Background

Eltham Child Care Cooperative (Eccc) needed a way for the public to find information about it, and to keep members up to date with important information about the centre. Never before having a web site, they had managed by writing information on a board at the front of the centre, and by providing regular newsletters.

Policies for review, and other important notices and documents were emailed or printed for members.

The food menu and garden duty roster were taped to the wall inside the centre.

Emergency communication was by done by individual phone calls to parents/carers of children at the centre.

Key Success Factors

Eccc wanted to improve its communication and remove some of its more manual processes. They required the application to be easily updated by an authorised member of the group. They needed to have the ability to manage and share documents (centre policies, meeting minutes, etc.), to manage a garden duty roster for members, to be able to send SMS messages and emails from the application in the event of an emergency, and to manage and share the food menu for the centre. All this needed to be managed by authorised users only, and to be viewable by all the members. The general public should only see certain information.

The Solution

The application was created which met all the key success factors above. It has a role-based security system, managed by the centre administrator. Members can view internal documents and centre information, update their garden duty roster, manage their own contact details, and can provide feedback and suggestions through the application.