Author Topic: Simulating a membership approval process, and restricting access (Read 480 times)

Simon West · December 19, 2012, 04:58:27 am

I have read other posts on the forum regarding forms of membership approval, and restricting access to contribution forms/Drupal pages/event registration based on the status of a membership, and hit a wall; every option I have considered seems to lead to a dead end.

The following is the workflow I am planning to create, if possible. I would very much appreciate someone's eye over this, and some suggestions, before committing to the task.

Prospective members register their interest in becoming a member through an online form. One requirement here is that the form creates three contacts, one a child, and the father and mother created with a "parent to" relationship (webform appears capable of this, according to the documentation).
Upon submission, the prospect is pending membership (the membership is for the child) until staff have confirmed an available space. Membership can only be completed once a place has been confirmed, at which point payment is requested. The membership type is fixed.
Once the membership status is "current" (or a custom status where they have paid but are awaiting the membership start date), the member and their parents are now able to register the child for events, complete contribution forms and renew the membership.
When membership expires, access to the member-only forms is revoked. Staff may give the ex-members temporary access to the member pages in extenuating circumstances - perhaps a temporary fixed membership of a month, or an end date at their discretion?

I can foresee a number of issues arising out of having a parent log in with their own account to manage the membership and activities of their child, so I am considering proposing a change to the model where there is:

One user account for the child, created and managed by the parents upon initial registration (account creation must therefore be automated)
Contacts are created for the father and mother, with a parent relationship to the child
The parents may use their child's user account to manage the contact information in their respective contact records (mother and father), permitted through relationship access control
Once the child grows to an age when they can manage their own account, parents give them access to it, and request user accounts for themselves.

I would greatly appreciate any input. Thank you in advance, and apologies if I am slow to reply.

Simon

JonGold · December 19, 2012, 09:40:36 am

Hi Simon,

Looks complicated but exciting! I'm not sure what the issues you foresee with allowing a parent to edit a child's account though, so I can't speak to that. We've implemented this in a number of cases, and I agree it's more complicated, but doable if that's important.

Some tips if you don't change the workflow (and probably useful in either case):
* For item 1, since you're using Drupal, consider using the CiviCRM Webform module for the signup. It'll handle creating multiple contacts (and their relationships) and you won't have to write a line of code.
* For item 2 - the way I handled this for a client was to NOT create memberships on initial signup, but to automatically add them to a "prospective member" group. When a space opened, they got moved to a new group ("approved for membership") and sent a form e-mail that linked to the actual membership signup page (with a checksum, so they didn't need to be logged in for the membership to be linked to their existing account).

Simon West · January 04, 2013, 06:20:18 am

Thanks JonGold,

I hope you enjoyed the holidays.

Your approach is the most efficient so far - thank you. I think a combination of Webform and CiviMember roles sync will address the majority of my points. The parent-child registration issue is a tricky one, at least in my mind. If we were to use webform for member-only event registration, we could simply create a user account for the parents and let them register their child for the events. However, some of the events require payment, and unless we do some jiggery pokery with Coleman's technique here, this would complicate matters. Also, the membership should be tied to the child's contact profile, but if we rely on CiviMember Role Sync to regulate member-only access, we would need to bridge this to the mother and father too, as they would need to be able to access the webform event pages in order to register on the child's behalf.

Does a better option come to mind?

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Author Topic: Simulating a membership approval process, and restricting access (Read 480 times)

Simon West

Simulating a membership approval process, and restricting access

JonGold

Re: Simulating a membership approval process, and restricting access

Simon West

Re: Simulating a membership approval process, and restricting access