Torenware Networks

Another part of my work for the Green Party of Canada is now in public release:

This module implements an automatic lookup of a phone number from one of several public sources (although in the first release, only the API411® web service of WhitePages.com (www.w3data.com/xml) is implemented, covering telephone numbers and address in the US and Canada. Other services may also be added if the community is interested and there's support for the work.

Data for the module is stored in internal caching tables, and also in CiviCRM.

Most of these services are for-pay, or require you to sign some paperwork with the service. In addition to installing this module, you'll need to contract with the service and make any arrangements they require for obtaining permission to use their services and for making payment on the lookups that you use.

The module currently handles integration with the API411 web service and CiviCRM 1.6 or later, and implements an API that other modules can use to do phone number lookups. Read the source for details.

Much thanks to the Green Party of Canada for supporting this work and releasing it to the Drupal community. Much thanks also to the people at the W3 Data® division of WhitePages.com, who have agreed to allow code implementing their APIs to be released under the GPL.

I've been looking at some of the things that folks have been wanting to do with Organic Groups with CiviCRM, but cannot do currently. I've spent a fair amount of time looking at how to fit into its architecture, and have slowly come to the conclusion that the answer is "no where".

So I've been looking for an alternate way of integrating the kind of functionality that OG has with CiviCRM, without actually using OG. I'm trying something out that may be useful for this. I have a demo to show folks. It's not for the timid, but it appears to work. More in the flip...

I've had a bit of time to work on CiviNode, and have made major improvements in its CCK support in the last couple of weeks. I'd be very happy to get a few testers for this, especially if you've been waiting for a new version.

You can download it here. It's for Drupal 5.1 only.

The readme file is below. You'll definitely want to read this, since this is a test release that will require you to patch a CiviCRM 1.7 install.

19 April 2007

This is a test version of CiviNode to get feedback on two new features:

1) A new CCK widgets module that is hopefully both simpler and more
"future proof" than civicrmdata.module, which this will likely
replace.

2) Improved contact autocompletion, which integrates CiviCRM's new
Dojo AJAX widget set into Drupal's CCK system.  You'll need to patch
CiviCRM 1.7 slightly to test this.  The patch is included in this
archive.  Lobo will likely include this patch in a future 1.7 release
(it's already in his "trunk" repository, which will become 1.8), but
this has not happened yet.  You can help speed this up by testing the
patch, since it *should* be backwards compatible with CiviCRM's other
AJAX widgets.  If it isn't, Lobo will definitely want to know, as will
I.

3) Make a good foundation for using CCK's improved Views module support.
This is not in yet, but won't take very long once
If you're comfortable patching CiviCRM (do it only on a test install!),
by all means test this.  If that sounds scary to you, wait a bit, and 
you'll see these files up on Drupal's download area shortly (less than
a week).


Thanks for looking this over.  It's currently available only for Drupal 
version 5.1, although it may be possible to get this working with 4.7
as well (assuming that CCK has the needed hooks for that version).

In addition: if there are features you want that you don't see, I'm
happy to discuss this.  I'd love to get sponsorship for this work, and
if this happens, I'll be able to put more time into improvements.

Thanks,
Rob Thorne
Torenware Networks

I've spent the last couple of days looking closely at the current versions of the Organic Groups module, with an eye to handling some of the issues that CiviCRM users have wanted to get done in getting the two systems working together.

Right now, there are two main things that need to get done for starters. More details after the jump.

Our old ISP of the last couple of years is having problems, so welcome to our newly moved server. We've made a couple of changes in addition:

• If you need to contact us, please create an account for yourself on our site. It's a bit inconvenient, but it will help us serve you better, since comment and website spam is an unfortunate fact of life :-(
• We're updating and expanding our docs on CiviNode. The project has reached a major milestone, and is being used in production sites.
• We'll be announcing a reporting solution based upon the JasperReports engine soon, and the new site will help us create a "playpen" so you can see how it works.

So welcome to our new site!

Right now, most of my work revolves about getting Drupal to work well with CiviCRM, the contact relations management package that's bundled with the CivicSpace distribution of Drupal. Some of the work is about ready to demonstrate to the wider developer community, and I'm getting ready to do just that.

As a part of doing this, I want to start a discussion about how people are using CiviCRM, and what features that general users and developers believe they need to get CiviCRM to do what they need. So first, some general ideas of what people are doing, and why they're doing it.