GoGuardian Monitor

Monitor gives transparency to software that tracks students.

Features

Multi-User Monitoring: Track activity of several students at once
Chat Service: View chat messages from any student in saved sessions
Classroom Stats: Access session history, classroom admins, and a list of students in a class
Dark Mode
Chat Client: Chat with your teachers from anywhere, even without GoGuardian installed
Desktop Notifications: Get notified when tracked students join a class
Data Backups: Keep your data even if the server isn't running
Account Creation: Create additional accounts to track

Requirements

Node.js: Runs the code
npm: Installs the packages

Usage

Setup

To install the dependencies, run the command below:

npm install

Next, build the frontend code with this command:

npm run build

Finally, you might also want to make a folder to keep backups in.

Running

To start the server without any parameters, run the command below:

npm start

To use parameters, add "--" after "npm start" like the example below:

npm start -- --backup /path/to/backup.json --notify

Here's a list of parameters available:

-p, --port     Configures the port used for the web server     [default: 3000]
-b, --backup   Sets file used to restore from backup
-v, --verbose  Sets the logging level to verbose    [boolean] [default: false]
-n, --notify   Enables desktop notifications        [boolean] [default: false]

Note: Elevated permissions are typically required by your OS to run on ports lower than 1024

Configuration

Once you've started the server, open its web page in your browser.
By default, this will be at localhost:3000 for your own computer.
You'll be redirected to settings, where you can add or create accounts of students in your school to get started.

Important things to know about the settings page & accounts:

Backup files can be downloaded by clicking the save icon in the top-right corner of the screen
If a backup is created while a tracked student is in a class, future restores from that backup will show that the class is still in progress despite that not always being true.
Monitor automatically connects to class sessions, so students being tracked by Monitor will appear online in every class they're in.
If Monitor tracks a student that is not using the extension, their teacher will see that they are online, but won't get any data from them. If this happens, their teacher will see "Waiting For Activity" on their tile in GoGuardian Teacher. Source: Student's Screen Says "Waiting For Activity"

Advanced

GoGuardian Account Creation

Want to track a student but don't know their device ID? No problem!
Go to add an account in settings and click "Create Virtual Device" to create an account to track them.

Note: Before you do this, you need a GoGuardian license ID, which is the extension ID of the "GoGuardian License" chrome extension.
To find this, go to chrome://extensions and click "Details" for GoGuardian License. Once you do that, the URL should change to show the extension ID.
Ex: chrome://extensions?id=bofhfaclfglmfciiogikgndbdejhjjcc

After you get the school's license ID, you'll need the student's email address and full name. You should get this information from Gmail. Be sure to copy and paste info so you get it correct.
If you get something wrong, it could change the student's name in GoGuardian's systems, so be careful.

Development

Note: Snowpack is used for builds, Express is used for the web server, and React is used with Material UI for the frontend.
If you're changing files while the server is running, you'll want to use Snowpack in watch mode, which builds files when you save changes to them.
To run Snowpack in watch mode, run the command below:

npm run buildWatch

Watch mode is great for development, but once you've made your changes you'll probably want the build to be minified.
To get a final minified build, run the command below:

npm run build

It's important to remember that watch mode doesn't minify files and if you use watch mode after a normal build, the optimizations will be lost.

mswider / Monitor