Author Topic: Setting up custom contact creation and search (Read 2102 times)

seaweasel · October 02, 2007, 03:05:14 am

I'm trying out CiviCRM with Drupal for a learner database that I'm setting up and would appreciate some advice. We need a searchable contact database with a quite a few fields and I'm a little unclear about how to set this up.

I've got CiviCRM installed successfully and I've created a couple of profiles with sets of fields for contact creation but I'm unsure how this relates to the "New Individual" link which goes to a standard form. How do I replace this with our customised form, and I'd also like to check if Profiles can be used to create groups of relevant forms on one page? e.g. a Contact Details section, Learner Details section, Interview section etc on one page.

Any help would be appreciated, please let me know if you need any further details about my setup. Thanks!

emilyf · October 02, 2007, 07:34:49 am

It sounds like you want to use custom fields. CiviCRM Admin > Configure > Custom Data. Here you can create data sets and choose the option "Tab" under style. This will create a new java-based tab on your contact view screen. So you can separate out your sections while not having to refresh the entire page, and your data will be better organized. You can set a weight for the data sets which will also determine where on the entry form the different sections show up. You'll also want to choose to make the data sets/fields searchable (just check the box) or else they won't show up in the advanced search section.

Hopefully that helps.

--Emily

seaweasel · October 02, 2007, 08:02:41 am

Thanks for this Emily, I'll look into the custom fields. How would I go about replacing the standard Create Individual fields with these custom ones?

emilyf · October 02, 2007, 08:25:42 am

As I mentioned, you can use the weights of custom fields to rearrange where they show up on the entry forms. You can limit (to some extent) what shows up in the view/edit/search forms by going to Administer CiviCRM > Global Settings > Site Preferences. However, because CiviCRM is based around the main contact fields, I think it is more complicated to remove the actual personal information (name, email, etc) if that's what you're getting at. I think you'd have to edit the template files, but this is a bit beyond the scope of what I've done. One of the moderators can probably weigh in on that.

Dave Greenberg · October 02, 2007, 09:49:30 am

Quote from: seaweasel on October 02, 2007, 08:02:41 am

Thanks for this Emily, I'll look into the custom fields. How would I go about replacing the standard Create Individual fields with these custom ones?

You can also use the CiviCRM Profiles functionality to create totally customized input screens, search forms and listings.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Profiles+Admin

seaweasel · October 03, 2007, 01:20:22 am

Thanks Dave. I had also tried out creating our fields with Profiles however this takes me back to the start in a way. Setting the Profile fields up is easy enough, however how would I go about using these for creating new contacts?

seaweasel · October 03, 2007, 02:23:21 am

I think I'm maybe going about this the wrong way. Having looked at the New Individual page, I basically need to adapt it to fit our needs, which includes:

Paring down Name and Greeting to just Surname, First Name and maybe Greeting
Moving Communication Preferences further down
Simplifying Primary Location (we only need one default location and fields for a couple of phone numbers and email)
Adding groups of custom fields for our additional learner details

I've had a look in all the admin settings however so far I've only been able to edit the address fields. In order to do the rest of the changes, will I have to edit the relevant php file?

If I can customise this input page (or create a new one) then from what I've seen CiviCRM seems to meet all our requirements, however I want to get an installation more or less customised to our needs so I can test it. Unfortunately all the documentation I've read only seems to cover setting up Profiles or Custom Data but not how to integrate it into contact creation forms such as this. I'm also a little unclear as to which would be best to use as they seem to share a lot of ground functionally.

All your help so far is very much appreciated!

seaweasel · October 03, 2007, 04:14:16 am

Just to update you, I've managed to change the contact page by editing the template. There were a couple of errors at first but after reverting some of the changes they've finally worked their way out the cache.

I'd still like to get rid of the IM field however when I removed it from the template, I got some array errors on loading the page in a dialog. Is there anything else I'd have to remove it from other than Location.tpl?

Thanks.

Dave Greenberg · October 03, 2007, 07:13:01 am

Quote from: seaweasel on October 03, 2007, 01:20:22 am

Thanks Dave. I had also tried out creating our fields with Profiles however this takes me back to the start in a way. Setting the Profile fields up is easy enough, however how would I go about using these for creating new contacts?

Check out "Linking to Contact Create Forms" on this doc page:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Linking+Profiles

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Author Topic: Setting up custom contact creation and search (Read 2102 times)

seaweasel

Setting up custom contact creation and search

emilyf

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

seaweasel

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

emilyf

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

Dave Greenberg

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

seaweasel

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

seaweasel

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

seaweasel

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search

Dave Greenberg

Re: Setting up custom contact creation and search