Here is my use-case: support community for people with diabetic cats. Often, when people post, there is a whole lot of very useful context we need to be able to help them: medical information about their cat, their location, circumstances, etc.
I’m thinking along a few lines regarding this:
- add custom fields to user profiles so they can specify their city, some information about their circumstances (do they live alone or have support – can make a big difference in how we advise them for example), the name of their diabetic cat, do they have other pets, etc
- create “cat files” in a dedicated topic (possibly with a template) with all the useful information about the cat: weight, age, history, which insulin the cat is on, when it was diagnosed, other illnesses, etc
- use tags to label important information about the cats: insulin types; how blood glucose is monitored; other illnesses; does the cat go outside or not; how easy (or not) is it to manipulate the cat; syringes or pen… etc
Now, here’s the catch: some lucky people have more than one diabetic cat. So there is not a 1-1 match. And some lucky cats have two human carers in the community.
I’m aware I’m thinking of this in database-style… table of cats, table of humans…
What I’d like – and here is the question, is this possible? – is for a topic about a given cat to link to that cat’s file. Of course it can be done manually, but is there a way to automate this somewhat?
If Judy is posting, and she has only one cat, Spot, then any post by Judy is about Spot. And it would be great if posts by Judy link to the “cat file” that she has created, which will be the one for Spot.
Marie, on the other hand, has two cats, so she would have to indicate which of the two cats the post is about (or both).
Also: given that we’re capturing data about the cat (which insulin, how old is it) and the carer (which city do you live in, are you alone in this) it seems to make sense to have some information linked to the cat file, and some linked to the member profile – but I’m not familiar enough with the functionalities to evaluate what would work best.
Can you add tags to members, or only to topics? Is it a good idea to use tags to help describe the cats in this case, would you say, or not?
Interested in hearing thoughts on this, or if you’ve tackled a similar issue, what option you went for.
Thanks!
(Put this in Support because it felt like it was more about functionalities, but maybe it belongs in Community?)
