infrastructure-monitoring-dashboard/CLAUDE.md

Infrastructure Monitoring Dashboard

Project Overview

A web-based status feed aggregator for a K-12 school district IT department. Provides a single-pane-of-glass view of vendor service health, replacing the need to manually check multiple status pages during incidents.

Target Vendors

Vendor	Type	Status Source
Microsoft 365	Productivity suite	Service Communications API (Graph API)
SpamTitan	Email security	TBD — likely status page scrape or synthetic check
PowerSchool	Student Information System	TBD — status page scrape
Classlink	SSO / Identity	TBD — status page or API
Apple	Device ecosystem	Apple System Status page (JSON feed)
DRC	Assessment / Testing	TBD — status page scrape
FinalSite	School website CMS	TBD — status page scrape or synthetic check
Google Workspace	Productivity suite	Google Workspace Status Dashboard (JSON feed)
Follett	Library management	TBD — status page scrape or synthetic check
EdInsight	Data analytics (Harris Education Solutions)	TBD — status page or synthetic check
Raptor	Visitor management	TBD — status page scrape
SchoolMessenger	Communication platform	TBD — status page scrape
McGraw Hill	Curriculum / assessment	status.mcgrawhill.com (JS-rendered status page)
Fortinet	Network security	TBD — FortiCloud API or status page
Local Infrastructure	On-prem hardware	Direct monitoring (SNMP, API, or synthetic checks)

Note: Exchange Online is intentionally excluded — it is a component of M365 Service Health and would be redundant.

New vendors should be added incrementally, not speculatively.

Hosting

• Web server: Caddy
• URL: https://status.nhsd.net:8443 (port 8443 to avoid conflict with existing Caddy instance on this machine)
• Access: Local network only (DNS A record points to the host machine)
• TLS: Caddy internal TLS (self-signed). IT staff only — browser cert warnings are acceptable.

Architecture

• Frontend: HTML/CSS/JS dashboard — lightweight, no heavy framework. Designed to work on a wall-mounted monitor or quick browser check.
• Backend: Node.js service that polls vendor status on a schedule and caches results.
• Web server: Caddy reverse-proxies to the backend API and serves the static frontend.
• Services: NSSM runs both Caddy and the Node backend as Windows services.
• Data flow: Backend polls vendors → caches to local store → frontend fetches from backend API → auto-refreshes on interval.

Directory Structure

infrastructure-monitoring-dashboard/
├── CLAUDE.md
├── .gitignore
├── bin/
│   ├── caddy/          # Drop caddy.exe here (git-ignored)
│   └── nssm/           # Drop nssm.exe here (git-ignored)
├── config/
│   └── Caddyfile       # Caddy server configuration
├── frontend/
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── css/
│   └── js/
├── backend/
│   ├── package.json
│   ├── server.js
│   └── providers/      # One module per vendor
└── scripts/            # NSSM service install/uninstall helpers

Development Approach

Frontend-first with mock data. Build the dashboard UI and layout with realistic fake data, then replace mocks with real vendor integrations one at a time.

Design Principles

• Keep it simple. This is a status board, not a monitoring platform.
• Degrade gracefully — if a vendor check fails, show "unknown" rather than crashing.
• Each vendor integration should be a self-contained module so they can be added/removed independently.
• Optimize for glanceability — status should be obvious from across the room (color-coded, large indicators).