Family Plan / Group Plan option as part of core CBSubs

Quick question (As I am getting a number of inquiries about this).

Are there any plans to build the ability to set up family or groups plans into the software rather than navigate through the very thorough tutorial ( www.joomlapolis.com/documentation/283-cb-paid-subscriptions/tutorials/18405-family-plan-membership-part-1 )

I would love to see the option to have members sign up for a subscription for more than one user in the plan (such as a family plan or company group plan) allowing a certain number of people to have their own logins under the same plan.

I've seen this in a number of Wordpress plugins but much prefer to stick with the CBSubs/Joomla as it has way more configuration options (way more powerful from what I've seen).

Yes, we've plans to implement support for family plans in a future release. I've no idea when though as it's a pretty major feature and don't really have any idea how to go about implementing it yet.

I'm pretty confident it can be done with an integration plugin so we might be able to release something like this sooner than expected as just a plugin as part of CBSubs instead of disrupting the core. Still don't have much of an idea regarding the UX; I suppose it could just ask for email addresses. We already have events for plan state changes so that's not an issue for us to be able to act on (e.g. when plan becomes active loop through the email addresses, find their accounts, and activate the plan for those accounts). This should also require the supplied email addresses to confirm. So probably something like the below.

1. supply email addresses (via +/- repeat usage) at payment basket
2. complete payment as normally
3. send email to supplied email addresses to confirm
4. users click confirmation link and now activates the sharing of the plan OR they register and it then confirms

It wouldn't be ideal to force the sharing though since you could end up bumping other users out of their current plans which wouldn't be very nice, but I guess the confirmation step could be optional.

To be honest I'm having a hard time finding family plan examples to figure out the best way to implement the UX. So if you've any examples to provide (e.g. other extensions, products, etc..) that have such a feature that could be useful.

Glad to see it's in the pipeline. The other hurdle is if users use CB Connect as a means to login.

I will see what if I can find some alternate UX samples. I've seen some in Wordpress but so far nothing in Joomla.

The other hurdle is if users use CB Connect as a means to login.

As long as it's email address based it shouldn't be an issue as the confirmation should allow acceptance during registration or with an existing account. The UX is the hardest part, but it needs to be on the payment basket. Probably below where coupons are applied using our +/- repeat usage so multiple email addresses can be supplied up to the maximum limit specified in the integration, but you'd have a repeat usage for each plan that allows family sharing so there's no telling how large the display could get. Needs a lot of consideration and testing.

True, there are lots of variables. If there one thing Joomlapolis and CBSubs are loaded with options which opens up tonnes of possibilities,

As far as family plan goes, I image in most cases it wouldn't go beyond 3 or 4 additional users as part of the +/- tool. I think the complexity would come in on how the pricing connects to extra users.

For example, in my case I am looking the following types of plans

Plan 1 (Single user): $20
Plan 2 (Family plan): $40 (Doesn't matter how many in the same household, so anything more than 2 - It's really just a group rate of 2 or more)

It makes sense that the +/- would be on the basket page as it would be connected to the pricing so I can see where it can get complicated as the email address is really a registration field item. I imagine the processing that take place after would be really complex too as it would trigger emails to those extra addresses to complete their own registrations and accounts, etc.

I wonder if some ideas from event registrations extensions (where its common to sell group priced events) is a place to look at as to how they process multi-user registrations?

The family plan functionality wouldn't register a user. It'd simply send them an email to "claim" the free subscription basically. If they don't have an account they can then create one at that time otherwise they should login then use the confirmation link to attach it to their account. So it'd work pretty similarly to CB Invites in that regard, which means it probably needs a profile tab to review attached subscriptions encase they need to send it to someone else and probably needs a field like CB Invites so it can be accepted regardless of email address used during registration.

I think event systems basically give you a number of tickets and you can had them out as you please so I'm not sure if that's quite as similar since in this case we're 1 for 1 matching the family subscriptions up with the original subscriber, which isn't hard but isn't quite the same as just giving away a coupon for example.

I think I've an idea of where I can go with this. It will certainly need a profile tab for managing attached family members. The owner should be allowed to cancel those family members plans, see if the family member confirmed, resend confirmation, or even send to someone else instead. As for UX during basket a simple repeat usage either on page or through a modal popup should be sufficient.