May 3, 2013 at 9:44 am
My daughter is in a school program where they have to complete community service hours. I'm on the parent advisory board of the program, and the program organizer told me about some software where they can submit their service hours and keep track of them online. Unfortunately the software is quite expensive and doesn't really fit into the budget for the academic program, so the program organizer came to me asking if there was anything that we (by that she meant me) could set up so that the kids could submit their hours and have them recorded. Now I'm a network engineer, I've done a little work with databases but I'm no wiz to put it lightly.
What I would need is to have an interface where students could set up a username and password, have a form that would go to the program organizer to have their service hours approved, then that would come back to the students letting them know it was approved at which point they could submit a second form letting the program organizer know that they had completed the activity for community service hours, and a screen totaling all of their hours.
Would SQL be correct for this? If not would you be able to suggest something that might work well? If there is already open source software or something cost-effective that we could implement I would be down with that! Any help is greatly appreciated.
May 3, 2013 at 10:02 am
Ben I'm hoping some of my peers may have a better suggestion;
I'm familiar with the free Community verison of DotNetNuke[/url] which is a Content Management Solution featureing suites of web page modules that can be setup to do what you want without any programming skills at all.
there's a module called "Forms and Lists" which you can use to setup to capture any kind of data you want...that would include the whole logging in/registering functionality,your service hours, notes, etc.
It happens to use SQL Server as the database behind the scenes. that means you need an exposed web server, and it needs access to SQL, or a host that provides the same.
You can make a form partially editable by anonymous users, or make any module available only to logged in users or even specific subsets of users.
the problem as i see it is it has a nasty learning curve;
I fiddle with it kind of regularly for hosting a dozen or so web sites for fun and friends, and i still am not an expert.
Other free "Content Management Solutions" will all offer similar functionality as well, and i would not be surprised if there was a WordPress item that could help as well.
hopefully one of my peers might be familiar with something easy to work with.
Lowell
May 3, 2013 at 10:11 am
While SQL Server could no doubt hold that data, it would be only a part of the solution.
The User interface part would have to be provided somehow, which could be any number of solutions (i.e web site, application that can be accessed from somehwere at the school itself, etc....) A web version would also need to be worried about securing the data and/or validating who is doing the entry, etc... Building this from the ground up could still get expensive (in hours even if you managed to get the software for free somehow): a truly "DIY" solution will be a non-trivial commitment.
That said - the use case you're talking about is fairly generic: this is basically a "Registration with approval process". Depend on what specific activity you're registering for, you might find free options where the basic templates are covered and done for you. For example - you MIGHT be able to get away with customizing some kind of survey at one of the many freeware survey sites (MZINGA for example); another option might be some of the freeware event registration sites, for example the functionality built into game guilds (a lot of sites for those with "mostly free" options, Guildportal just being one possible example of many). Last option is to look at perhaps using google docs/google drive to set up a spreadsheet template they could fill in.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
May 3, 2013 at 11:20 am
Hit up the local .NET and/or SQL Server user groups. Some of these groups get involved in things like Give Camps where they get together and develop applications for non-profit groups over a single weekend. You may not have the opportunity for a Give Camp, but perhaps there may be a few people willing to help you with something like this local to you.
May 3, 2013 at 11:43 am
Lynn Pettis (5/3/2013)
Hit up the local .NET and/or SQL Server user groups. Some of these groups get involved in things like Give Camps where they get together and develop applications for non-profit groups over a single weekend. You may not have the opportunity for a Give Camp, but perhaps there may be a few people willing to help you with something like this local to you.
I like this recommendation.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
_______________________________________________
I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
SQL RNNR
Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
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May 3, 2013 at 11:49 am
There are a couple of open source volunteer tracking systems out there. One is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmoss/?source=navbar
I haven't tried it, but it popped up as a possibility when my daughter was looking for similar software for the Pierce County Humane Society. They ended up going with Volgistics, I think, but that sounds like it would be beyond your price range.
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