Adding an Application Form/Process

[bchoc]

Greetings,
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

[lobo]

how complicated is the app?

you might want to take a look at:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/disp ... ect+-+Home

for a pretty complicated app(s) implemented using CiviCRM.

lobo

[bchoc]

How complicated?  Not at all complicated.  The rough draft of the questions I got has about half a dozen multiple choice questions (historically, these have been recorded in text fields), a few "how many" questions, and a handful of "essay questions".

I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at with the Branner Project.  So ... are you saying this functionality is built into CiviCRM and I missed it?

[lobo]

if its just 10-20 questions, then you should be able to do it using CiviCRM profiles and custom groups / fields

you can expose a profile and collect information about it in joomla front end etc

lobo

[bchoc]

As I understand it, that would make the "application" effectively part of the CiviCRM "permanent record."  That would not scale well for multiple applications.

[lobo]

then write a custom CiviCRM component that manages multiple application records and data as per your requirements

you can find a list of consultants at http://civicrm.org/professional/

lobo

[bchoc]

OR ... I could look to one of the survey or database access tools.  The less custom the better, because I have to assume there will be no I.S. skills on staff when I leave.

CiviCRM is very good at what it does, but it doesn't need to be everything for everyone, and I'm OK with that.  So if there are any recommendations or suggestions for task-specific tools I'd be glad to hear it.

Brian

[corrado444]

Try Phil-a-form for surveys. I built several of them using it. It's scalable and it saves the records in the database. It's commercial but very cheap

[haltonsc]

I use community builder. Its a login addin

This set up can be as strict or as flexible as you want and you can add in an unlimited number of your own variables and types

Names addresses phone numbers are in the default data loading