CU Connect

Inspiration

As CU students, we often found it difficult to quickly access accurate information about the university — such as course details, faculty contacts, event schedules, and administrative processes. This inspired us to build a personalized assistant that could answer questions instantly, 24×7.

What it does

CU Connect is an AI-powered smart assistant chatbot designed to help students and faculty seamlessly access information about Chandigarh University (CU). From campus details to academic support, it aims to make communication within the CU ecosystem faster, simpler, and more interactive.

How we built it

We built CU Connect using: Frontend: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the user interface. Backend: Node.js and Express.js for handling routes and server logic. Database: Firebase for storing user interactions and chatbot data. AI logic: Custom response system combining Gemini API for intelligent dynamic answers and manual predefined intents for CU-specific queries, with proper fallback handling for unmatched inputs.

Challenges we ran into

Every project has roadblocks, and ours was no different. Some major challenges were:

Designing natural and context-aware responses for the chatbot.
Syncing data between frontend and Firebase efficiently.
Ensuring the server ran smoothly without timeouts or redundant responses.
Structuring a clean and user-friendly chat UI.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a working chatbot for CU-related queries.
Designed a clean and interactive user interface.
Connected backend with Firebase successfully.
Learned about APIs, real-time data, and teamwork.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned:

How to integrate Firebase with Node.js for real-time data handling.
Structuring a chatbot conversation flow using conditional logic.
Managing server responses, frontend-backend communication, and deployment basics.
Team collaboration, version control, and debugging during development