[consulting] best course of action question

[Matt Chapman]

Jeremy Weiss wrote:
> The simplistic overview would be something like this:
> When they register, sellers would choose which states they wish to solicit business in. The buyers would fill out a RFQ form which would be automatically sent to all the sellers who are registered for the state the buyer specified in the form. The sellers would respond to the RFQ with a quote. The buyer would then choose a seller with which to do business.


Jeremy,

I wrote this module...

http://drupal.org/project/notify_by_views

for a very similar goal.

It's D5, but should be rather easy to upgrade. (If you do upgrade it, 
please share. I get periodic requests in the issue queue for a D6 
version, but have no need of it yet myself.)

Get access control on the RFQ node type via Content Access module or 
Node Privacy by Role.

Then, essentially, you would create a view for listing all RFQ nodes 
given by a 'State' argument. Then, in your Argument handling code, you 
take in a user ID argument and transform it into a list of state 
arguments which are stored in the the seller's profile. This module will 
use that view to determine which RFQs the seller should be notified of.

So there's some coding to do, but this module will get you 90% of the 
way there, I think.

Alternatively, you might be able to do something like this with 
Subscriptions module & taxonomies for States, but I have no personal 
experience with that approach.

Best,

Matt Chapman
NinjitsuWeb.com