College Notice and Announcement Android App with Department Feeds and Push Notifications

College notices still live on physical notice boards and scattered WhatsApp groups. A student who misses the board on the wrong day misses the exam-form deadline; a department that needs to reach only its own students broadcasts to everyone; and important announcements drown in chat forwards within hours. The result is missed deadlines, repeated queries to the department office, and no reliable record of what was announced and when. Students also cannot search an old circular or silence departments they do not belong to.

This project builds a native Android app that gives every department its own notice feed and delivers announcements as push notifications. An admin panel lets staff compose notices with attachments, target departments, and pin urgent items; students subscribe to their department, search the archive, save important notices, and control which departments can notify them. Firebase Cloud Messaging handles the push fan-out, and a local database keeps the feed readable offline. The build demonstrates real mobile-app architecture — networking, local persistence, background messaging and Material Design UI — on a problem every college has.

1. An admin signs into the web panel and composes a notice — title, body, attachments — then selects target departments and an optional expiry date.
2. The backend stores the notice and maps each target department to its FCM topic (for example, the topic "dept_cse").
3. Firebase Cloud Messaging fans the notification out to every device subscribed to those topics, typically within seconds on a normal connection.
4. On the device, a messaging service receives the payload, builds the Android notification, and inserts the notice into the local Room database.
5. The feed screen reads from the local database — department chips filter the timeline, pinned notices stay on top, and the search index covers titles and bodies.
6. Tapping a notice opens the detail screen with the full text, attachment downloads, and share and save actions.
7. The settings screen writes the student's department subscriptions back to FCM topics, so unsubscribing stops that department's pushes immediately.

Tech stack:

• Kotlin
• Android Jetpack (ViewModel, Room, Navigation)
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
• Firebase Firestore (backend)
• Retrofit (REST client)
• Material Design 3
• Glide (image loading)
• Android Studio

• [Department-wise notice feeds] Every department gets its own feed; students follow their department and see a clean chronological timeline of announcements, with pinned urgent notices fixed at the top.
• [Push notifications via FCM] Publishing a notice fans out through Firebase Cloud Messaging topics, so only subscribed departments receive the alert — no spam across the whole college.
• [Admin publishing panel] Staff compose notices with formatted text and file attachments (PDF timetables, circulars), target departments, set expiry dates, and pin critical announcements.
• [Notice search and filters] Full-text search across titles and bodies plus department and date filters, so a student can find an old scholarship circular in seconds.
• [Per-department notification preferences] The settings screen lets each student choose exactly which departments may send push alerts, with quiet hours and a daily-digest option.
• [Saved notices] Students bookmark important notices — exam timetables, fee circulars — into a personal list that stays accessible even after the notice expires from the feed.
• [Offline reading] Published notices are cached in a local Room database, so the feed, detail pages and saved items open without an internet connection.

• Complete Android app source code (Kotlin, Android Jetpack)
• Admin web panel source with the publishing workflow
• Backend configuration (Firestore rules and FCM topic mapping)
• Setup and build instructions for Android Studio
• Project report PDF (architecture, FCM flow, database design)
• PPT presentation for final review
• Viva Q&A preparation document