A "Can this be done with AwareIM" post...

capj

Hello,

I am looking to develop a web application and have been searching for a RAD tool to help. I would describe myself somewhere between a pro webmaster and beginner db programmer. I have stumbled across AwareIM and it looks like it may work for what I want to do. Your thoughts are appreciated.

A religious non-profit wants to setup a online database app to match skilled volunteers with overseas missions projects and short-term work teams. People can register as volunteers and manage a profile containing personal and skills information. Missionaries can register and manage project profiles and request work teams. Team organizers are assigned an approved team by Admin, and can search the volunteer database to invite people to participate. Admins approve all profiles and manage the system. The public cannot view the database, but can view teams in progress and view general information.

There's more to it, but that is the gist of what they want accomplished. Is this type of application fairly easily built in AwareIM, including the moderated self-registration?

aware_support

This is a 100% match to what Aware IM can do. The application you want can be done very easily with Aware IM.

You do not have to be a programmer or know the database technology to create this kind of application with Aware IM. You don't need to know HTML or other web technologies either. All you need to understand is what concepts exist in your application and how they are linked together (for example, a Missionary can be associated with multiple Project's and WorkTeam's etc) - you've already provided some description of this.

If you want we can develop this application for you if you provide more detailed specs. However, once you learn Aware IM capabilities you will be able to do it yourself.

capj

Thank you for your quick and encouraging reply. I have downloaded the evaluation to see what it's all about.

How does AwareIM integrate with "regular web page" content? Does it have the functionality to add and/or manage HTML based pages? If not, how easy is it to integrate into a website? The reason I ask is that I would like to display HTML content based on security roles, and also to allow admins the ability to add/manage the content. I regularly use the dotnetnuke CMS to setup websites, but I'm not sure how I would integrate with AwareIM, especially on the user accounts... the synchronization may get messy. Just wondering what your suggestions would be.

aware_support

Aware IM can be used both as an application that offers its own screen layout or as an application integrated into some other web site.

When Aware IM is used as a non-integrated application you can set up different elements of the screen - banner, footer, menu, left page, right page. You can use custom HTML pages for each of these screen areas.

When Aware IM is integrated into an existing web site you can turn banner, footer, menu left and right pages off leaving only the main area of the screen where Aware IM forms are displayed. The best way of integration is to use HTML IFRAME element inside the existing web site for the Aware IM-controlled screen area. Our own web site is an example of such an integration - have a look at the "My account" and "Buy" pages on our web site - they include IFRAME elements to manage Aware IM-controlled screen area.

capj

Thank you for the clarification, however what you described is suitable for branding purposes or a public website, but I was wondering more about CMS functionality where admins can update webpages with HTML content (ie. static text) and certain pages can only be viewed by certain users.

I have been reading the documentation and so far have come up with the following possibilities:

Build a CMS like functionality using business objects to hold the content and document templates to display it.
Integrate it into an external CMS like dotnetnuke, using the iframe, and some how use web services to synchronize the CMS and AwareIM user accounts and authentication.

The latter sounds quite ackward, and makes me lean towards the first, although it seems like a lot more work to implement. Am I missing another solution?

aware_support

Solution 1) is definitely the way to go - any integration is always a pain. From what you described so far solution 1) should be quite easy to implement in Aware IM - it will take care of CMS, access control etc.