or something similar) to process queue entries as they come in. You can have multiple of these running at once if the queue becomes backed up.
14. To greatly improve boot performance of the application on each hit, run the following:
    • php artisan config:cache to cache the fully-resolved configuration to a file
    • php artisan route:cache to cache the routes to a file
    • php artisan event:cache to cache the auto-discovered event listeners to a file
    • php artisan view:cache to pre-compile and cache all of the Blade templates

Updating

1. Run php artisan down to put the application in maintenace mode.
2. Pull or upload the current version of the code from this repository.
3. Run composer install --no-dev --classmap-authoritative to download any new production backend dependencies and optimize the autoloader automatically.
4. Run npm install to download any new frontend dependencies.
5. Run npm run build to bundle and optimize the frontend assets.
6. Run php artisan migrate to run any new migrations on the database.
7. Run php artisan telegram:set-commands to send the list of bot commands to Telegram.
8. Run php artisan telegram:set-webhook to inform Telegram of the bot's webhook URL.
9. Restart any queue workers you have running (php artisan queue:work) in separate processes to ensure they're using the latest code.
10. To greatly improve boot performance of the application on each hit, run the following:
    • php artisan config:cache to cache the fully-resolved configuration to a file
    • php artisan route:cache to cache the routes to a file
    • php artisan event:cache to cache the auto-discovered event listeners to a file
    • php artisan view:cache to pre-compile and cache all of the Blade templates
11. Run php artisan up to pull the application out of maintenace mode.

Development Setup

The development environment uses Laravel Sail, a containerized environment with a script and easy-to-use commands for interacting with it.

Pre-requisites

• All platforms: Docker
• Windows: Enable WSL 2 with a Linux distro. Run all commands in WSL.

.Env Config

Copy .env.example to .env:

cp .env.example .env

After doing so, update the values only as needed. The important ones that will most likely need to be filled in are the ConCat and Telegram items.

ConCat Config

1. Create a ConCat account on your ConCat instance for OAuth and ensure it has developer authorization.
2. Add a new OAuth App at Housekeeping -> Developers -> OAuth Applications -> Create New
   • Use http://localhost for the callback URL
   • Select the registration:read and volunteer:read application permissions
3. Update CONCAT_CLIENT_SECRET and CONCAT_CLIENT_ID in .env

Telegram Bot Config

1. Create a bot via @BotFather (/newbot)
2. Update TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in .env

Sail Setup

1. Install the PHP CLI for your environment (ex: sudo apt install php-cli)
2. Install Composer
3. Run composer install in the application directory
4. (Optional) Add sail alias with alias sail='[ -f sail ] && sh sail || sh vendor/bin/sail'
   • It would probably be a good idea to add this to your shell startup script (ex: ~/.bashrc)

Running the Developer Environment

Whenever using a Sail command, if you don't have an alias setup, use sh vendor/bin/sail instead of sail.

1. To run the container, use sail up (Ctrl+C to stop)
2. If this is the first time the env has been run:
   1. Run sail artisan key:generate (Updates APP_KEY in .env)
   2. Run sail npm install
   3. Initialize the database schema with sail artisan migrate
   4. (Optional) Seed the database with dummy accounts with sail artisan db:seed
3. To run the Vite server, use sail npm run dev (Ctrl+C to stop)
4. Open the project on http://localhost (it may be slow)
   • If you see an Apache/nginx/etc. splash screen, ensure you don't already have a web server bound to port 80.

Development Tips

• Using php artisan tinker or sail artisan tinker will present a PHP REPL with the application bootstrapped, allowing you to mess with any part of the application and see the result of code in real-time. See the Artisan documentation for more information.
• The helpers dump(...) and dd(...) can be extremely helpful for debugging the application. The former pretty-prints a representation of any data passed to it with full HTML formatting, and the latter does the same but also immediately halts further execution of the application. Collections and Carbon instances also have ->dump() and ->dd() methods.
• Use php artisan make:migration or sail artisan make:migration to create a new database migration. See the migrations documentation for more information.
• The Laravel documentation and API documentation will be very helpful if you're not already familiar with the framework.
• Running composer run format and npm run format will format all PHP and JavaScript code, respectively.
• Running npm run lint will lint all JavaScript code, checking for common errors and making recommendations.
  • npm run lint:fix will automatically apply fixes for many of these.
  • npm run lint:fix-unsafe will correct even more, but these changes should be manually verified.

Architecture Overview

Since Laravel is an MVC (Model, View, Controller) framework, that structure is generally adhered to. PSR-4 autoloading is in use, so as long as the namespace and class filesystem structure is followed, files don't need to be manually included/required.

A significant rework of the frontend is underway to modernize it by rebuilding it with Vue & TypeScript, using Inertia to connect it to the backend. At the moment, the only page that has been fully rebuilt is the Manager Controls page.

Frequently Used Directories

• Routes: routes
• Controllers: app/Http/Controllers
• Models: app/Models
• Views: resources/views
• Artisan commands: app/Console/Commands
• Database migrations: database/migrations
• Configuration: config
• JavaScript/TypeScript assets: resources/js
• Style assets (Sass/SCSS): resources/sass
• Image assets: resources/img

Custom Artisan Commands

Use php artisan help or sail artisan help to view a list of all available commands, not just custom ones.
Use php artisan help <command name> or sail artisan help <command name> to view detailed information for a specific command.

Name	Description
auth:set-role	Sets the role for a user. If user isn't specified on the CLI, then you will be prompted to search for and select the appropriate user, as well as to select the role to assign.
auth:fetch-unknown	Retrieves and populates information for any users with the unknown username (previously-created Users that information couldn't be retrieved from ConCat for at the time).
tracker:notify-rewards	Sends notifications to users for rewards they are newly eligible to claim. Automatically called by the task scheduler every 5 minutes.
tracker:stop-ongoing	Stops all ongoing time entries for the active event. Automatically called by the task scheduler every day at the configured day boundary hour.
telegram:set-commands	Sends the list of commands to Telegram to display to users interacting with the bot.
telegram:set-webhook	Sends the webhook URL to Telegram. Requires the application to be accessed via HTTPS.
telegram:poll	Polls Telegram for updates (primarily for development use).

Database Models

All database models are using UUIDv7 for their primary key (id column). Eloquent is being used heavily for nearly all database interactions. Foreign key constraints are used in the database whenever possible to ensure referential integrity at every step of the process.

All models and their relationships are listed below, alongside a brief description of their purpose.

Name	Table	Description
Activity	activities	Used for tracking events and changes to models for audit logging purposes. Belongs to a User via both subject and causer.
AttendeeLog	attendee_logs	A log to enter users into. Used for tracking attendance to a panel or other type of event. Has many Users, with type (attendee or gatekeeper) on the pivot table. Belongs to an Event.
Department	departments	An organizational unit for staff/volunteers of a convention.
Event	events	A single convention/other type of event that time is tracked for.
Kiosk	kiosks	A device that has been authorized to allow volunteers to enter time on. These devices keep a cookie with the session key to identify themselves.
QuickCode	quick_codes	One-time-use sign-in codes for users. Expires 30 seconds after creation. Belongs to a User.
Reward	rewards	Possible reward/goal for volunteers to thank them for their time once they reach a threshold. Belongs to an Event.
RewardClaim	reward_claims	Rewards claimed by users. Belongs to a User and a Reward.
Setting	settings	Application settings identified by a string and stored as JSON.
TimeBonus	time_bonuses	Time periods that grant bonus volunteer time credit while being worked within. Belongs to an Event and many Departments.
TimeEntry	time_entries	Volunteer time clocked by users. Belongs to a User, a Department, and an Event.
User	users	Any user of the application. Has a role (Banned, Attendee, Volunteer, Staff, Lead, Manager, Admin) that determines permissions.

Permissions

Permissions are implemented very simply at the moment. Users have a single assigned Role value, which is just an enum (Banned, Attendee, Volunteer, Staff, Lead, Manager, Admin).

• Volunteer is the default role for users. They have time tracking capabilities, but not much else.
• Leads can authorize/deauthorize Kiosks.
• Managers can authorize/deauthorize Kiosks, view and manage volunteers' time entries, manage attendee log attendees and gatekeepers, and create users with a badge ID.
• Admins can do anything, but especially are responsible for general entity CRUD operations.
• Attendees are just users created for the purpose of being an entry in an attendee log. They are automatically "promoted" to Volunteer if they ever log in.
• Banned users are prevented from interacting with the application entirely beyond signing in.

Time Tracking Details

Since the primary purpose of Tracker is to track the time that volunteers spend working shifts, a lot of care has been put in to how that time is kept.

Time Entries

In order for a volunteer to enter time, they must visit an authorized kiosk at the beginning and end of their shift. When they clock in, they select a department the shift will be for, and a TimeEntry is created in the database with the current time as its start field and a null stop field. Any TimeEntry with a null stop field is considered to be an "ongoing" entry. An ongoing TimeEntry's duration is the amount of time between its start and the current time. Upon clocking out, the ongoing TimeEntry is updated to fill in the stop field with the current time. A volunteer may only ever have a single ongoing TimeEntry.

Time Bonuses

An admin can create multiple TimeBonuses for an Event that apply within a time period (between start and stop) to specific Departments. Any TimeEntry that is assigned to a Department + Event with a TimeBonus and has its time range even partially within a TimeBonus period has the TimeBonus' multiplier applied to the amount of time that is within the bonus period.

Example scenario:

• A TimeBonus exists for departments "Crowd Control", "Operations", and "Art Gallery" for event "BLFC 2023", between the period of 2023-10-31 18:00 and 2023-10-31 20:00, with a multiplier of 2.
• A TimeEntry is entered for the "Operations" department and "BLFC 2023" event, starting at 2023-10-31 16:00 and ending at 2023-10-31 19:00

The TimeEntry's raw duration will be 3hrs, and its "earned time" (duration with bonuses) will be 4hrs. This is because the TimeEntry contained 1hr of time within the bonus period, so that single hour is considered to be worth double time.

Auto-Stopping Ongoing Time Entries

Each day at the configured day boundary hour (see [config/tracker.php], default 04:00), the application has a scheduled task to automatically terminate any ongoing time entries. This is to catch the cases where a volunteer forgets to clock out after their shift, thus leaving the time entry running perpetually. When a time entry is terminated this way, its stop time is updated to be either 1hr after the start time or the current time, whichever is sooner. A notification is sent that they're forced to acknowledge on the web page the next time they log in.

Attendee Logs

Attendee logs are an entity used to track attendees for a scheduled event such as a panel or meetup. They can have any number of users entered into them by badge ID, and they don't even require the users entered to be valid volunteers or staff. Any number of Gatekeepers can also be added to them, who will all be able to view and manage the attendees that are logged, regardless of their own role.

Telegram Bot

Account Linking

Users can link their Telegram account to the application by scanning a QR code on the web page or manually visiting the proper Telegram link generated on it. The QR code simply directs them to the same aforementioned link, which should automatically open Telegram and send a /start <setup key> command to the bot. Every user has a Telegram setup key that is unique to them and randomly generated upon creation. When the bot receives the start command with their setup code, it stores the Telegram chat ID on their User and uses this for future communication.

Notifications

The bot will automatically send notifications to users with linked accounts for the following scenarios:

• Their earned time has reached a reward's hours threshold
• They have claimed a reward with a staff member
• Their time entry has been auto-stopped at the day boundary hour

Commands

When a user sends a message of any kind to the Telegram bot, Telegram contacts the configured webhook (php artisan telegram:set-webhook) to notify the application of the message. The message is checked for a valid command - if there is one, the command is processed. All Telegram commands are in app/Telegram/Commands. Telegram needs to be informed of these commands with php artisan telegram:set-commands so that it may present a convenient list to users of the bot.

During development, php artisan telegram:poll can be used instead of the webhook, which will start a long-term polling process to pull updates from Telegram rather than it pushing to the application. This allows the Telegram bot to be tested without needing the application to be externally accessible to the internet.

Glossary

• Artisan - Laravel command line helper application (Used to run Sail)
• Blade - The built-in view templating engine in Laravel
• Carbon - Fluent datetime library written in PHP (Laravel uses this by default for all datetimes)
• Docker - Container engine and other utilities for running containerized applications
• Eloquent - Laravel's built-in fluent ORM for interacting with the database
• Inertia - Glue library between Laravel's backend and the single-page application frontend
• Laravel - Web application framework written in PHP
• Sail - Laravel system that manages a development container, proxying commands into the container
• Sass/SCSS - Preprocessed extension language for CSS
• Telegram - Instant messenger that Tracker provides a bot for interacting with
• TypeScript - Superset of JavaScript that adds a strong type system and compiles to plain JS
• UUIDv7 - Universally Unique Identifier, version 7
• Vite - Asset bundling and cache-busting for the JS and image assets
• Vue - Frontend component/single-page application framework