This is the home page of EvalDesk, from where users can sign in and explore all the features.
This section showcases all the features that EvalDesk provides to organizations conducting university events.
This section enables the admin to create and manage events, assign juries, oversee teams, and monitor analytics.
This is where admin puts all the csv data of the teams and portal converts it and gives each team a unique QR code for easy Evaluation
This is the page where the admin allocates teams to juries by domain and team category mapping.
This is the Event Analytics page where the admin can view performance metrics, ensure fairness, and declare event winners.
This section is restricted to jury members, allowing them to submit scores by scanning a team’s QR code directly in the portal.
This is the Evaluation Board where juries enter, review, and submit scores for teams.

EvalDesk – Digitizing the Way We Judge

What Inspired This

Every university event I've attended ends the same way - judges scribbling scores on paper, someone punching numbers into a calculator, and a crowd waiting 20 minutes for results that are still sometimes wrong. That bothered me. Not just as a student, but as someone who builds things. There was a clear gap: judging at university events was manual, opaque, and stuck in the past. EvalDesk is my answer to that gap - a platform that makes judging fast, fair, and actually insightful.

What I Learned

This project pushed me beyond tutorials and into real engineering decisions:

Designing secure Google OAuth + JWT authentication flows that actually hold up in production
Structuring clean, scalable REST APIs with Node.js + Express
Implementing role-based access control across three user types: Admin, Judge, and Participant each with completely separate views and permissions
Managing complex React state without it becoming a mess
Deploying and debugging two separate Vercel services (frontend + backend) that need to talk to each other reliably

How I Built It

Tech Stack:

Frontend: React (Vite)
Backend: Node.js + Express
Database: MongoDB
Auth: Google OAuth + JWT
Deployment: Vercel (two separate projects)

The flow is clean:

User signs in with Google : no passwords, no friction
Backend validates identity and issues a signed JWT
Every protected route checks that token before responding
Judges score teams through a simple, distraction-free interface
Scores are aggregated instantly and stored in MongoDB
Admins see everything : live scores, analytics, and full event control , on a real-time dashboard

Separating the frontend and backend deployments wasn't just an architectural choice it made the system cleaner, more scalable, and easier to maintain independently.

Challenges I Faced

Honestly, the hardest part wasn't building it was deploying.

OAuth redirect URI mismatches that only appeared in production, not locally
CORS errors between two different Vercel domains that took real debugging to resolve
Environment variables that had to be carefully managed across two separate projects without ever leaking sensitive keys
Token expiry edge cases : handling what happens when a judge's session expires mid-scoring
Role-based rendering in React : showing the right UI to the right user without exposing protected logic on the client side

Every one of these issues taught me something local development never could. Production is a different beast, and shipping EvalDesk made me a better engineer.

What EvalDesk Actually Does

EvalDesk replaces paper sheets and post-event spreadsheets with a structured, real-time digital workflow. Judges score from any device. Results are instant and transparent. Admins have full visibility.

But more than the features : this is a solution that's ready to use. Real events. Real judges. Real results.

Future versions are already mapped out: AI-generated feedback for participants, predictive performance analytics, and exportable reports for event organizers.

This isn't just a hackathon project. It's the beginning of how university events should run.