[William Rockwood]

Greetings,

I’m currently using connections to create and manage a staff directory for a public library. Initially, I extended the Phone field by editing the various class files to create an ‘extension’ key based on the ‘workphone’ key and that works well, until it’s time to update the core extension. ;)

I’ve put some time into investigating alternatives, such as creating a stand-alone sub-plugin based on your ‘Hours’ or ‘Education Levels’ plugins to extend the Phone fields without modifying the core plugin, but I wanted to check to make sure that’s even possible or recommended. It’s one thing to create a whole new field but quite another to alter or supersede an existing field, I would think?

Also, there is some (ok, more than some) interest within my organization for staff to edit their own entries (we’re using google apps login for authentication, so usernames end up being email addresses, which would also be present in the connections entry for each user). Is this possible out of the box? If not, is it a feature you’re considering? If not, any idea how many hours it would take to write up a sub-module to provide that functionality? I looked at your ‘Form’ extension and it seems to be not quite what I am looking for in terms of functionality (though I may just grab it for the simplified/streamlined entry editing functionality)

I very much appreciate any insight or suggestions you can provide. Thanks!

[William Rockwood]

grin I just found the ‘Link’ extension, which will solve part of my question quite easily!

So the only remaining question is, is it feasible to modify/add phone fields using a modified version of, say, ‘Education Levels’? Or is there a much simpler way?

Thanks again!

[Steven Zahm]

@ William

The one part I do not quite follow and need a bit more detail on…

The phone field supports free-text; it is not limited to just numbers or a particular number format. This design decision was on purpose to allow a wide range of input. That said, why not just enter number 123-555-1212 ext 123? This is how I’m am familiar with seeing such info on business cards and such.

[William Rockwood]

I could do, and am doing that in the “Work Phone” field (listing the phone number as “nnn-nnn-nnnn xnnn”, but I need an extension field that lists only the extension. I could relabel the output in the theme, but it feels pretty unprofessional to tell my users to put their extension in the “work fax” field or whatever. I also will be using this data with a separate json export plugin so I can feed my cisco phone directory.

If the answer is to open the core plugin files with vim and re-add the “extension” key to the phone field every time there’s an update, so be it, I guess.

[Steven Zahm]

@ William

Understood…

The best way to handle this which will require a bit more up front work but will be update safe is to add your own metabox for phone numbers à la the “Education Levels” extension and then unregister the core phone numbers metabox so you only have one with your modifications. And most of the work is simply copy/pasting.

I would copy the entire code for the phone numbers metabox:
https://github.com/Connections-Business-

• Directory/Connections/blob/8.2.1/includes/class.metabox-entry.php#L1739

Make your changes and register it using the same array attributes:
https://github.com/Connections-Business-

• Directory/Connections/blob/8.2.1/includes/class.metabox-entry.php#L144

Use this method to do the actual metabox registration:

• https://github.com/Connections-Business-Directory/Connections/blob/8.2.1/includes/class.metabox-entry.php#L56

To unregister the core phone number field, this should work:

cnMetaboxAPI::remove( 'metabox-phone' );

You can hook into the cn_metabox hook to make this happen:

add_action( 'cn_metabox', array( 'cnEntryMetabox', 'init' ), 10 );

Step by step:

1. Hook a new function to the cn_metabox hook.
2. The function should unregister the metabox-phone metabox.
3. Set up an array with the exact same attributes.
4. Register your custom phone metabox.

Hope that helps.

[William Rockwood]

Ah fantastic! Thank you. This will help immensely. I really appreciate your responses and must say we have clearly made the right choice in going with this plugin for our staff directory. I will be sure to leave a rating/review for Connections in the wordpress plugin directory. Thanks again!

[Steven Zahm]

@ William

No problem! An thanks for taking time to leave a review, truly appreciated!

[Author]

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