By ouyang1512 on

Hello everyone, I am working on a conference abstract submission sub-system on a non-profit org website and hope anybody here can provide me some suggestions/ideas. I have Drupal 7 installed and wonder if there is a good way to manage the abstracts. The features we would like to have are:

1. primary contact info (has user name and password so that they will be able to come back to make edits)

2.. other authors/presenters' info (all the same: first name, last name, org, degree, phone etc., the same as primary contact)

3. abstract focus areas (data focus/program focus, for example) ---radio button
4. abstract title and body (text field/area)
5. info disclosure agreement (some check boxes)

6. ideally, we want to be able to make comments, scale the abstracts by staff, send out abs submission notice, confirmation messages etc.
7. collect all authors/presenters info in our DB for future marketing purposes. It would be great if we could integrate their contact info/profile into system's people/user module, or at least there is way to connect them to each other.

Is this something can be done using the fields module in the core, or webform with profile 2, or any other options available here? I am aware that Conference module is not an option for drupal 7.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

bjornarneson’s picture

bjornarneson commented

I think you want to use Fields for the project, not Webform module. See a general comparison here:

http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/webform#webform-vs-cck

Webform typically is used when performing data collection that is a one-way communication, that is, many users submitting values to a very small set of administrators. Webform is not a front end for letting users create custom nodes. Webform submissions are not nodes. This means that you can't use Views with submissions, setup custom access permissions to submissions, or do just about anything with them outside of what Webform provides for you.

Knowing that you want abstract authors to come back and edit their nodes and will be soliciting comments on abstracts should lead you straight toward Fields.

pastizzi’s picture

pastizzi commented

Hey ouyang1512

this really sounds like a case for COD (http://usecod.com/). It runs on Drupal 6 but it has all the features you require. We just recently used it for a site and only can recommend this distribution.

Otherwise I'd go with fields since forms don't create "full nodes". -> You can't find the submissions in the content management overview.

Hope that helps.

cheers

ouyang1512’s picture

ouyang1512 commented

Thank you both very much for answering my questions! I probably will then go with fields. But I still do not have a clear picture of how to handle the multiple authors/presenters info part. Do you have any idea?

To pastizzi, I wanted to use COD, but I do not want to do the upgrade to D7 just after the implementation of the site. We only have one developer with a lot of other maintaining and design tasks at the same time.

ouyang1512’s picture

ouyang1512 commented

I have been asking a lot of questions here and I am really appreciate all the help and suggestions from this forum.

Continue the question I asked in the thread, I decided to use node for the abstract submission, but I am stuck on the author/presenter's profile.

The scenario is that there might be one or more authors/presenters for one abstract, I could not find a way to embed user profile fields in a node and then add all user profiles in this node to the system at the abstract submission (if you know there is a way, please direct me and I would greatly appreciate that). What I am thinking now is to build a workflow, first allow the primary contact create a user account if he/she has not, then grant her/him to add multiple author/present's profile, at last, fill the abstract submission form. Is this something doable? Or could you share your thoughts with me?

Thanks a lot!

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

You could use a user reference field (references module) to add/list all the authors.

ouyang1512’s picture

ouyang1512 commented

Thanks much for your reply, nevets. That would be a good idea if all authors are registered users of my site, right? But what if they are not registered and not have a profile? Will use "add existing fields" from the profile do the trick? I tried this, but did not seem the data was added to profile. Did I use the "add existing fields" in a wrong way, or misunderstood its use?

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

No sure what you are asking with

Will use "add existing fields" from the profile do the trick

since it is not context of authors who are not users so they would not have a profile.

If the authors are not users of the site, I would use a text field that allows multiple values in the content.

ouyang1512’s picture

ouyang1512 commented

Sorry for the confusion

I was thinking to add a fieldset (first name, last name, degree etc.) like your suggested in the "abstract form" content type, in which the fields will be sharing the same fields as I have in the author/presenter profile ("add existing field"-->choose field_authorprofile_fname etc.). I thought the data in this fieldset would be saved as profile content, but it did not, still as abstract data :(

I am trying to figure this out is because my organization wants an integrated people table, every piece of info about people can be found in one place (like use a view). But, if I use fieldset for the second, third, fourth, etc. author/presenter, their info would not be listed/managed as the way we do with the user profile, would they?

Does this make more sense to you? Do you know of any better ways to achieve this? I thought profile is something like a content type, and can be created by users with a certain permission, but turned out it is not. This is a little frustrating...

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

I would consider making users for the other authors, they may not ever log in but it would simplify the problem.

The solutions I am aware of either treat author as a user or use a content type for author (Handled authors who are both users and those who are not). By adding a user reference field to the content type you can associate it with an actual user (You could also assign that user as the author of the content which would allow them to edit it).

ouyang1512’s picture

ouyang1512 commented

Appreciate your advices and help very much, nevets!

I will try creating users for other authors first and see if it is going to work (use rules to control the process, maybe??). If I figure out how to get this work in either way or other ways, I will report it back here.

Thanks again!

bonchak’s picture

bonchak commented

It's been more than a year but i wonder how you figured it out. I will be dealing wit a similar case in a near future and would like to hear your solutions.

I think of using rules and flag and context modules mainly. The abstract owner will submit the form and will be forced to register first. The referee will be registered too. So both parts will be registered users. There will be a moderator who controls the document flow. The submission form will be node or entity based and there will be an option that the moderator decides (boolean field) if form submission requires a prior event registration or not. When a form with reqiured fields is submitted the moderatior will assign to the referee. The referee will decide using the flags and rules so that the flags will fire a rule which redirects the node to another referee or the modeartor or the abstract owner. this is the main plan. I will appriciate any ideas if it is a wrong idea or should better follow an alternative way.

thx all