YWAM Information Technology - Update on the Online Application Form Development - Comments

Much Needed

R.Blevins — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:15:04 +0100

This is something that is much needed in YWAM in my opinion. I was talking to a friend just the other day who is applying for a secondary school and she was bemoaning the fact that every time you apply for a school, you have to fill in the same (or almost the same) info over and over again.

Admittedly, you won't be doing this that often, but nevertheless, I would like to see something like this application form connected with some kind of central profile site where YWAMers could come and store their profile online and then when a school or base or whoever, needed this info, it could be sent directly from their profile page to the online application form. This shouldn't be to difficult to integrate, the question is, though how widespread the need is for this.

Update to the Application Form

bill.hutchison — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:36:05 +0100

We took some time out of the development to evaluate a free survey solution that allows for the surveys to be saved mid-way through the process.

Lime Survey seems like a pretty good program, that almost does what we want, but not quite. You can check it out at www.limesurvey.org.

The main thing that we didn't like about it was how it actually formats the surveys after you have created them. It's pretty ugly and there is not a way to reformat the way that the questions are displayed (you can add different templates, but it always displays the questions one after the other, sorted vertically).

Lime Survey could be a possible solution for some bases, and it might be worth checking out. There is no way to process payments for application fees or anything, but we are not developing that into our application solution either.

So we are continuing to develop the application, and we will keep you up to date as it progresses.

Bill Hutchison
Reef to Outback

Good work!

KevinColyer — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:54:42 +0100

Dear Bill,

Great work, I would like to help test this if I can.

Had you thought of opening up the development process at all? Perhaps providing SVN access or something (GIT anyone!) I would be delighted to see some more code posted on the YWAMKB IT section. It would work as a crude version control system!

As we will need translations and also nicely designed PDF forms etc as this continues we could perhaps collaborate a bit more...

Any thoughts at making this code GPL or Public Domain? Then many many others could benefit too?

Cheers,

Kevin

Great work guys,

vince.licari — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:27:53 +0100

Hey Bill, I hope all is going well in Australia. It looks like you've been pretty busy. Great job. I'd love to have a look at it when you are done. We are looking at moving to an online application process. We use Joomla for our CMS so we would love to test the component in a our environment. We are looking for an integrated application and payment process. Of course whatever we do it will need to be less complicated for our students and referees. I don't know how it is at other bases but here at ywam lausanne the things that holds up applications the most are is the school deposit and getting all the referee's in. So the system that we choose will need to greatly improve how those 2 things are done and above all be easier and less complicated for the students.

Keep me posted and let me know when you have something we can take a look at.

blessings bro and it's great to see so much development happening. Keep the ideas coming.

-Vince

Update on the Online Application Form Development

bill.hutchison — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:09:08 +0100

Thank you for all your feedback on the on-line application form application. The application is coming along slowly, but we are getting there. We have been able to incorporate a lot of your feedback into the application including ways to hopefully address the varied application processes out there and the legal issues.

Here are some of the features that the programmer is building into the on-line application:

Built on PHP
Database interface to allow it to be used with Microsoft SQL, MySQL, SQL Lite, etc.
Built on the Smarty Template system, but with some programming knowledge he reckons that we should be able to adapt it to Drupal, Joomla or Typo3, hopefully as a plugin
Individual applicants have username and passwords to the system. This should provide a level of security and privacy as well as hopefully allow the applicant to save the form partway through the application process
The application build process will have an ajax interface, like JotForm that Sam pointed out. This will allow each location to build and customize their applications based on their own needs and schools.
It will not be centrally hosted, so if a YWAM base wants to deploy the solution they will need to host it themselves, or possibly look at regional options for deployment.

I hope that I got all that right from what our programmer has been telling us. When we get a bit further down the track we will look at setting it up on a host for testing.

Anyone interested in helping us to beta test it when we get further down the track?

Are there any Typo3, Joomla or Drupal programmers out there who would be willing to look at getting the application set-up as a plugin when the application is up and running?