I'm working with a nonprofit to replace the existing, hacked, proprietary DB/website. The primary "client" for this nonprofit is other nonprofit organizations, one "must have" is an online workflow for grant applications.
In the present system, basically, a user goes to the website and enters in everything in an online form and it's stored in a MSSQL DB "application record" which is vaguely linked (ideally) to an "organization record." (But with lots of redundant info, because the organization record's are not kept up to date. Oh, and I don't mean a nice many-to-one DB link, rather I believe a URL is just inserted in a field). I can recreate this in MySQL easily enough. However, we're trying to get away from having a back-end that only a programmer can manage, because of the who-knows-what-we'll-have staffing at the nonprofit.
I'm leaning towards a Joomla with CiviCRM to handle the "organization record" portion of that. I see this as being the workflow for the user:
- 1. Register via Joomla login (if user does not have account yet)
- 2. Create/edit CiviCRM organization record (accomplished via a CiviCRM "profile" and the "edit" menu option, which connects the organization record to the Joomla user).
- 3. Fill out a form with questions like "What is your mission?" and "Why should we give you money?" (except nicer, of course)
- 4. User done. Can login and change answers until the app period closes.
I think I've got steps 1, 2, and (to some extent) 4 down. The big hole is #3. I've glanced around at the extensions directory, and maybe a "survey" is the appropriate sort of tool. I can always build my own DB and front-ends, but as I said we want to move into something more standard. It would be great if the application could be linked (either in DB or just html) to the CiviCRM organization record, but that might be asking too much.
I can't imagine I'm the first to do this, so I thought I'd just ask for suggestions, especially regarding step 3. Are there survey tools you'd suggest for this, or is this a build-your-own situation? We don't mind spending some money, but a subscription model would not serve well, because these apps are few but take a long time.
Thoughts? Thanks,
Brian
