EasySocial applicability to a project?

Hi Guys,

It's been a while -- but am back on a Joomla dev project. When EasySocial first came out, I was hoping that by the time this job came in, it would be mature and full featured, which it appears to be! Before I buy a copy and see how deep the Rabbit hole goes, I was hoping that you guys could indicate whether what I'm thinking is possible with EasySocial.

Basic architecture

I have Health facilities, Equipment, and People:
• Health facilities would be set up as groups
• People and Equipment would be set up as users

Equipment and people get linked to facilities through a "group join" and people get linked to equipment through a "friend" type link.

Record types

1) People (users)

• People profiles will pretty much be easy to implement through your standard modules, plugins etc.
• People would be set up as users with types Technicians, Health Workers, Manufacturers, Donors/NGO's etc)
• Data would be user / front end generated, so... normal.

2) Equipment (users) and Heath Facilities (groups)

• Equipment would be set up as users of type equipment
• The source data for these records originates from a tablet app, gets downloaded and processed with a desktop program, and is then published to MYSQL tables. Records contain:

a) Text fields, numeric, date fields
• Text / Numeric / Date data fields are straight forward and don't worry me

b) Images / photos
• URLs of (10-50) images per record.
• Links point to images on another server (thumbs as well as full sized) and could be a headache and I don't have an easy way to port them over to mine, unless I get deep into the App's web based API... which is it's own rabbit hole.

c) Numeric data (temperatures)
• Numeric data will need to be represented graphically (vchart) and sometimes as tables (tabulizer) as well.
- For Equipment, which would be set up as user profiles, I'm imagining using
* HTML field type.
_ What are the limitations here?
_ Can I use js and php in there too? (embed a google chart for example)
* Joomla article field type (is there such a thing yet?)
_The table/graphing components that I'm using allow embedding in articles...
* I saw a "User - blog" application type listed in the backend demo.
_Is that an EasyBlog integration and could I use it as a wrapper / workaround
* Customization of the template for this user type to add the special stuff
_Should I anticipate a custom template instead for these embeds?
- For Facilities, which would be set up as groups, not sure at all
_I'm a little worried that things may be a lot less flexible than for user profiles
_I looked through the apps for groups in your backend demo and no HTML option
_I saw "group - story" -- is that the equivalent of "User -blog" for groups (an EasyBlog integration?), and if so, coud I use that as a wrapper / workaround?
_Should an anticipate customization of the groups template, if even possible?

d) Location data (GPS coordinates)
• I can output these in any format (presently using google map standard)
• However, on Health facilities page, would be nice to be able to show two maps
* one with facility on map
* other with all equipment items at facility on map. are multiple markers per map possible?

[b}Importing / syncing / generated data for EasySocial[/b]

The big headache though is that Equipment and Facility data is automatically generated / updated. I can imagine three basic approaches here:

a) Manually set everything up, put records of each type in, establish relationships in every direction, study the structure and then output the data from my desktop based processing engine into the EasySocial MYSQL table structures.
b) CSV import set up on automated schedule or something
c) Set some sort of daily automated script (like the ones in Maintenance/Scrips) to "Sync"/"Migrate" the data in the MSQL tables (as they are currently structured) to the structures that I've set up in EasySocial

While I could just take a standard "form" approach to doing this, or even generate a "network" architecture of records with Joomla articles, I thought that it would be really elegant (and more engaging for users!) to port the data into EasySocial. They would of course still have access to cut and dry tables etc... but with your suite of packages (need to see how EB & ED would integrate, if necessary), it would be a lot less stale!

Sorry for the long post, but before I buy and more importantly, spend time messing with trying to get the pieces to fit together, I wanted to run the general concept by you to see if you think it can be done (and is realistic!).

Many thanks,

Tory