The problem
St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Parish (Jersey City, NJ) needed a way to digitize their aging paper-based baptism records. Some of their records were kept in books that date from the late 1800s. They also needed to add the ability to generate certificates for all sacraments offered at the church, namely, Baptism, Communion, Confirmation and Marriage, for their current parishioners.
Certificates must be available for print in black and white, as well as in color. They wanted to have a designated person from staff to enter records. However, in case of mistakes, only a deacon should be able to edit information, since the certificates carry sensitive personal information.
The solution
Developed using Laravel and MySQL, the Certificates application features user roles. Designated parish staff is allowed to create records for current parishioners receiving a sacrament, as well as to transfer information from their old books into digital form.
If a mistake is made, a deacon must log in with her credentials and either void a certificate or edit information.
The Dashboard features a grid with the most recent certificates from each sacrament. From there, the user can click on a certificate and print either in color or black and white.
To add a new certificate, simply go to the tab corresponding to the sacrament to be added, then click the Add button. Using DataTables, the tab displays all records with the most important information and a side button that allows to print and edit, depending on the user permission.
