Detachment of Florida Squadron Portal

This is a labor of love - a comprehensive administrative portal for the Sons of The American Legion, Detachment of Florida. It grew out of years at the squadron level, through district and area roles, all the way to Detachment Adjutant. The through-line is simple: put the right tools in everyone's hands so volunteers can succeed without fighting the technology.

Unlike the public floridasons.org WordPress site or the narrower year-end reporting upload portal, this application is the logged-in operational backbone for squadrons and leadership. Next.js 15 and React 19 power responsive dashboards; Prisma and PostgreSQL hold squadron, district and officer data; NextAuth secures role-based access so each level sees what matters for their job.

Squadrons can maintain records and work through officer workflows - including fillable PDF intake that extracts structured officer fields instead of retyping. District and area leaders get scoped dashboards across their commands. The Membership Chairman sees membership-oriented dashboards, goals and reporting flows tied to the Sons service year (July through June). Master admins - Detachment Adjutant and designated staff - manage users at scale, routing, email, audit visibility and the wider reporting toolchain that produces standardized PDF output from live data.

Email hooks (welcome messages, password resets), file handling, professional PDF generation and careful UX for laptops and phones all reflect how real volunteers actually work - often after hours, often on modest hardware. Passion project or not, it is built to the same standard as client work: readable code paths, guarded uploads and administrative accountability.

The portal is intentionally segmented by responsibility. Squadron users focus on their charter information and reporting obligations without wading through statewide controls. District Commander and District Adjutant paths emphasize oversight across squadrons in the district. Area Vice Commander views lift up the area lens across districts. Membership Chairman experiences center on goals, progress signals and membership-centric reporting aligned to Detachment meetings and deadlines.

Master Admin and Detachment Adjutant capabilities bundle what volunteer headquarters staff actually need: durable user provisioning at scale, configuration for email and routing, visibility into activity and submissions, and operational discipline (audit logging, careful confirmations on destructive actions) so leadership can delegate safely.