How can I merge Nodes & Webform Submissions into instances of one general Content Type in Drupal 6?

Question

I built a site using Drupal 6 recently that allows for users to submit information to the site owner in three different ways. They are:

1. Webform A: Quick Contact - this just collects name, email, phone and a message.

2. Webform B: Free PDF Book by Email Webform - this collects info similar to above, and then sends the user an email with a PDF attachment which is a book written by the site owner.

3. Node Create: Case Evaluation - this form is a Node Creation page using the Multi-Step module, CCK and a lot of conditional fields. Anonymous users can fill out this form and the node data is emailed to the site owner based on a Rule I created.

All three of these forms work perfectly in terms of doing what they are supposed to do for the site. The webform submissions are easily accessed from the webform node by the owner, and I set up a table view to manage the node submissions.

Even though the forms are gathering slightly different data, at the end of the day, the most important data is the personal contact information (each one collects name, email and/or phone), and each form submission (from any of the forms) is considered a lead by the owner and followed up on.

I would like to centralize these various form submissions (2 webforms + 1 node) into one Content Type (leads) so they could be managed from one page, rather than three, and so the owner doesn't have to reference/compare submissions from two other forms when working with data from one to prevent double-contacting potential clients if they filled out two forms on the site.

Is there an obvious solution for this scenario that could be implemented using some combination of existing modules and Rules. Or, any solution that would at least not stray too far from good Drupal practices?

Answer 1

I'm not convinced about your desire to consolidate to one content type. You should use one content type only when the forms are similar in structure and purpose. Webform A, Webform B and Case Evaluation seem to be satisfying totally different needs. They are not good candidates for consolidation.

Another alternative is to force people to register (i.e. become logged in users) before they access any webforms and CCK forms. Using the User profile (bundled with Drupal core) module you can collect standard data when people register that you now need to collect anyway for the three forms. It will consolidate your leads data in one place. The registration procedure can be made unobtrusive and simple.

I would also recommend that you use Webforms in general. They are user friendly and are excellent for making questionnaires and contact forms. Use CCK content types for more fundamental aspects of your sites like article content types and where you need views integration.

There is a very useful module called http://drupal.org/project/inline_registration . It allows you to register just before you create a node. I would guess it doesn't work with webform (unfortunately) but please check.

Another option which I feel might might be viable would be to have user fill out 2 forms. One quick webform which captures their basic details and the other webform/node create where they get to do their specific work like request a PDF etc. This way all your lead data gets captured into one webform for which you can get excel file exports.

Before signing off -- another point occurred to me...assume you have 3 webforms (Case Evaluation is turned into a webform). You just make sure that the initial data consists of standard fields like Name, Email address etc. You will get 3 excel sheets (one from each webform). It will be very easy to take the first 3 or 4 columns that you are interested from each sheet for leads data and then combine the data together in one "leads" excel sheet. This quick and dirty method will save you a lot of effort and to my mind will be a "good enough" solution.

Answer 2

What about converting the webforms to CCK too, and using a Views Bulk Operations scenario for aggregate/sort/filter capabilities?