Author Topic: Event-specific Application Form (Read 2209 times)

curious-trick · July 02, 2010, 09:57:01 am

Hi,

I want to implement this work flow:
- Person pays $25 application fee and fills in basic contact info. (Currently this is Event 1.)
- Person fills in application (only after paying fee).
- Staff (7 people) notified that a new application is ready for review.
- Staff review application and leave comments that only other staff can see (bonus feature, not totally needed).
- One staff person does a phone interview with the applicant.
- If the applicant is accepted, they can pay the full event fee. (This would be Event 2).
- After paying full event fee, applicant fills out a few forms (medical, food, skills). These could be stored as online forms, or could be files that they download, fill in, and upload.

At any point in the flow, staff need to see where the applicant is in the workflow.

This application is specific to this event, so I don't want to create fields that show up for every contact in the database. This leads me to think that Profile is not the appropriate tool.

Can I implement this in CiviCRM? I'm running CCRM with Drupal.

Maybe CiviCase? Maybe CiviGrant? Maybe the application is an Activity? Maybe Google Docs instead (that's what we used last year)?

I started using CCRM about two months ago. I have access to the server via cPanel, not SSH. I can add Drupal modules if needed.

thanks ~ Curious

curious-trick · July 05, 2010, 03:43:50 pm

Maybe I could use CCK and/or Webform, and the CiviCRM CCK Contact Reference module? Then I could use a Contribution Page to grant access to the application after the fee is paid.

Maybe this would get more responses if I posted in the Drupal modules thread, or elsewhere?

thanks ~ Curious

Donald Lobo · July 05, 2010, 08:57:28 pm

your use case is fairly custom and specific to your org. CiviCRM (or any of its modules) will not do it out-of-the-box.

You can use CiviCase for the workflow, u'll add a fair number of custom fields and potentially create some activities. I suspect you will need a developer/consulting firm to work with. You might want to consider hiring someone from http://civicrm.org/professional/

lobo

curious-trick · July 10, 2010, 09:10:51 am

I think that using Drupal's Webform module would do what I need, especially if I could figure out how to use the CiviCRM CCK Contact Reference as a hidden field in the form. However, my install is on cheap shared hosting and my database user privileges seem to be too limited to use the Webform module (cannot lock tables). Will implement backup plan: email and Google Docs.

~ Curious

curious-trick · July 14, 2010, 01:31:50 pm

Webform still works, even though it gives errors to admins about "cannot lock tables". I haven't figured out CCK/Webform integration.

My solution:
- leave the application fee as an event
- paying the application fee creates a Drupal user account **
- the application is a Webform, and it requires a Drupal account to submit the form.

This is better than nothing, and it's still loose -- anyone with a user account can fill out the application.

** Problem: CiviCRM doesn't integrate with Drupal's CAPTCHA for user creation, so my workflow needs to change. See this thread:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,7303.0.html

~ Curious

curious-trick · April 04, 2012, 10:17:49 am

In the initial post of this thread, I asked if Civi+Drupal could implement a particular workflow in relation to event registration. It's been nearly two years since I posted that question, so I'm asking again, Can Civi+Drupal now do some or part of that workflow? The particular functions I'm interested in regarding event registration:

During registration, participant fills in questionnaire such as "Why are you interested in this class?" and "What's your prior experience with the subject of this course?" Since the responses are relevant only to this event, I don't want to add a field to every contact profile with that data. Two years ago, I tried to do it using CCK/Webform integration, and it didn't work.
Participant pays application fee and fills out application, then staff review the application, and if they accept the participant, they give participant access to pay registration fee and fill out event-specific forms such as lodging, food, and transportation options.
During application review process, staff can comment on the application, other staff can see those comments, and the applicant cannot see the comments.
Staff can look at a list of applicants and see where each participant is in the workflow.

This is pretty much the same use case I posted initially (see first post for full details), and Lobo suggested it would require custom development. Can Civi+Drupal do any of this more easily now?

thanks ~ Curious

Coleman Watts · April 07, 2012, 03:55:44 pm

Well, webform integration didn't actually exist 2 years ago. Now it does and it can handle a lot of your workflow, at least the questionnaire that staff can comment on.
The webform could redirect to a contribution page.
Views might do an adequate job with #4.
The "missing link" is probably just bringing all the info together, expecially linking the payment with the application. Some custom code might still be necessary in that area.

JonGold · April 08, 2012, 12:30:43 am

I may well be missing something, considering the number of learned folks who suggest custom code is necessary. However, this sounds very similar to something we implemented about 1.5 years ago, without webform integration. The use case was similar, but involving memberships rather than events. Here's how I'd spec this out:

* Create a contribution form, with a contribution type of "Application Fee" and a profile with whatever data you need. You can use a contact subtype so those custom data fields don't show up for every record.

* Anyone who fills out that profile gets automatically put in a "potential applicants" group.

* Staff can view members of the "potential applicants" group and leave notes (using activities? notes? not sure, more than one way to do it). If the person is accepted, they can be added to an "accepted applicants" group by the person approving them. When adding folks, you can send them an e-mail - you can do this one by one or in bulk. That e-mail contains a link to the "real" event registration page.

* There's multiple ways to look at where folks are in the flow, but agreed that Views is probably simplest.

Coleman Watts · April 08, 2012, 08:18:25 am

That's a nice simple way of doing it. A good compromise between automation and avoiding custom code with a few manual steps.

I'd add one thing: since you're wanting to collect some info and would rather not create them all as fields in Civi, you can inject a webform into this flow as step 1: so first they fill out the webform, which redirects them to the contribution page (can do this with a hashed link if the user is anon).

petednz · June 28, 2012, 09:32:29 pm

do you mean you are using the contact checksum (hashed link) via a civimail to get people to fill in webform with it prefilled when logged out

or are you suggesting that if anon finds webform and fills it in we can somehow send them on to the civievent such that the event form is prefilled?

I note that if we use the webform redirect to go to the form we end up with the sid in the url

since the sid has the info about the new contact who has just been created, does that give us any ability to prefill the event form

or are we going to have to somehow open a session, so the person who fills in the webform arrives at the event form with the event-form being prefilled?

i suspect this isn't easy and i have been mis-interpreting your comments about using a hashed link in the forlorn hope that some recipe already exists.

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Author Topic: Event-specific Application Form (Read 2209 times)

curious-trick

Event-specific Application Form

curious-trick

Re: Event-specific Application Form

Donald Lobo

Re: Event-specific Application Form

curious-trick

Re: Event-specific Application Form

curious-trick

Re: Event-specific Application Form

curious-trick

Re: Event-specific Application Forms

Coleman Watts

Re: Event-specific Application Form

JonGold

Re: Event-specific Application Form

Coleman Watts

Re: Event-specific Application Form

petednz

Re: Event-specific Application Form