Hi there,

This is a great extension - thanks very much. One problem we have tho is a fairly compelx staff structure which means that different staff tend to belong to more than one department. In the current WEC Staff ext, this can be got round a bit by using folders as described in the manual, but for anything more complex the only solution is to duplicate staff records and put them in different folders which doesn't seem a good idea.

It would be great if a) it were possible to add people to more than one department, and also if b) the departments themselves could be selected from a list (a bit like tt_news categories). The second of these seems a bit like a tall order tho!

Hi Paul,

In the next version of the extension -- which should come out next week -- I have added the functionality so that you can have multiple departments for a staff member. The right way to do departments is like tt_news categories, but since departments are not real records now - just text strings - it is not as nice as I would like. However, it should work for your needs.

-Dave

Another related suggestion would be the ability to sort departments by a numeric system like you have for display order. We don't want our page sorted alphabetically by department, for example...we want pastoral listings first, then operations, etc.

I'm working around that by entering a space or spaces in front of the department name which forces it to sort by the space(rs) first...

Hi Mary Beth,

The feature that you would like already exists. Since the departments are handled by text strings, you just need to create your departments so that they use #- before each one. So if you want Pastors, then Operations, it would be 1-Pastors, 2-Operations, 3-Support Staff, etc. The #- is stripped off by the extension, btw, whenever it is displayed and is only used for sorting.

Note that you need to edit each staff record and change the department. The easiest way to do this is in the List view. Go to where you Staff Info data is. Make sure "Extended view" is checked at the bottom. Then choose to show the Department field and then Set fields.

Then click on the Staff Info name at the top. You should see pencils for each of the field names at top. Click on the Edit pencil by that Department field. Then you can more easily edit them all.

Let me know if you have further questions.

-Dave

FYI: I have a patch available that allows selecting any number of departments from a list box (predefined in BE). I'll send it to the developers in the next days...