solved Help Understanding User & Profile Questions/Information

I need a bit of help understanding where I should use Form Designer to place certain questions.

During the Ning Import I believe that:
Location became profile_location
Country became profile_country

These fields are not required.
Should I use Form Designer to add those two fields to the profile/settings form?


I have another field that is required called "Second Life Avatar Name".
Should I use Form Designer to add this field to the user/signup user/account and profile/create profile/settings?


Am I missing anything here?

Thanks!
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 01/26/17 08:44:49AM

If you want your users to be able to update/change those fields then you'll need to add them to the Form Designer.

It depends - is that question something that should be part of the PROFILE data or part of the USER data? Add it to only one. In this case I think you would want to add it to the Account Settings form (not profile settings), since this is likely to be a unique value for each user in your system - and thus if you happen to have a profile that has more than 1 user attached to it you don't want them all to have to share the same second like avatar name.

Let me know if that helps.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

The reason it is part of the profile data is that in Ning Users and Profiles are always a 1 to 1 relationship, so in some ways the data is interchangeable. It also seems that most Ning sites want to display some of the answers to their sign up questions ON the profile, which is easily doable if the data is part of the profile. It's doable as part of the user data as well, but would require an extra jrCore_list call to bring in each user associated with the profile and show the data that way.

So it's really up to you - the "cleaner" way is probably to store that data with the user account info, but the "simpler" way is to have it be part of the profile. If you're always going to have a single user to a profile then either way works.

Let me know if that helps.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Thanks, Brian.

First my apologies for deleting the post that you responded to. I zigged when I should have zagged

Your reply makes sense. I'm going to look at storing it all on User. As my site evolves I'm not always going to have a single user to a profile.

I appreciate your insights
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 10/04/16 01:48:04PM

No problem - and if you know down the road you're likely to have multi user profiles, you're right - best to set that up as part of the user data so you don't have to worry about it.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

You have likely already looked at the profile and user datastore tables so know this, but to be clear, non-Jamroom default data imported to profiles -

profile_location
profile_country
profile_zip

and to users -

user_birthdate
user_location
user_country
user_zip

so imported location, country and zip are common to both.

Also, upon running the 'Signup Question' tool, signup question responses get added as -

user_signup_question_1, user_signup_question_2, user_signup_question_3, etc.

So, if you want to use/show/update any of the above imported fields, create custom form fields for them.
hth


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Great explanations, very helpful.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Thanks, Paul!!

A bit of a follow-up to this.

I have my user information all set up including reassigning user_signup_question_1 to something more understandable. So now it's time to output the data.

Does jrUser work with jrCore_list right now? I'm guessing not (though I hope I just missed something).

Where do I begin in my effort to display user data information?

Thanks!!

User datastore information isn't readily available to visitors but can easily be sourced within profile page templates.
If you put a {debug} in a profile page template you'll see that there's a variable called $_user_id. This can be used to grab all of that user's data, including custom fields, with the following call -

{$_usr = jrCore_db_get_item('jrUser', $_user_id)}

From then on in the template, the array $_usr can be used to show that particular user fields -

{$_usr.user_my_custom_field}

Note that if a user is logged in, his/her data is always available in the $_user array.

Hope that makes sense.
Pa


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Thanks, Paul! I'll check it out

ETA: Looks great!! Thanks for everyone's help on this.
updated by @tatiana-dokuchic: 10/05/16 05:40:00PM

Here's the {debug} docs

Docs: "{debug}"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/jamroom-developers-guide/1477/debug

(from that doc) This is an important thing to understand

Thank you, Michael. I'll be sure to keep that handy.

thanks for this great thread...

I have a question - if I keep the questions in the profiles, is there a way to make some of those questions "private" (viewable only by admins?)? Or is it an all-or-nothing thing - the privacy of the whole profile vs non-privacy?

Deb, from your own Profile page as admin, click the gear settings.
Then you see the two tabs for Profile and for Account.
In each of those tabs, there will be a Form Designer button.
The form designer in Profiles TAB will show various profile page stuff - for ProfileCreate and Profile Settings.
The form designer in Account TAB will show a dropdown menu for User/Account and User/Signup.

In those four areas, you can go through and Modify each data input field and choose who gets to SEE the info...whether it's info that is asked when a new member wants to SIGN UP for your site (set the "Display" to "all users including logged out since they won't be a logged in user yet. -BTW you must choose the "display to all including logged out" to allow applicants to your site to SEE a "user/signup" field question that you want an applicant must answer before you approve them).
Or.... under User/account -> you'd set the display to "Admins" because you want you and your mods to be able to still see the member's answers to sign up questions even later on when they are a member...but you don't want regular members to see those questions or answers, ever.

In the Profile TAB form designer, you can modify what input data shows on the profile's sidebar, and to whom it is visible. For example, you'd probably set the profile_image and profile_name in the "display" menu to "Normal Users"...which means to allow ALL site users (admins and regular members etc) to see it when they are logged in.
Go through all your form designer settings under both your Profile TAB and your Account TAB, and include going through the drop-down menu at upper right while in any form designer, to see all your options. (for example, that's how you move between the Form Designer fields for user/signup and user/account.)



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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 10/27/16 11:50:52AM

Strumelia - these look like great directions! I can't wait to try it out and see how they work. This is exactly what I was looking for. thank you so much. I'll be back if I run into any problems.

question: so if I set up a question under user/account that is only viewable by admins, can I require it? Then when does the member see and answer that question?

Deb, I 'think' what happens then is:
if you set up a new 'required' question AFTER a user is already approved (i.e. logging in and not using the signup form anymore)...then when they go to their Account settings and change 'anything', when they hit SAVE they will be required to fill in a response to any new 'required' fields before they can Save their settings changes. If you do the same but don't set it as 'required' then they can go in their account settings to make changes, they can see the new question, but they can choose to ignore it and save their account settings without answering it.
As admin, make several test questions in the Profile and Account form designers- test different settings and then log in as a regular member and see if you can see them on your profile page, in your Profile TAB and in your Account TAB.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 10/27/16 06:29:04PM

strumelia is exactly correct ^.

Docs: "Using the Form Designer"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/jamroom-admin-handbook/1275/using-the-form-designer