Question

I am associated with a non-profit that has asked me to help them create a basic application with the following requirements:

1. Must be able to run on mac and pc.

2. Purpose of the app is to manage a list of volunteers, and send emails to the volunteers reminding them of an upcoming shift. They have it set up so that a person volunteers for the 1st Monday of every month, or the 3rd Thursday of every month, etc. They want to be able to select a range of dates, and have the app find out which day of the month falls in those dates (2nd Monday, or 3rd Friday, etc) and email the volunteers a reminder.

3. They need to be able to edit the volunteer list for each of the days.

4. They need to have a basic report showing all the days of the month and the volunteers for that day. Basic text is fine.

I was thinking that I could do this as a simple html + javascript app, with the data stored in an xml file. The hangup I am having, is that in order to send the emails, it needs to call a server-side script. I was hoping to have this be a completely self-contained app that doesn’t require a server to run. I can’t do it as a windows app, because it needs to be able to run on a MAC. So I thought a simple web page would work.

But the email sending, is the problem…

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Answer 1

To send emails you’ll need a mail server , wether it is a remote one or something on the client’s local computer. I’d go with a web app hosted on a server , makes more sense.