[MERGED TOPIC] Reminder System

Hammerhead wrote: We are looking for a Joomla component (or CB plugin) that will enable our users to create 'alarms' that coincide with expiration of their First Responder and medical practitioner certificates.

The component must present a list of standard (admin-configured) certificate types (for example: CPR, EMT, etc.), allow the user to select the expiration of each one, and the system must then send reminder emails to each user at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days in advance of the date set.

Requirements:
- Must support Joomla ACL (site registration required)
- Users may see and edit only their events, not that of others
- Events must be more than one year in duration (some certs last 3 years)
- Integration with CB, DTRegister, ACYMailing highly desirable

Hope someone can help us find what we need. Thanks in advance!

I believe we already replied here:

www.joomlapolis.com/forum/87-presales/226194-can-cb-do-this#247940

Apparently I did, thanks for reminding me (how ironic!). However I didn't understand your reply since I don't know how CBsubs works and would appreciate some clarification. If you can kindly respond in that other thread, I'd be grateful.

Hammerhead wrote: Apparently I did, thanks for reminding me (how ironic!). However I didn't understand your reply since I don't know how CBsubs works and would appreciate some clarification. If you can kindly respond in that other thread, I'd be grateful.

Well you did not ask for further explanations on the previous (now merged) thread.

CBSubs has a very powerful Mailer system that can be manually triggered in backend or triggered through CRON jobs.

You can create as many Mailer Actions as you want.

Each action has its own timing criteria that can be configured off a wide range of available fields - even CB fields you create.

So you can configure things like:

Send personalized email (the email subject and bodies can have personalized fields like [FIRSTNAME], etc.) if a a certain cb_field (date) is 90 days away from today.

Another one if a date is 60 days away, etc.

We typically use this to send users reminder messages that their subscriptions are ending so users renew.

I guess you can also create a number of CBSubs plans (one for certification, etc.) with specific durations and program CBSubs to send reminder messages - this way if they renew their subscriptions they reminder messages will be sent again next year - otherwise the reminders will stop if the subscription was not renewed.

nant wrote: Each action has its own timing criteria that can be configured off a wide range of available fields - even CB fields you create.

I guess you can also create a number of CBSubs plans (one for certification, etc.)

Thanks for clarifying. Sorry for the delay responding - I've been dealing with an unexpected family medical emergency.

The problem is that though certifications are for known periods of time, WHEN a member creates his 'subscription' will not always be a fit if he is not able to specify the END date of a plan. In other words, not all users will be creating plans the exact date they get their certification. There may be gaps between when the certification was issued and when a user creates a reminder plan.

For example, if a CPR certification is for two years, but someone creates his 'plan' when he has 14 months left (more than one year, less than two years), the notification will not coincide with the expiration since the system is calculating from the beginning of the plan, not from the end date the user inputs.

What we need is for the user to plug in his OWN termination date and have the system calculate notifications prior based on that date. Is that possible?

Yes the CBSubs Mailer system can trigger off CB Date fields that are manually populated by end-users.

nant wrote: Yes the CBSubs Mailer system can trigger off CB Date fields that are manually populated by end-users.

I'm not sure if that will work for us.

If my understanding is correct, it would require we create custom fields, and every user would be responsible for logging in and updating their profile. We were looking for something simpler, with a module that we can put on the landing page that would have a simple process that looks something like:
Select 'plan' (certification type)
Enter expiration date
Verify (check out) at $0
System dispatches emails backward based on date above

In other words, we were looking for something obvious and easy. Asking users to navigate through to their profile is a bit more complex than we hoped.

We were trying to use AEC, and the developer assured us he'd be willing to make the small adaptations needed, but he fell out of bed and didn't finish the job. So now, after paying for a component we don't need, we're left trying to figure out how to get it done. This is why I'm so reluctant to spend more money without knowing for sure if we can get what we need before buying something that isn't right.