Successfully installed Drupal 6.8. I know which theme I am going to use and have some idea of how to set it all up. But I have an unusual business application and do not know the best way to go about building it in Drupal. All ideas and suggestions would be welcome.
I have a website with a number of static content pages that describe a family history research business that I run.
My services are of two types:
1. some fixed ones that can be described like a product for a shopping cart (like looking up an entry in a census)
-- these have a fixed price
2. some that are bespoke to that particular client's needs (for more complex requirements)
-- these are priced by the hour, and I need to give them an estimate before they order.
Once a prospective client likes what they see they should be able to
> place orders for the fixed services - but on checking out they need to give me information about their project (such as the name of the person they are looking for, where they came from, dates etc.)
> contact me to give me the background for the more complex bespoke services, so I can give them an estimate.
Once their order is placed I would need to see it, and acknowledge it.
Once acknowleged and the job is in progress, both client and I need to be able to talk via something like a trouble ticket system. I ping answers back to them, they reply with queries or questions or more information. Finally I send them the results of our research.
Once it is done I close the 'ticket' and bill the client. They can pay via Paypal or Worldpay or post.
What do you think?
Comments
Wow, quite a project. Well I
Wow, quite a project.
Well I would look into Ubercart and it's modules for your e-commerce part of the website. I think, not sure if this is the best option, you can sell a service as a product and then give the customers who bought that product a certain role. You can set up your ticket system, (have a look here; http://drupal.org/node/17174) just for specified roles I think.
I haven't done anything like this before and am not sure if this is your best option. But this is where I'd start my r&d for such a project.
Hope it helps!
Cheers,
Bartezz
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Live fast die young
The only part of this I'm
The only part of this I'm dubious about is the hourly services billing. The rest is doable with drupal no problem. One way to approach it would be to create a product for each type of service at the price of the hourly rate, then use the quantity field for the estimated hours (you can easily rename text with the stringoverrides module if you don't like the word 'quantity'). In any case, it's probably going to involve some level of customization outside the admin interface.
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I think you could try Storm,
I think you could try Storm, is a project management module. It has ticket system and time tracking priced by hour.
http://drupal.org/project/storm