1. Staff being able to login and enter their availability days/times including recurrence by week if needed. Each staff's entries are hidden from other staff but admin and any other authorised user are able to view all availability entries together.
2. Access backend db remote to download the staff availability data into desktop app. I just need some pointers here such as how to connect to the Umbarco backend db, what table to look into etc.
1. Easily doable as build into Umbraco: You can use CMS user roles to specify which general actions are allowed/permitted, then set access to the content on a per user basis. E.g. a member of staff can only see 'his/her' area whereas admins etc will be able to see more (you can obviously restrict here as well).
2. I wouldn't go as far as accessing the DB directly, why not use the build-in API to access the entities you want to access? I your case I would probably build a web service that gets plugged into the Umbraco application, opening a connection to your web app with taylor made methods to retrieve exactly what you want (e.g. a complete list of all staff availabilities for a certain date range). The web service runs in the same context as the Umbraco app, so you can easily use the API (or something like LINQ2Umbraco) to retrieve what you need from the DB and prepare it with .Net for the required output schema. Doesn't have to be a web service as well though with .Net 4, you can also use WCF, build your own REST service with a custom HttpHandler, etc. etc.
Creating a staff availability
Hi
How can we achieve the following;
1. Staff being able to login and enter their availability days/times including recurrence by week if needed. Each staff's entries are hidden from other staff but admin and any other authorised user are able to view all availability entries together.
2. Access backend db remote to download the staff availability data into desktop app. I just need some pointers here such as how to connect to the Umbarco backend db, what table to look into etc.
Thanks
Regards
Hi Yahya,
here are my 2 cent:
1. Easily doable as build into Umbraco: You can use CMS user roles to specify which general actions are allowed/permitted, then set access to the content on a per user basis. E.g. a member of staff can only see 'his/her' area whereas admins etc will be able to see more (you can obviously restrict here as well).
2. I wouldn't go as far as accessing the DB directly, why not use the build-in API to access the entities you want to access? I your case I would probably build a web service that gets plugged into the Umbraco application, opening a connection to your web app with taylor made methods to retrieve exactly what you want (e.g. a complete list of all staff availabilities for a certain date range). The web service runs in the same context as the Umbraco app, so you can easily use the API (or something like LINQ2Umbraco) to retrieve what you need from the DB and prepare it with .Net for the required output schema. Doesn't have to be a web service as well though with .Net 4, you can also use WCF, build your own REST service with a custom HttpHandler, etc. etc.
Hope that helps,
Sascha
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