Chadmin - The Demo Church

About

What

Chadmin is a tool to help churches connect with their members more efficiently.

It is a central resource that is accessible from anywhere, that provides the relevant information to the people who need it - when they need it.

Capturing information is quick and intuitive with an easy interface that works from any web browser.

Users are assigned roles which restrict access to only the information that that user needs to see.

It includes:

• member information management
• family relationships
• group management (home cells, volunteer groups, etc)
• group meetings logging
• role-based permissions system
• user management with assignable roles
• multiple organisations (campuses)
• contribution logging and statements
• capture of calls and interactions with members
• member course management with attendance, assignments, tests and payments
• capture of meeting attendance
• meeting check-in and check-out system (for children's church)
• various reports and forms for the different areas of information
• a message system between users on Chadmin
• audit logs of changes made to data
• scheduling system for volunteers, with email notifications
• discipleship information
• bulk emails with unsubscription
• events management with self-registration and auto email notifications

See the Versions page for more info

The application uses a permissions system which gives logged-in users the required permissions according to the roles they have been assigned.
Roles can be limited to specific organisations.

Why

A central database was needed for all the member information that could provide all the functionality of the separate historic databases.
Managing the same data across multiple databases is resource intensive, leads to duplications, omissions, incorrect data and a lot of frustration.
A central database application also makes backups, maintenance and upgrades much easier.

Build strategy

This is a database application built with a web front end.
This is good for compatability (works using most web browsers - mac or pc)
and for remote access (e.g. from campuses or over slower connections).

It is built on an MVC (Model View Controller) framework to:

• keep to well known development methods,
• enhance application security,
• ease future development and expansion,
• allow other developers to work on the code without struggling through custom code and a long learning curve

The MVC framework chosen was CodeIgniter as it is a fast framework which uses well known language (PHP)
and has good documentation which makes further development much easier.

Speed is very important for a good user experience and this also motivated a functional system more than a pretty application.
(Read: it's not pretty but it works - fast)