Home Instead Email Notifications

Email notifications for Home Instead care services - activity logs and schedule summaries.

Features

1. Activity Log Notifications (scraper.js)

The UniqueIQ client/family portal lets you view care notes and activity logs, but you have to manually log in to check for updates. This scraper:

• Logs into the UniqueIQ portal automatically
• Fetches the activity log for the current day
• Sends a nicely formatted HTML email when there are updates
• Tracks what's been sent to avoid duplicate emails
• Runs via cron every 10 minutes to catch updates throughout the day

2. Schedule Notifications (schedule-notify.js)

Parses timesheet PDF attachments from Home Instead emails and sends a daily summary:

• Shows carer schedule for the next 7 days
• Merges data from multiple timesheet emails for complete coverage
• Alerts if there's a coverage gap (>2 hours between 9am-6pm)
• Alerts if no timesheet data exists for upcoming days
• Subject line shows today's carers with times (e.g., "Laura 09:00-13:00, Sulayha 13:00-18:00")

Setup

1. Clone the repo and install dependencies:

npm install
npx playwright install chromium

2. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your credentials:

cp .env.example .env

3. Configure your .env:

SITE_URL=https://portal.uniqueiq.co.uk/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2f
USERNAME=your-portal-email
PASSWORD=your-portal-password

EMAIL_TO=recipient@example.com
EMAIL_FROM=sender@example.com
SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE=false
SMTP_USER=your-gmail@gmail.com
SMTP_PASS=your-app-password

For Gmail, you'll need an App Password (requires 2FA enabled).

Usage

Check today's activity log

node scraper.js

Check a specific date

node scraper.js -f 15/01/2026

Check a date range (sends one email per day)

node scraper.js -f 01/01/2026 -t 15/01/2026

Force resend (ignore tracking)

node scraper.js --force

Send schedule summary

node schedule-notify.js

Cron Setup

Add to crontab:

crontab -e

Add these lines:

# Activity log - every 10 minutes
*/10 * * * * /path/to/run-scraper.sh

# Schedule summary - daily at 7am
0 7 * * * /path/to/run-schedule-notify.sh

The wrapper scripts handle logging and (for the scraper) killing any hung previous instance.

Configuration

Optional settings in .env for schedule notifications:

# Coverage gap detection
COVERAGE_START_HOUR=9          # Start of coverage period (default: 9)
COVERAGE_END_HOUR=18           # End of coverage period (default: 18)
COVERAGE_MAX_GAP_MINUTES=120   # Max gap before alert (default: 120 = 2 hours)

# Missing timesheet alert
MISSING_DATA_ALERT_DAYS=4      # Alert if no data within X days (default: 4)

Files

• scraper.js - Activity log scraper
• schedule-notify.js - Schedule notification from timesheet emails
• run-scraper.sh - Cron wrapper for scraper (with kill logic)
• run-schedule-notify.sh - Cron wrapper for schedule notifications
• sent-emails.json - Tracks sent activity emails (auto-created)
• scraper.log - Scraper execution log (auto-created)
• schedule-notify.log - Schedule notification log (auto-created)

License

MIT