Fabrik limitations / possibilities?

[DeeEmm]

Hi all.

I've decided to use Fabrik to rewrite a web based app that I originally wrote using Logos form and reports manager (LFRM) but would like to better understand the limitations / possibilities of Fabrik.

Out of all of the offerings in the JED, Fabrik seems to most closely fit the bill and was by far the easiest to use. I've already created a test installation and created a basic form and visualization in just a few minutes. The interface, its layout and the terminology used make it a very intuitive experience, so hats of to the Author(s).

My web app is basically an incident reporting and tracking service. Incidents are created and details entered. This part is easy enough to figure out in Fabrik. The incident can then generate further follow up actions that need to be carried out and updates can be entered to record progress of these further actions. The progress can be tracked by the author and by management.

Part of the service revolves around automatic reporting, informing members of a predefined usergroup (management) when certain thresholds are reached. For example, when incidents are not closed within a certain period of time or when a pre-defined number of incident types are opened simultaneously, an email will be automatically generated and mailed to the management.

Is this functionality something that Fabrik can handle? Is it possible to run a CRON job to interrogate the database and send emails out based on the results?

I would be interested to learn of any similar usage of Fabrik and any insights that you may have in operating Fabrik in a similar manner to this.

Thanks in advance.

/DM

 

[troester]

Yes, you can.
Have a look at the "Schedule" jobs, "email" plugin
http://fabrikar.com/wiki/index.php/Cron-email

You can send emails also on form submission (add an email plugin in your form's settings).

 

[DeeEmm]

Yes, you can.
Have a look at the "Schedule" jobs, "email" plugin
http://fabrikar.com/wiki/index.php/Cron-email

You can send emails also on form submission (add an email plugin in your form's settings).

Thanks for the quick reply

Will check it out

/DM

 

[DeeEmm]

I've taken a look through the schedule plugin and Wiki but cannot seem to figure out what triggers the process to run. Does creating the scheduled task create a CRON? Generally with other scripts these need to be created manually via C-panel or similar as is not possible to create them from from 'front end' scripts. Some scripts utilise a high frequency predefined CRON which is then used to call the scheduled processes.

I'm a bit confused, I cannot seem to figure out how this works.

If it is triggered from page views, the reporting process would not work for my application. My app is not publicly visible and has a very limited number of visitors so this method would be unreliable. Generally once set up there would be little or no need for users to visit the script unless they are notified to address something via email (such as an overdue action).

Is it possible to call the scheduled task from a server run CRON? E.G. via URL/QueryString? A similar method is employed in Akeeba.

Thanks in advance.

/DM

 

[troester]

That's the option "Require querystring"

Require query string - if set to yes then the plugin will only run if the page's URL contains the querystring 'fabrik_cron=1'. Useful to stop processor intensive queries running when a browser requests a page, whilst still allowing server cron jobs to run using wget with &fabrik_cron=1 applied to the url.

I missed to give you the main WIKI link
http://fabrikar.com/wiki/index.php/3.x_Schedule

In fabrik backend the field labels often are showing tooltips.

 

[rob]

We have a Joomla system plugin which triggers the scheduled task, as you pointed out we can't create real crons from the admin interface.

The require querystring option can help with that. Or you can create a 'real' cron job which uses something like wget to trigger a webpage, and include the '?fabrik_cron=1' as part of its querystring.

 

[DeeEmm]

Cool, so I can simply create a CRON via my cpanel to call "http://www.mysite.com/index.php?fabrik_cron=1" and set it to run at the required duration?

/DM