Thread

I need to build out a simple client project management portal with EE. I realize there are several much more robust project management systems out that, but robust isn’t what I need. This will be for staff to post simple updates to home construction projects for their clients, and other than the password protected aspect, all it needs to handle is staff entry of project status updates, upload project photos, include details about home warranty information and possibly include a way for their clients to submit “feedback” to a linear feedback page. Other than that, all aspects of each project would ideally be managed by staff via the EE admin panel.

I figure most of that aught to be really simple via a custom built channel/form fields, and each project would be a single channel entry in the backend, with all the form fields tied to the one channel. The “feedback” submission could be based on a SAEF, if such a one-form-field entry update is possible. Each “page” of the portal would then take its content from the relevant form field of that channel entry. Simple enough, right?

However, it’s the password protection that has me most stumped. I would rather avoid the complications of forcing the staff to manage users and groups for each project entry, in addition to managing the project channel entries themselves. I’d rather opt for a single-step process for creating new projects if possible, and just have the username/password simply be a couple of form fields for the channel, using cookies or something to persist the session. I imagine this might require a bit of PHP in the project portal templates, but the details of said implementation are still a bit fuzzy. Is something like that even possible without developing some sort of extension?

Alternately, is there perhaps a better approach that I haven’t thought of to handle this private content?

Have a look at the entry access addon.  It would give you a single step, in that you assign user permissions to the individual entries.  So basically you can have one membership group, and then each entry maintains a list of who’s allowed to see it - all done from within the publish screen.  Not exactly what you were getting at necessarily, but close enough that it might be worth a look.  I’ve used it for a site already wherein my client wanted to make postings to a single channel and limit access to those postings to logged in users that they assigned without having to get into multiple member groups, etc. Similar to what i think you’re looking for and my client found it pretty easy to wrap their head around it.

Thanks John. That approach definitely seems viable, although the compatibility tabs in the top left are a bit confusing. Is it compatible with only EE1 or only EE2? I presume the latter, but I had to look at it several times before I noticed the strikethrough in the EE1 tab. At first I thought it was simply grayed out because that tab was active. Didn’t help that there were no other compatibility details on that page. Oh well. 😊

Yes, to the best of my knowledge that’s an EE2-only add-on.