Meeting Notification System

I am in need of a php/mysql website to assist me in doing my job. Let me preface this by saying, while this will be used at a state agency, the agency is in no way involved in this endeavor. I am doing this completely on my own and out of my own pocket.

I am a case manager for a state agency that works with children in foster care. As part of my job I have many court hearings and meetings that occur for a case. Each time a court hearing or meeting is scheduled it is my responsibility as the case manager to send notification to all case members involved on the case. I always have to have printed evidence that this notification was done. This is a timely and difficult process typically for case managers. We often miss notifying someone and then the meeting or court hearing has to be rescheduled. I want to create a program that will prevent this from happening.

The program should be simple and easy to use. It should have a basic user registration system, forgotten password option. There will be two main user roles 1. Super Admin which will be the person or persons who are able to do everything in the system with no restrictions, and 2. Case Manager, this person will be able to create a case, add case members, remove contacts from a case, edit a contact, create a contact, and create a meeting notification.

Each new user registration should be put into a queue that a Super Admin must approve and give case manager rights to before they are able to access the system.

There will be users – these are all case managers within our organization.
There will be contacts – these will be various people who do not have access to the system.

The information collected for a user when they register is:
1. username
2. password
3. email address
4. title
5. office location (this should be a lookup table with predefined locations entered by the Super Admin)
6. phone number
7. First Name and Last Name

The information collected for a contact is:
1. First and Last Name
2. Full Mailing Address
3. email address (optional)
4. Fax number (optional)
5. Phone number (optional)
6. Preferred contact method (email, mail, fax)

Below is the workflow of how I’d like the system.
 
A case consists of the following information:
*Case ID (entered by the case manager to match an already predefined case id assigned to case)
*Child Name (can be multiple children to a case)
*Date of Custody
*Case Manager (which will be one of the users of the system that has a login)
*Case members (parents, attorneys, agency worker, foster parents)
*Case member role (this should be a lookup table so that new roles can be added by the admin easily)
 
Case manager needs to notify all other case members of the meeting date, time, location, and reason.
 
1. Case manager logs into the Case Notifier system and is presented with a very clean and simple interface asking for Case ID and meeting type. Would be nice if the system could just display the cases that have that user as its case manager. However, every case manager should have the ability to search and make notification on every other case.
2. Depending on the meeting type more information will be asked.
The following meeting types and information required for each meeting type:
a. CFTM: date, time, location name, address
b. Court: court hearing type, date, time, (the location will always be the same, so there’s no need to ask for the location as it will be hard coded on the template)
c. FCRB: date, time, (the location will always be the same, so there’s no need to ask for the location as it will be hard coded on the template)
d. IEP/504 School Meeting: date, time, location name, address.
e. Generic Meeting: meeting name, date, time, location name, address
 
3. Once the additional questions are answered the case manager clicks submit.
4. The system then takes the meeting template and merges the case members address information and the meeting date, time, location into the template for each case member. If the case member has an email address listed in the contact info then the system will just send an email message notifying them of the meeting. It will also provide a pdf page that the case manager can print out showing the message that was sent as proof that it was sent. All other contacts without an email address will have a pdf page created along with envelopes that will be mailed via Postal Service.

I have established a domain name for the system already   www.casenotifier.com


(each case member will have a mailing address and might have an email address and a fax number. The contact record should have an option to select the preferred contact method (mail, email, or fax). The system will use that method to generate the notification. If it's mail then the system will create a pdf letter and envelope using the contacts info and the info entered by the case manager for that particular meeting. If the preferred contact method is email then the system will use a predefined email template for that meeting type and send an email. It will also generate a pdf print out of the email that was sent (similar to what might be printed from MS Outlook). If the preferred contact method is Fax then the system will generate a pdf letter with a line after the address that states: SENT VIA FAX: 901-555-1212 (this would be the fax number from the contact's record). When the case manager prints out the pdf document they will take the ones that need to be faxed and fax those, they will mail the ones that need to be mailed.


So a contact's record might look something like the following:

Contact ID: 12345 (autonumber generated by the system. This should be exposed to the user since our case management system uses ID's to identify people our case managers are used to using people id's to ensure they have the correct person)
First Name: Bob
Last Name: Nash
Address: 44 Any Street
City: Memphis
State: TN
Zip: 38201
Phone: 444-444-4444
Fax: 123-456-7890
Email: bob.nash@gmail.com
Preferred Contact Method: Mail


A case record might look like this:

Case ID: 20120343 Child Name: Nathan Johnson DOC: 4/4/2010
Case Manager: Tommy Sheppard

Case Members
Name=============Role============Contact Method
Sarah Johnson --------- Mother------------------33 Street, Memphis, TN 38132
John Johnson------------ Father-------------------210 Avenue, Memphis, TN 38111
Alex Smith ---------------Mother's Attorney-----alex.smith@attorney.com
Jack Doe ----------------- Father's Attorney----- -FAX 901-923-4444
Brian Jackson ---------- Guardian ad litem------- 335 Road, Memphis, TN 38122
Barbara Johnson ------- Maternal Aunt ----------- barb.jam@email.com
Bob Nash ----------------- Paternal Grandfather----555 Street, Memphis, TN 38133

Case ID's will be entered by the case manager as we already have predefined case id's so we will use the ones already assigned.

(The contact method should pull the preferred contact method to display so that a Case Manager can quickly see which way the person will be notified and determine if it's a correct method or not. Clicking on the person's name should open an AJAX window which allows the editing of the contact's record if necessary.)

Contacts can be a member of multiple cases with different roles in each case.

When adding a contact to a case the system should force the user to do a search for the contact by name. If no contact is found then the system should give the option to add a contact.

Hopefully this will help prevent duplicates, but the system should have an option to merge duplicate contacts. This should be a Super Admin function.

I have debated as to whether the system should keep a history of notifications made to each user or not. I think I've decided that the system should keep a history of notifications made for the past 6 months so that a report can be printed if needed by the case manager.