Application handling in DB

[KeithLee]

Hello,

I am new to Gibbon, and just want to tell you that I am excited to find this amazing ERP solution for students (and staffs). I’ve been struggling with dozens of SIS/SMS options, but seems like Gibbon covers (a lot more than) all that I need. I also love this forum being powered by Discourse, the forum platform that my institution also uses. Most likely I am going to settle here.

Prbbly the only complain, if any, will be that it does not support PostgreSQL, but I have no objection to compromise with MariaDB, given the completeness of Gibbon for other needs.

Having said that, I wonder how it processes application in a bit detail. I do not want my institution’s user list to be mixed up with other sources. To be more precise, from DB control perspective, I want to avoid creating another user ID for applicants. The ideal case for me is to issue a user ID only after the acceptance and student (and staff) registration.

With that in mind, I want to assign student / staff IDs with 4 digit year + 5 digit internally set numbers. In the system, I can see that there are three types of IDs.

• gibbonPersonID
• gibbonStaffID
• gibbonStudentEnrolmentID

My guess is that the person ID is like a user ID for all users, and staff and students are assigned different class of IDs. So, each person, staff or student, will have two ID numbers, although the person ID might not be visible to users. What’s also concerning is that, in DB, the student enrolment ID is 8 digits max. Is this actually the student ID? I cannot find student ID elsewhere.

What I want is

1. Applicants do not consume Person ID, so that I can keep user base clean
2. Assign 9 digits to student IDs

I manually changed the gibbonstudentenrolment table column’s max length from 8 to 9. Hope this does not break anything, if not, I hope to keep it this way.

Guess I have to run two installations, if user IDs do get mixed. Would be great to avoid that.

[sandra]

Hi @KeithLee, welcome to the Gibbon community sounds like you’re off to an excellent start learning how things work.

Yes, the admissions system keeps application data and IDs separate, and only creates accounts and other related records once the application has been approved. This, as you mention, prevents mixing up user lists. There is also a relatively new Admissions system with a customizable application form, found in System Admin > Form Builder, which should meet a wide range of admissions needs.

When looking in the database, any of the IDs prefixed with gibbon, eg gibbonPersonID, are unique internal database IDs used for identifying and connecting relational data. These IDs aren’t exposed to the interface and are just used by the database. There is a separate studentID field, as well as username generator, which lets you setup an ID strategy for your institution, including how many digits, any prefixes, starting number, etc. Be sure to check User Admin > User Settings for the Username Formats section.

Hope this helps, sounds like Gibbon will already do the things you need it to do, and there’s a lot of flexibility built-in with a huge number of settings.

[KeithLee]

Thank you for all the super details! Sounds like a really well thought system.