Ultimate View & Edit Contact Page

[JohnFF]

I've been given a mission to design and build the ultimate view and edit contact page for our client dashboard: Tabs, inline editing, support for multiple emails /  mobile phones, tables of activities grouped by (groups of) types etc.

Many of these elements (i.e. the email addresses block that supports multiple emails) is available as default on the CiviCRM contact page.

My questions are:

1) What is the best way for us to make this page? A CiviCRM extension? A modified CiviCRM profile (which doesn't appear to support multiple email/phones)? Or a Drupal page with blocks and views etc?

2) How can we integrate squares (avoiding the use of the word block here) like the CiviCRM email block neatly into this page?

[Hershel]

Tabs, inline editing, support for multiple emails /  mobile phones, tables of activities grouped by (groups of) types etc.

The only thing not already built in, I think, is "tables of activities grouped by (groups of) types". Is all you're trying to add?

Clarify what precisely you are trying to do here. If it's really going to be better than what we have, then maybe it should be in core, and not as an addon.

The default contact page is actually quite good however.

[JohnFF]

It is indeed!

Part of our service to schools is to provide a dashboard that teachers can log into. They need to be able to view some, but not all, data. We try to group different activities sensibly etc, and hide ones that don't need to be shown. In particular, they don't need to see events that their alumni have attended at different schools etc.

[Hershel]

If you want to hide certain activities, you can customize a bit of PHP code for that. I'm not sure if there is a hook for that today, but a few years ago, I did such a job for an install. It was quite simple--one or two slightly customized files and that was it.

[Michael McAndrew]

ultimate view and edit contact page for our client dashboard

Hershel's idea is nice but I am wondering if normal civicrm access has the simplicity and the usabliy you are looking for in this particular use case.

We originally did the dashboard with  slightly customised and re-themed profiles so it was maintainable and reasonably quick to develop. Sounds like we might now have hit the limit of profiles though.  If you want it to be really sexy and have time to spend developing and mantaining it, then API and some fancy js framework, maybe??? Obviously don't want to go down that road lightly.

Michael

[JohnFF]

Thanks for responding guys

I suspect you're right - we've hit the limit of what profiles can reasonably do. Coleman yesterday at the London CiviMeetup showed me a page in a Drupal & Civi dashboard, made to look like a spreadsheet, which I can only describe as "face-meltingly good", which has inspired me to do my own thing. If I can release it I will, but I suspect it will rely too much on custom data.