CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Has anyone ever heard of using civicrm for a record of students at a school or college for replacing something like an access or filemaker pro database?

We are looking at options for a new database that would not be used in a manner that seems to be consistent with the main focus of civicrm, non-profits or groups managing contacts, raising money, or keeping track of members.  We have databases that track things like enrollment by semester, admissions materials, admissions conditions and many other things that need to get recorded in the history of a students.  These are small shadow systems to the large system the school uses to keep records on students that the large system cannot do.

Nothing in this database is updated by the student, except maybe we would allow address updates.  The database is not used to do things like track contributions or fund raising or joining groups, etc.  A search online seems to bring back results centered around those types of uses.

Has anyone come across anyone using civicrm for something like this? 

Also, I see that it seems to only work with joomla or drupal.  I do not know if we will be switching to one of those to run a website.  Does it work with any other CMS's?

I am not sure if this is enough detail, but any help in determining how this could fit for regular databse functionality vs. just using a filemaker database would be appreciated!

CiviCRM can certainly be used for a college. Depends on how much education-specific needs you have.

To note, however, while CiviCRM does require Drupal and Joomla, it doesn't have to be a part of your main website. It can be a separate site and/or it can be themed to LOOK like your regular site so that users don't realize it's not "really" the same site.

Yes, given the choice between a simple database app like Access or CiviCRM, there is simply no comparison--CiviCRM provides a wealth of additional features and functionality beyond the built in features of a tool like Access.

Things like updating contact details, adding organizational contacts, relationships, notes, groups, contribution records, exporting contacts, PDF print-ready mailers, bulk email abilities etc. etc. are just a few ideas of things which are far easier with CiviCRM and some of which are not even possible with Access.