Posted by ebrittwebb on March 11, 2008 at 6:00am
Does anyone have (or know of) experience integrating CiviCRM into a school portal (website), such that students and parents can self-manage their contact information for use by the school and/or school PTO?
Today in Newton Public Schools, we have 21 different school sites, with none of them sharing any user login or contact information between them. My vision is to integrate the 21 sites into a single instance of CiviCRM, so they can share user login and contact information across them.
Even there is not direct experience with this, is there anyone interested in scoping out such an implementation and maybe even working together to pilot test something like this?
NOTE: Per Lobo's suggestion, this has also been posted on CiviCRM Forum
Comments
We are interested ...
hey erik:
do you wanna start off this discussion on the civicrm forums (where most of our users hang out).
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/board,1.0.html is a good place to have the discussion
There are a few schools that are using it and we'd like to see more schools start using it (and potentially integrate it with other open source school packages, maybe schoolbell?). My kids are going to start school in sept, so i have a vested interest in making this happen :)
lobo
Is this something that could
Is this something that could be handled with a use case, followed by a recipe?
Given the current level of integration between CiviCRM and Drupal, how much of this would require new code, as opposed to a config that cleanly identifies the points of connection between these two apps?
What CiviCRM functionality do you want to use?
What Drupal functionality do you want to use?
In hashing out the cleanest way forward, I'd recommend starting with a specific use case, with user stories:
Students will be able to do X, Instructors will be able to do Y, Administrators will be able to do Z, etc. Given that the integration between Drupal and CiviCRM is pretty well established, I think that we're probably closer than we think, and that this is more of a documentation issue (and a theming issue for look/feel continuity) than a development issue.
I also think that starting with a list of CiviCRM modules would be a great way to start -- going here: http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/52 and scrolling down to the C's shows a few modules already developed --
@lobo -- I'd love to see this collaboration happen -- what do you think would work best as far as centralizing the conversation? Also, what modules would you recommend as central to making a clean integration; ie, what would you use to build a Drupal/CiviCRM site from the ground up, with Drupal handling the content side, and CiviCRM handling the user tracking/constituent management side?
Also, how much user activity within a Drupal site gets exposed inside CiviCRM?
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Bill, Erik, et al I am close
Bill, Erik, et al
I am close to having a complete use case. Still in dialogue with a school group based in Ohio. It looks like I'll at least partially be using CiviCRM.
One of the features they desire may end up being accompmished by http://drupal.org/project/signit but I don't know where the readiness of that module stands.
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners
P2P Foundation
Social Media Classroom
I've responded on the CiviCRM forums ..
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,2696.0.html
lobo
Also created a wiki page
Also created a wiki page where I am Drafting user stories/usecase based on discussions I am having with school parents.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10643
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners
P2P Foundation
Social Media Classroom
Developing K-12 website for school using civicrm for list mgmt.
I am developing a K-12 website using Drupal and hope to use civicrm as the major list management module. If anyone has experience with using civicrm for this task, I would like to compare notes and progress. My goal is to use civirm to keep current list of kids and parents, including tracking willingness to volunteer and contributions.
Targeted emails, creating and distributing school directories, and volunteer management are a few functions I would like to incorporate.
Part of my challenge is to format civicrm in a way that is simple an user friendly, and allows easy queries.
I am new to Drupal and Civicrm, so any advice is welcome.
Higher Ed use case
Haven't played with Civi much outside of playing but integration seems like a great way to keep faculty / staff directories for College / Universities as well. I know I'll need to be investigating this soon for College of A&A @ PSU to some degree or another so that all sites within our infrastructure share staff profiles and don't replicate information. CiviCRM seems like it could be a good way of handling this data if the integration / recipe is right :). Love to hear what people find if they get at the answer before I do (won't be looking into this for awhile...).
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