CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am a full time web developer and CiviCRM newcomer. I read about 25% of the CiviCRM user and administrator guide and I was hoping the community could save me some time before I read the whole thing.

My website will feature a cycle of actions that will repeat every 6 months. A user will apply for a program submitting an abstract, faculty will review all applications, some will be accepted, those accepted will attend a workshop. Also I need functionality to run reports on applicants and accepted applicants, and be able to search for and through submitted and accepted abstracts (attachments)- I think this should be pretty standard though no?

After my reading I found that I could use CiviCase and create a new case for each applicant, I read through the section on CiviCase but I am not sure if CiviCase is my best option. I am not looking for someone to map out this project for me but rather point me in the right direction so I don't misuse Civi elements and run into problems down the road.

Any suggestions are massively appreciated, thank you in advance.

Hey Jason,

I am going to look into using CiviCase then, thank you very much! At first the XML setup seemed like a turn-off to me but hearing from you that CiviCase is a great component I am confident it will be a small hurdle.

Thank you very much- if any one else has any suggestions or ideas of other components that might compliment CiviCase in my program that would be great to hear. I will be sure to post back and return the favor when I learn more about CiviCRM.

Thanks Hershel,

I am going to re-read the CiviCase section of the book tonight and then test it out tomorrow.

Will I need to implement any specific Civi components to gain the functionality to allow users to be able to search for/through things like the attachments uploaded during the application process or the applicants themselves from the front end?

Thanks again for your help.

I would want to search on tags or keywords attached to those documents, could I attach keywords to them?

I would want to search on tags or keywords attached to those documents, could I attach keywords to them?

The only other option (for right now) would be to add a "tag" field for each file field. Or you could consider doing the application aspect in Drupal and then the searching would be in Drupal also. It would all still be associated with the CiviCRM Contact of course, but the application data would be in Drupal.

There is the fulltext search feature in civi that searches activity details. I'm not sure if it's available as a block in wordpress like it is in drupal, but anyway you can get to it from the menu under search -> custom searches.

Thank you everyone for your help.

I just finished re-reading the CiviCase section of the User & Admin Guide Book and I didn't see anything in there about creating a case when a user fills out a form.

Ideally I would want a user to come to the site, fill out the form for their application submission and attach their abstract. This would create a case on the fly with the first activity (something like 'applied') completed. Then the case would follow a pattern from then on. Is there any way to initiate a case like this? I am afraid the office work will become to time consuming if we must create each case manually from data entered on an unrelated form.

I apologize if I am getting too off topic for this thread, just let me know I will be more than happy to post elsewhere.