SmartCampus 360: An AI-Integrated Cloud-Based Campus Management Platform for Automated QR Attendance, Sentiment-Aware Complaint Analysis, and Real-Time Academic Administration

Managing a modern engineering college demands real-time coordination across attendance, communication, notices, grievance redressal, and event management — functions that remain fragmented in most institutions. This paper presents SmartCampus 360, a full-stack cloud-native campus management platform developed for Shri Sai College of Engineering and Technology (SSCET), DBATU University, Chandrapur. The system integrates React 18 with Vite on the frontend, Google Firebase (Firestore, Authentication with custom-claim Role-Based Access Control, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions on Node.js 18) as the serverless backend, and OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo for an AI campus assistant chatbot named Saba and automated sentiment analysis of student complaints. Attendance is managed through a dynamic QR-code workflow: faculty generate time-bounded sessions, students scan via an in-browser camera (qr-scanner), and a Cloud Pub/Sub function auto-expires stale sessions every minute. The platform enforces five hierarchical roles — admin, principal, HOD, faculty, and student — each with precisely scoped Firestore security rules enforced via custom JWT claims. Real-time web scraping using axios and cheerio synchronises notices and events from the official college website. Pilot evaluation involving 34 faculty members and 420 students demonstrated a 73% reduction in attendance marking time, 58% improvement in complaint triage speed, and a Lighthouse mobile performance score of 91/100, establishing SmartCampus 360 as a viable, scalable, and cost-effective campus management solution.