PW as a network management tool?

[Christoph]

Hi guys, 

I'm currently preparing an estimate for an upcoming project where I need more than just a simple CMS.

It's roughly about a website where some people can offer some of their spare time to help other people. And those people on the other hand can ask for help. To provide help or ask for help people just fill out a web form. Their data are stored in the database. Also, there are coordinators who add data records of people and their availabilities/demands to the database.

We need a system that is able to find matching pairs of people that provide the kind of help others ask for. And coordinators should be able to easily connect/merge data records via the admin panel, look at all entries, mark people as available or not available and so on. All in all, a tool to manage a network of people and their availabilities/demands. I hope you understand what I mean

Now, I wonder if something like this is possible with PW or if a custom solution from scratch would be better?

I'm a designer who uses ProcessWire solely as a "simple" CMS for smaller sites and I'm not sure how fare I can go with it.

As I want to use it as a CMS for this web site it would be great to expand it to a management tool.

Possible or not?
Thanks for any hints on that! 

[onjegolders]

Hi Christoph, this sounds like a perfect fit.

Relating helpers to helpees (excuse the made up word ) would be done using a page reference field so would be extremely straight forward.

In your tree, you'd presumably have:

Help Topics

Helpees

Helpers

each topic would start with a helpee assigned to it (as they've created the need for help) and then based on their criteria, a helper or multiple helpers would be assigned to it.

Would the system need to be "intelligent"? In other words, would the system need to look for keywords and try and match pairs together or is this solely the responsibility of the administrator? (This would be the only complex part of the job if so)

Ryan has built incredibly complex multi-relational sites using PW (http://www.tripsite.com/) and I can't think of any better system for this kind of job.

[Christoph]

Hi onjegolders, 

thanks for your reply!

Relating helpers to helpees (excuse the made up word  ) would be done using a page reference field so would be extremely straight forward.

Currently not sure what a page reference field is, will look this up

Would the system need to be "intelligent"? In other words, would the system need to look for keywords and try and match pairs together or is this solely the responsibility of the administrator? (This would be the only complex part of the job if so)

Yes, some kind of intelligence is appreciated, like matching helpers and helpees from the same city or based upon same interests.

The more I think about it, I feel like I have to build a separate admin tool for my needs, because their are many admin tasks that are not intend for publishing. It's more like managing a database.