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 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.

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.