Membership/Email function help needed

8 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: January 29, 2010   (RSS)

By Codee - January 26, 2010

I'm helping a person with an educational website for youth. I fronted the CMSB license and the work to help them out but I could use some assistance. I have purchased the membership plugin as well and think it will help this person; especially since it would be much better to start part of this properly from the beginning and then have to go back and fix a bunch.

What the person needs is the following to happen:

Each student is a member on the CMSB system (so has a User Account with limited functions).

The teacher has a semi-templated lesson that gets slightly modified depending upon each students needs. So I can create a CMSB section for the lesson that can be
displayed in a viewer, per se, that has the semi-templated lesson and then populates the custom fields depending upon what the instructor
types/enters/uploads for each student. There are approximately 6 progressive lessons of the core learning material.

We want each student to be able to login and:
1) view only their lesson(s) in the viewer
2) receive an email from the CMSB system that has the viewer's data in it.
This is so the students can receive a "written" copy of their lesson(s) via email and of course be able to login to the site and see the lesson as well. It would be
great if the email were automated upon creation of the record lesson, but is more than acceptable if the teacher clicks a "submit" or "send email lesson" button for each emailed lesson.

So we need the info to be unique for both the user's viewer and user's email.

Is this process doable and reasonably simple? Thanks for any help in advance.

Re: [equinox69] Membership/Email function help needed

By Chris - January 27, 2010

Hi equinox69,

How exactly will the templating system work? Will students have a set number of fields which need to be inserted into lessons, or will there always be new template fields added for each lesson? Can you explain a detailed example of how this should work?
All the best,
Chris

Re: [chris] Membership/Email function help needed

By Codee - January 27, 2010

Thanks for addressing this Chris.
Will students have a set number of fields which need to be inserted into lessons, or will there always be new template fields added for each lesson?

Each lesson will have an independent template if that answers your question...unique, when I previously used the term "progressive" lessons I may have been misleading...it wasn't meant that "lesson 2 is a combination or add on to lesson 1 and includes lesson 1's data". So lesson 1 has a unique template, lesson 2 has a unique template to lesson 2, etc. The only data that changes for any lesson 2, for example, is what goes into the data field block for that student.

So, if one of the the data field blocks in lesson 2 is a static "recommendation", then the "recommendation" field shows in any lesson 2 record (and viewer of course) but the data that shows for the recommendation is unique to that student. Maybe Student A sees in the recommendation field "do your division tables up to the integer number 8 by friday" and Student B sees in their recommendation field "do your quadratic equation exercises on page 472 of the textbook by thursday".

Does that answer your question appropriately?

Re: [equinox69] Membership/Email function help needed

By Chris - January 27, 2010

This is actually sounding pretty complicated. I'm imagining that you'll need to have a section which is associated to both lessons and students (a many-to-many table.)

Can you explain more about how these data field blocks will work?
All the best,
Chris

Re: [equinox69] Membership/Email function help needed

By Chris - January 28, 2010

Hi equinox69,

Oh! Lessons are directly associated with students, that makes things simple.

In that case, the only tricky requirement is the emailing. If you want teachers to be able to send these emails from within CMS Builder, you'd need a custom plugin, otherwise this could be done with a custom script. If we're the ones building this for you, it would be just as easy to do with a plugin (and would provide a nicer user interface.)

Please let me know if you'd like to discuss having some custom code written via our consulting service.
All the best,
Chris

Re: [chris] Membership/Email function help needed

By Codee - January 28, 2010

Oh! Lessons are directly associated with students, that makes things simple.

That "sounds" good, but "how"? I've got the membership plugin that should provide part of the ability to do that, right?

In that case, the only tricky requirement is the emailing. If you want teachers to be able to send these emails from within CMS Builder, you'd need a custom plugin,...Please let me know if you'd like to discuss having some custom code written via our consulting service.


Okay, I am interested in having you build a plugin for this function.

Re: [equinox69] Membership/Email function help needed

By Chris - January 29, 2010

Hi equinox69,

That "sounds" good, but "how"? I've got the membership plugin that should provide part of the ability to do that, right?


Yes, that's right. The membership plugin will help you build a front-end for students, who'll each have a User Account. Your Lessons will need a Student list field which associates the lesson with a User Account. Does that get you started in the right direction?

Okay, I am interested in having you build a plugin for this function.


I'll email you a quote on Monday.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
All the best,
Chris