Thread

I’ve been maintaining a client site built on Wordpress a long time ago. I want to convert the site to EE as I’ll be able to do much more and it will be a lot easier for them to update the site. They have the need to have members register to view certain content. BUT, and it’s a big but…they need to verify that the person trying to register is an employee of the company. So the employee might have to enter in their employee ID for example, and then EE would have to check it against a database of employees that is generated from some other system. I realize this functionality isn’t built into EE, but I’m wondering how feasible it would be. I would be hiring help for this portion of the project as it is way over my head. Thanks for any information!

Might be better posted in the pre-sales area…BUT,
I don’t think this functionality would be too hard.
Off the top of my head, it might require either an extra table set up or custom field…which you then populate with the valid ID’s (import), then check a login against them.
That is, if an add-on doesn’t already do the job….or might make it easier.
Ask on the solspace forums if “user” can do this out of the box.

This feature is unique to your needs and therefore not likely to be available in the form you require it to be in.  The main problem here is that we don’t know the capabilities of the remote database (does it have an API?) so at this point we have to assume there is no option for remote access.

This situation would be greatly simplified if the employer provided email addresses to the employees (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).)  Do you remember how Facebook worked when it was restricted to college students?  You had to sign up with an email address from the college before you could get access.  You would then receive your access details.

You could do the same thing here.  I think we could safely assume the employer has taken care of email access security, so we we could work from that.  This would still require a custom add-on, but it would be more simple than the alternatives. 

So, the process would work something like this…

The user signs up and the system checks the email address (pattern check to verify if the email address is part of X domain.)  If there is a match on the domain, then the system allows the registration and sends an email with an auto-generated password to the user (who could then change the password.)

There are variations we could do, but you get the general idea.

ETA:

Just to be more clear, the user would only receive the password if that user can actually receive email at the address entered.  This is like the reset email process.  Anyone can initiate a password reset for any user (assuming that person knows the username the user signed up with) but only the person in control of that email address can finish the process.

BTW, if you would like to talk more about a possible add-on for this, then feel free to send me a PM.

Oh, my reply considered that the employee ID’s would be batch exported from the other db system and imported into EE or a new table.
This might work if the security was not super-important up to date - that is, if employees didn’t change too often, or if there was no great danger of a terminated employee having access until you deleted that ID, etc…...

Actually pulling the info off another system somewhere else “live” would require some more heavy lifting.

This feature is unique to your needs and therefore not likely to be available in the form you require it to be in.  The main problem here is that we don’t know the capabilities of the remote database (does it have an API?) so at this point we have to assume there is no option for remote access.

This situation would be greatly simplified if the employer provided email addresses to the employees (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).)  Do you remember how Facebook worked when it was restricted to college students?  You had to sign up with an email address from the college before you could get access.  You would then receive your access details.

You could do the same thing here.  I think we could safely assume the employer has taken care of email access security, so we we could work from that.  This would still require a custom add-on, but it would be more simple than the alternatives. 

So, the process would work something like this…

The user signs up and the system checks the email address (pattern check to verify if the email address is part of X domain.)  If there is a match on the domain, then the system allows the registration and sends an email with an auto-generated password to the user (who could then change the password.)

There are variations we could do, but you get the general idea.

ETA:

Just to be more clear, the user would only receive the password if that user can actually receive email at the address entered.  This is like the reset email process.  Anyone can initiate a password reset for any user (assuming that person knows the username the user signed up with) but only the person in control of that email address can finish the process.

BTW, if you would like to talk more about a possible add-on for this, then feel free to send me a PM.

John, thanks for the info. I’ll try and talk to the IT guys about their database and how we might access it. What if it could spit out a CSV file or something? Would that file have to be on the website’s server, or could it be accessed on a remote server? This company has around 9000 employees I think they said. They also said they generate a list every day of terminated employees that would need to be removed from the registered members as well. Obviously the more automation the better for everyone.

I’ll give them the email address verification idea as well. It sounds like a great idea, but I don’t know how they handle employee email addresses. Thanks again!

Oh, my reply considered that the employee ID’s would be batch exported from the other db system and imported into EE or a new table.
This might work if the security was not super-important up to date - that is, if employees didn’t change too often, or if there was no great danger of a terminated employee having access until you deleted that ID, etc…...

Actually pulling the info off another system somewhere else “live” would require some more heavy lifting.

Unfortunately the employee list would change frequently, so whatever method is found would have to accomodate this.

What if it could spit out a CSV file or something? Would that file have to be on the website’s server, or could it be accessed on a remote server?

At this point, everything depends on their end.  There are a lot of ways they could setup a system for remote access of a database of employees, but what options are they willing to provide?  Who would be able to provide those options?  So, you have to contact them and get more answers.

Most likely they wouldn’t be able to provide anything fancy.  Perhaps they could provide a zip file via FTP and the webserver you are working with could grab that file and do auto updates (however, everything which moves over FTP is in clear text and I wouldn’t want a DB of my employee info being that open.)

Again, you can’t assume anything on their end.  Perhaps they could send an email to a certain address when a user is terminated?  Even an email could set off an automated process to remove users.