College Tutoring Platform -- Feedback Requested

Thanks for the insight. I built the prototype using exactly the modules you mentioned, as well as a few other heavyweights (mainly Rules). I agree that using these "nearly core" modules is the way to go, as it helps guarantee compatibility with other smaller contributed modules.

Regarding the resource scheduling idea, I'm not sure the problem is so similar. The tutoring center doesn't actually schedule times for meetings. Basically, tutors tell them what courses they can tutor, students submit requests when they need a tutor, and the staff makes a semester-long assignment. When the tutors and tutees actually meet is up to them.

I'm at the point now where I've done all I can from the GUI. There is some custom coding I need to do to fill in the gaps. Ideally, I'd like to take the customizations I've already done and reproduce them in php as a module install routine/installation profile/both, and document it to the point where a non-drupal-savy IT person can install it and play with it. The issue is, that's a lot of work. Before going through all of that, I'd really like to hear someone from at least one tutoring center say, "Yeah, we've been looking to move to something new. I'd be interested in taking a look at that."

Anyone know a tutoring center looking for a new platform?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Bill,

You are right on with the requirements. I would also add a couple more:

1. Post training sessions for tutors, and keep track of attendance (for certification and payroll). This is easily handled with Date/Calendar/Signup and such.

2. Flexible reporting capabilities.

You are correct that we don't need to do any scheduling.

What is Rules being used for?

Rules is basically used to avoid the need for custom coding wherever possible. For example, a tutoring request has a user reference field that references the student in need of tutoring. If an administrator fills out the request, he or she can select the student. If a student fills out the request, the field is hidden. A rule is then used: "WHEN a new request is submitted, IF the student field is blank, SET the value to the currently acting user." It's the 'IF' condition that I can't get workflow or Trigger to check for.

Also, there are several situations where I would like to use Rules, but so far I can't. The problem is that Rules limits the arguments you can specify for actions. Example: I have a content type called tutoring_assignment, which takes a tutoring request and links it to a tutor. The tutoring request links to the tutee, course, and course instructor. When a new assignment is created, I would like to have a rule that changes the workflow state of the referenced tutoring request (to 'assigned'). This isn't possible, as the only argument which can be passed to the change state action is "current node."

Another example: When a tutoring assignment is created, I would like to send an email to the course instructor. Again, the only argument choices for the recipient I have are current user, and node author. There is no way to choose "the user referenced in the instructor field of the tutoring request node referenced in the 'request' field of this node." Token provides some flexibility here, allowing you to choose users referenced in the current node, but not with this many degrees of separation.

One possible solution to this is to use a computed field to keep track of the appropriate email recipient, but this could cause inconsistencies in the data (if the node isn't updated), and it doesn't solve the problem in the first example. Another idea would be to just code the action, either by making a Rules Action, or just using hook_nodeapi. I think the best solution to this would be an advanced option for arguments in Rules. Instead of an argument, you could specify a view that would provide the argument as a result. Then, something generic like "current node" can be passed as an argument to the view. I could easily build a view with some relationships that would pull the data from the table I need. What do you think of this?

What custom code is needed?

The problem above is one place where custom code will probably be needed. Another place has to do with views. There is a content type called time_entry, which basically records anything that happens that a tutor gets paid for (tutoring report submitted, attending training, etc.) Currently, I can make a view that lists each entry, but there is no way to make a summary view. I'd like a view that lists each tutor, and the total amount they were paid for the year, or the amount of money spent providing tutoring for each academic department. It seems like there should be a way to make a field in a view that a) runs another view with a specified argument, b) performs SUM or COUNT on a particular field, and returns the result.

As you can see, there are several places where I could write some quick and dirty code that would accomplish what I need, but the alternative is to improve the UI so that I (and others) can do these things without needing custom code.

Sorry this post came out like a brain dump of the entire project. Aren't you sorry you asked?

Thanks for your interest and advice,

Jeff