By bstrange on

I have a computer maintenance company and have been mulling over the idea of using drupal to allow my customers to log in and chack their previous work history and most importantly a way for them to log into their account, click to view a work estimate that I have created and then hit a button to approve said estimate.

I have been unable to find any mods that would specifically allow this and I am wondering:

1. Can a mod be written that would allow an admin to post estimates (pages) to a specific user's account that would be viewable by only them and the admin?

2. Is there a way to set up an "approve" button for said estimates that could be considered a digital signature? My concern is that if an admin can post the estimate on a users account, then that user could make the case that the same administrator 'clicked' the approve button for them thus making the entire estimate/approval interface worthless.

3. Is there a way to make the approval button, upon being pressed send an email to both myself and the client informing both parties that the approval was granted for a posted estimate?

4. Are there existing mods that natively serve this purpose (and if so what are they)? If none of the current mods are built to provide this kind of functionality, could any existing mods be hacked/modded to accomplish the above stated functions?

5. If the mod needs to be developed from scratch, is it a process that a person new to drupal could accomplish by reading some tutorials or does it require a programing degree?

6. Are there any interfaces designed to help a novice develop a mod?

I hope this was the appropriate place to ask these questions. Sorry I had so many, I am very new to Drupal, but I am already amazed at what can be accomplished (as opposed to other CMS platforms) and what seems to be potentially possible.

Thanks in advance!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

bstrange’s picture

bstrange commented

Ok, if you can't answer all of the questions, I'd settle for any :)

Should I repost this in a different forum that may be better able to assist me with this question, or do I have it in the best location already?

Thanks in advance! :)

bigkevmcd’s picture

bigkevmcd commented

1. Can a mod be written that would allow an admin to post estimates (pages) to a specific user's account that would be viewable by only them and the admin?

Yes...you could define permissions for "view estimate" and "manage estimates" and then then implement hook_access to define whether or not a logged in user can view the estimate node.

2. Is there a way to set up an "approve" button for said estimates that could be considered a digital signature? My concern is that if an admin can post the estimate on a users account, then that user could make the case that the same administrator 'clicked' the approve button for them thus making the entire estimate/approval interface worthless.

What would you class as a signature? Simplistically you could record the time and user who approves the estimate, but it's lacks the "non-repudiation" test that would define a "digital signature".

3. Is there a way to make the approval button, upon being pressed send an email to both myself and the client informing both parties that the approval was granted for a posted estimate?

Yes...the drupal_mail function should make this fairly easy.

4. Are there existing mods that natively serve this purpose (and if so what are they)? If none of the current mods are built to provide this kind of functionality, could any existing mods be hacked/modded to accomplish the above stated functions?

Not that I'm aware of.

5. If the mod needs to be developed from scratch, is it a process that a person new to drupal could accomplish by reading some tutorials or does it require a programing degree?

Certainly doesn't require a programming degree, as is the case in all programming tasks, the key is defining exactly what you want, preferably on paper, first, and then being willing to refine as you go along.

6. Are there any interfaces designed to help a novice develop a mod?

Best advice I can give is to start at http://api.drupal.org/api/ and then find "Pro Drupal Development" and read some of the pre-existing modules, it takes a bit to get your brain wrapped around the three main concepts: nodes, formapi and the hook mechanism, but going by the number of third-party modules, it's not that hard :-)

Good luck!

Blitter’s picture

Blitter commented

1. Can a mod be written that would allow an admin to post estimates (pages) to a specific user's account that would be viewable by only them and the admin?

4. Are there existing mods that natively serve this purpose (and if so what are they)? If none of the current mods are built to provide this kind of functionality, could any existing mods be hacked/modded to accomplish the above stated functions?

You're after the workflow module:
http://drupal.org/project/workflow

Permissions can then be used so that clients can only post and see/edit their own [insert content type here], and your employees can see all of them. Slap some filtered views on and you're done.

bstrange’s picture

bstrange commented

Thanks all, I appreciate the replies!

I will check out workflows first to get the site up and running , and then I think I might dive into learning to write some mods myself :)

Thanks again