ANN: "RSVP for Salesforce" experimental version released

[Andrew Burkhalter]

Hey all,

(Cross posting to NGO Plone b/c event registration is such a common  
sector-specific use case.  Note: this requires some familiarity with  
Salesforce if you're interested in reading further.)

This is a really quick announcement and a request for feedback on a  
new feature I've been developing for the broader Plone+Salesforce  
integration suite.  Here in the nonprofit sector, where ONE/Northwest  
operates, a huge need (I'm assuming this is true in other areas as  
well) is the ability to do basic event registration/accept  
participant rsvps.  Typically, this has a lightweight content  
management component (i.e. the "marketing" of the actual activities)  
and a fairly heavy CRM component (i.e. accepting/managing  
participants, business processes around the event, event reminders,  
event followup, etc.).

At ONE/Northwest, we use Salesforce.com for the latter and Plone for  
the former and are encouraging clients to do the same.  Until now,  
however, there was never an easy way to link a piece of Plone content  
to a particular Salesforce Event or Campaign record and accept  
registrants that are automatically integrated into your CRM system.

RSVP for Salesforce attempts to change this:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.salesforce.rsvp

What it is:
========
* Allows enabling of RSVPs on any piece of content within a Plone site
* The above adds some new configuration options to the piece of content
* For configuration, all you need to do is chose the unique "Id" of a  
Salesforce record and its object type, and you'll have a basic  
registration form.
* When attendees register, new Leads are created within the  
configured Salesforce instance and an attendance record (i.e. a  
CampaignMember) connects the new Lead to the content editor  
configured Salesforce campaign
* Offers several optional configuration capabilities for capping the  
capacity for an event
* Offers optional end user form configuration by partnering with the  
fantastic PloneFormGen


With that said, there are some limitations...

What it isn't:
=========
* Mature, proven, deployment-ready code.  This is still experimental  
code.  Things will definitely change based on feedback.  We're going  
to use it for a few internal tests and with 1 or 2 clients, but  
unless you have a high sense of adventure, you shouldn't go slap this  
into production immediately.

* Something that works with versions of Plone older than 3.0.x

* A general, feature complete ticketing, online registration system.  
This is simple and optimized to integrate well with Salesforce.com  
and is optimized towards events with a flexible amount of capacity.  
While one can certainly use this to lock down capacity a bit more  
tightly, the burden is upon a correct configuration of the capacity  
related fields.

* A system for accepting online payment to secure event attendance --  
though we're placing bets internally on how long it will be until  
this feature is requested.

* A fail safe system for absolutely capping attendance at a hard  
capacity. Because a greater than max capacity # of participants could  
load a custom PloneFormGen-based registration form (or the default  
registration form for that matter) that suggests available capacity,  
we advise you to set expectations appropriately during the signup  
process and via any auto-response emails that are sent. In other  
words, text like the following goes a long way towards expectation  
management: "Thanks for expressing your interest in attending our  
event. A follow-up email will be sent within 24 hours confirming your  
space for the event."


After all that, if this sounds interesting to you, I'd love to get  
feedback, advice, and suggestions from people.  Particularly, use  
cases, usability advice, and code feedback.  This can be on or off list.

This is an egg based package.  Instructions for installing an egg  
within your Plone site are at:
http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout/installing-a-third- 
party-product

Thanks and let me know if there are questions!

Andrew

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