HostelDesk: A Web-Based Hostel Complaint and Maintenance Management System

Hostel maintenance complaints are often communicated through informal channels, fragmenting records and making assignment, progress tracking, and resolution verification difficult. This paper presents HostelDesk, a web-based Hostel Complaint and Maintenance Management System designed to manage the complaint lifecycle in a hostel environment. The platform provides role-specific access for students, administrators, and maintenance staff; a hierarchical representation of hostels, blocks, floors, rooms, and beds; category- and subcategory-based issue registration; image and short-video evidence; and support for existing complaints. Complaint urgency is determined using category severity and affected-student information, with four priority levels and configurable service-level deadlines. Administrators can assign approved issues to internal personnel or record external maintenance work, while workers update progress and resolution details through a dedicated portal. Students subsequently verify the outcome, reopen or escalate unresolved issues, and submit feedback. The implementation uses React 18 and Vite for the responsive frontend, Node.js and Express.js for REST APIs, PostgreSQL for relational persistence, JWT-based authentication, bcrypt password hashing, and Multer for media uploads. The documented prototype integrates operational dashboards, monthly reporting, technician information, hostel/block heat maps, notifications, and audit history. The source documentation reports functional capabilities but does not provide quantitative performance or user-outcome measurements.