custom registration form integrating salesforce/jomsocial

Hi there
I am the resident web chick at a small cash strapped UK charity. We have a joomla site (http://www.bestbeginnings.info) and are currently in the middle of implementing Salesforce as our CRM. I am due to go on maternity leave very soon and panicking about being able to do the following myself:

- install JomSocial (have paid for it and could do the basic install). We currently use CB and fireboard
- get Jomsocial working with a custom chronoform for user registration
- this registration form should have a captcha, a confirmation email (just to let them know username and password, not to approve them) and critically it should be able to pass their name and email to salesforce as a web to lead. This takes the structure:

<form action="https://www.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.WebToLead?encoding=UTF-8" method="POST">

<input type=hidden name="oid" value="alphanumericvalue">
<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.bestbeginnings.info/whatever">
<input type=hidden name="lead_source" value="Website">

<label for="first_name">First Name</label><input  id="first_name" maxlength="40" name="first_name" size="20" type="text" /><br>

<label for="last_name">Last Name</label><input  id="last_name" maxlength="80" name="last_name" size="20" type="text" /><br>

<label for="email">Email</label><input  id="email" maxlength="80" name="email" size="20" type="text" /><br>


<input type="submit" name="submit">

</form>

Obviously we'd want to populate the name and email fields with the ones they are entering for Joomla registration but also get the Joomla registration bit to work as normal.

If they want to fill out more profile fields later they would need to do that via Jomsocial - this is just to capture the initial data and give them access to member only areas on the site.

I haven't installed chronoforms yet - I can see it being really useful for other custom web to lead forms on our site too, which I think should be simple enough, but this one is a bit hairy!

BTW, there is already a thread on the Jomsocial forum about using a chronoform for registration with this component, Philip Roy is doing it
http://www.jomsocial.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=560&hilit=registration&rb_v=viewtopic&start=10

Any advice/pro bono help (sorry) or really reasonable quote welcomed.
Many thanks
Jo Bradshaw
Head of Comms
Best Beginnings

Hi Jo,

Happy to offer a bit of pro-bono help. I know of JomSocial but haven't looked at it otherwise. Completely off the top of my head a CF PlugIn like the CB one should be practical. My diary is pretty full at the moment but there's always the odd space that can be squeezed out.

You mentioned SalesForce too . . . what if anything is needed with that?

We can carry on the conversation in the forums her or by email - see the address in my sig.

Bob

Hi Bob

Thanks so much for your kind offer. I have looked at the helpful tutorial re building a registration form using chronoforms and I think it makes sense, however I am nervous about fiddling on the site before I can work out how to get everything working the way I want.

I want to take off CB completely and just use Jomsocial and the custom registration form.

The only thing salesforce web-to-lead needs is the to POST the fields: these are the compulsory ones which tell salesforce which web to lead form it is using and I just cut and paste from what saleforce tells me (the retURL is where the person is directed after submitting the form):

<form action="https://www.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.WebToLead?encoding=UTF-8" method="POST">

<input type=hidden name="oid" value="alphanumericvalue">
<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.bestbeginnings.info/whatever">
<input type=hidden name="lead_source" value="Website">

then in the same POST action we need to include the JUser fields name, email we are going to create when the person registers. The example I posted initially is the basic html salesforce generates for a web to lead to capture name and email address and post to salesforce. For example, here on our site it is used to sign up to a newsletter (People have to enter their name and email themselves) http://www.bestbeginnings.info/keepintouch

I have seen other posts about how to grab user details from a logged in user and use them as part of a form elsewhere in the forum and I can see how this would work for things like this newlsetter sign up or a request for information, but my problem is how to capture these fields at registration - ie at the same time and send them to salesforce.

Is that specific enough? I would be happy to carry on via email but just thought this might be helpful for others out there...
Many thanks again
Jo

Hi Jo,

A quick reply.

There should be no problem in grabbing any info that the user enters in the registration process. Once the Joomla registration has run the User ID is available and can be passed on along with the other info.

I've grabbed a copy of JomSocial and will install it on my test server over the weekend so that I can look at a CF/JomSocial PlugIn with the code in front of me.

Bob

A SalesForce plugin would be a very popular addon for Joomla and would bring it's capabilities to a whole new user base. SalesForce is very widely used in business to the point that it's become a sort of standard. For a company to have even a "Contact Us" page that captured the users info as a lead would be be a plugin people would pay for.

I'd like to help out here, but I still have a lot of learning to do as far as php and mysql. It'll be on my mind though!

Thanks everyone for your input. Bob, did you manage to fit in any time to look at this over your busy schedule?

Hi Jo,

Sorry, still on the to do list ( a client server failure and a power cut rather messed up the day here today).

Bob

Hi Jo,

I did get to take a look at the JomSocial registration. It's a three part form (actually three forms). [list]

Form A is a Joomla Registration and - as far as I could see - does exactly the same as a standard Joomla Registration (no bells and whistles, no extra code).

Form C is the Avatar upload and is optional so we can ignore it for the moment.

Form B collects the *extra* JomSocial info and writes it to the JomSocial field-data table.

[/list]If I'm correct - then it ought to be a fairly simple matter to replicate Form B in a ChronoForms form alongside the standard CF_Joomla_Registration plugin.

Bob

Great, and then is it a straightforward thing to post the data into salesforce using a POST action - in the same form or would it be a plugin to do that? Really appreciate that you made time for this in the midst of power failures etc 😀 Thanks, Jo

Hi Jo,

Yes - it should be. Do you have the current SalesForce setup - or a link to the relevant doc (I experimented with Sugar.crm here once but never used SalesForce). Basically the question is what info does SF need and in what format?

Bob

PS Power is all back on and seems to be staying that way - fingers crossed. (Now I just have to complete my wife's tax return . . .)

Hi. Has anyone gotten this or something like it to work successfully? We are using JomSocial as our community extension and SugarCRM for SFA/CRM. I've been looking at various approached to integrating/synching the users
1. form-based registration [Joomla+JomSocial+ChronoForm(?)] upon submit, a POST sends the info to SugarCRM
2. some kind of back-end integration via something like this: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/4711/details

Is it worth looking at ChronoForms for this? I understand that it's not yet integrated with JomSocial?

thanks!
Jason

Hi Jason,

No real experience to offer here. I took a look at the JomSocial registration process and basically all but the last step (which creates the extra profile info) are pure Joomla - so it should be possible to re-create with ChronoForms. IIRC someone made it work but we didn't see the results here so I can't offer any code.

Doing a POST to SugarCRM should also be straightforward (at least in theory).

Bob

What I've noticed about ChronoForms and ChronoConnectivity are that they take a little extra leg work as far as figuring out what code to use, but the advantage is that you can use it for almost anything. They way it's set up is far more versatile that most other stuff out there...and much more affordable.

As for the JomSocial questions, one big push for them over there is to keep the standard Joomla registration and login stuff in-tact. This means that you can use just about anything you want for it. I've set up my login so that it redirects to the Community page so people end up where they need to be to fill out other areas of their profile if they want.

My only advice that I would push hard is don't go too in depth with integration as JomSocial is still a young product and could change drastically with each new release. For this reason, ChronoForms may end up being more versatile and what you do create with it may be more easily upgraded if anything else on your site changes.

I know it's not a "How To" post, but hopefully food for thought. 😀