I’m planning to use SuiteCRM for my following requirement and needed some advice on whether or not I’m using the right modules:
REQUIREMENT
We have Helpers whose personal details we need to record like their Name, Age, Address, Demographic details, etc.
These Helpers maybe qualified to attend different Intakes. A single Intake can happen at one or many locations at one or different dates.
For each Intakes, we have Helpers with either of the statuses “Selected/Accepted/Declined” into an Intake.
Those who have accepted or have been selected will then be invited to attend the Intake and their booking requirements need to be recorded such as Train/Hotel/Access requirements, etc.
Reports on Helpers in a particular Intake with particular status AND Helpers who haven’t attended any Intake for past year/3 years
The modules I had in mind for this was
Helpers - Contacts
Intake - Events & Locations
Helpers in Intake - Delegates in Events (But there is only Accepted/Declined status; No Selected; Also, can’t report on these statuses so not sure of this choice) No module to record booking requirements for those who “Accepted” and attending an Intake so can create a module using Module builder but not sure of Relationship with Contact/Events module as any requirement created should also appear as subpanel in Contact & Events module
So, are there modules available by default in SuiteCRM that I can modify and use for my requirement OR wouldI have to create all new modules except Contacts?
If I will have to create new modules, then a little few suggestions on relationships between those modules and with Contacts module will be very helpful.
I recommend using the default modules as much as possible, you gain a lot of functionality and save a lot of work.
Contacts is fine for Helpers
Events is a quite non-standard module, so it’s harder to customize and lacks some features (like Reports limitations).
Maybe you can make do with Meetings or even Tasks for that? As long as it has a date, and let’s you relate Contacts to it (and most modules do let you), you should be ok. Add any missing custom fields that you need.
About the booking requirements: do you need it to be a separate module? Can’t you make it just a bunch of fields in the Intake (based on Meetings or Tasks) module?
I understand Events is a non-standard module and have already started facing issues wrt getting Delegates info on Reports or changing any Delegates fields from Studio.
However, Task/Meeting might not help in this case as we normally hold things like events where lot of helpers are invited, some attend & some declined. Those who attend may or may not having their booking requirements, etc.
If we create a Task - there is no way to bulk add multiple Helpers and update their statuses based on they accepted or declined.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to handle such a requirement?
The correct way to do this, IMHO, would be to use basically any module that can have a many-to-many relationship to Contacts, for example, Cases. Then the status fields (accepted, selected) can be custom fields in the relationship. Not fields in any of the two modules, but in the relationship itself.
Now, the problem is that this kind of fields are notoriously difficult to set up.
If you have a budget to hire someone knowledgeable that could be helpful here. I suggest SalesAgility but there are many other players in this market and they are also welcome to make themselves known here.