An unusual request for a project has me thinking it might be something similar to the Solspace Mine section of the site:
http://www.solspace.com/software/mine/
Where customers and also technicians could sign-in and see documents matching items they had purchased for support and installation.
The project doesn’t require the PayPal functionality, the items would need to be manually added to the customer’s profile by the client Admin.
Can anyone help me with what I would need to do to setup something similar, just in terms of the general logic of assigning sets of data to a user, and I guess it would need Member Templates, new to me.
One thing I can think, is I was worried about managing the users, I think now I can see there would only be so many items, and those would need there own set of data to be matched to the customer who purchased them.
I’m sort of new to the whole IA thing, since database implementation baffles me, before EE that is.
thanks for any suggestions.

What you see on the Solspace site is custom module code. But what you could do is use the User module and an extension available for it called User Authors. The functionality allows you to add multiple authors to a blog post to create an extended concept of ownership of the post. You establish the connection in the EE Edit page in the CP. Then in your templates, User Authors provides code to show the entries that *belong* to the member viewing the page. That’s the place for you to explore.

mk

As someone who has never provided a client site using EE, all of these wrinkles sort of scares me.
To top it all off, our sales person is the one who has actually met the client to gauge their proficiency of computing in general.
Would it be simple for the client to add new owners, I suppose it would.

The client seems to have complex ideas to do simple things.
They want to deliver a pdf to the technician and the customer, but both have to be signed in to some sort of portal area.
With EE I can’t quite tell whether I should be thinking CP features or front end, no fault of the EE system, just that this is abstract functionality.
Could the information links and pdf be placed in the control panel for members any way at all?
Any other suggestions of guidance to help me keep this on track?
Your ideas for the user modules make sense, does it still sound like the way to go then, is it KISS (keeping it simple).
Thanks for your recommendation of the User module and user authors, and sorry for rephrasing probably the same question.

You’re getting in deep if this is your first use of EE. I would first set the expectations with the client that you’ll need time and a few error and revision cycles.

Whenever we build this functionality for clients we go with a model of having customers join the site, become members and have things belong to them in one way or another. you could do all of this with EE categories where each category represented a customer. Many other ways too, notably the one I mentioned.

Best of luck on your adventure.

mk

http://www.solspace.com/docs/entry/license_agreement

Thanks again MItchell, you’ve been great.