Although one could easily generate an octopus monster if everyone throws in their favorite meetting features, this looks like a genuinely interesting mashup and worthy of spending a little time spec writing to get it right (whatever that means for at least some significant subset of people). As one who participates in far too many meetings, I would like to be part of that process. Perhaps starting a new drupal group would get us off to a good start.
 
Just to throw in a few more features, a lot of meetings have preprepared documents for participants to read so there needs to an easy way of including them. Some sort of an agenda template that can be tuned to your organization would be good and then another template to construct the minutes after the meeting. Both have to be pretty flexible judging by the various meetings I go to where they only bear a passing resemblence. Audio, video or even stenographers notes might be "full" record of the meeting.

From: development-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:development-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Victor Kane
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 3:32 PM
To: development@drupal.org
Subject: Re: [development] Newbie announcement + starting a new meeting related module

Apart from David's suggestions, you might want to consider splitting the functionality up into different kinds of globs of responsability.

Seems to me like you have meetings, tasks and a way to view the minutes of a meeting together with the status of their embedded tasks, as a report, and as an easy form of navigation.

For example, a meeting can have tasks (issues, cases) referenced into it in some way.

Now, look and see if there do not already exist content types/modules that can duplicate PART of the total functionality, and then fashion a mashup with cck (nodereference) and views.

Of course, you are behind the eight ball if the module you want to re-use has no support for cck and/or views.

Then consider using David's approach and fashion content types (meeting, with usernode and/or user references, nodereferences; task; ...) and views (or embed views into content type displays...).

Because part of the problem is not only that of overlapping modules, but also modules which do not abide by any architectural considerations in terms of fostering re-use, and separating modules into convenient re-usable class-type entities.

Hope that helps,

Victor Kane
awebfactory.com.ar

On 5/12/07, Bob < anarchybob@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey there, I'm new to this so go easy if I make any blatant faux pas!

A bit about me: I've been doing php & mysql programming for quite a
while now, and make the odd hack application here and there. I think
like a lot of people I've come round to the idea helping with a big
CMS is a much better way to go!  I've not contributed to a big project
before either.  I got a copy of the Drupal Pro Development book, and
it all seems kinda straightforward so hopefully I'll be ok!

Anyway, I want to create a new module.  I've not seem anything
similar, but let me know if I'm duplicating existing functionality (I
think there's some crossover, but anyway).  And also sorry if this is
the wrong place for this, I couldn't see a suitable list otherwise!

I want to make a module for meetings that tracks individual agenda
items and action points.  I'm involved in an activist community where
a lot of people do a lot of different meetings all the time, and
there's rarely any continuity.  The module would work as follows.

1. Before a meeting, people can add individual agenda items that allow
comments and discussion.
2. Just before the meeting, the agenda can be printed off as a time
saving device.
3. After the meeting, comments or minutes can be recorded against
specific items to allow better tracking (keywords, etc)
4. Also, and the main focus of this module, individual action points
can be added and assigned to users.
5. In a way similar to case tracker, people can then leave comments
and mark tasks when they're done.
6. At the next meeting, it should be easy to keep a track of what's
actually been done, and see what's dragging on.

As you can see it's kind of a circular process, but I hope you kind of
get the idea!

I have a few ideas how this will all work in my head, but if anyone is
interested or would like to help that would be great, as I think it's
quite an ambitious first project and a little mentoring would be
appreciated!

A few notes:
- I was looking at making meeting node types extensions of event
types, to keep all that functionality.
- Two basic new node types would be involved - Action Point and Meeting.
- I was thinking of using taxonomy to track things like meeting groups.
- For action point entry, I was visualising posting them as a plain
text list, which then gets parsed and each line added as a node.

As I've already stressed, any and all input welcomed, even if it's a
case of 'don't bother because of X reason'.

Thanks a lot!


David
xx

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