Skip to main content
By Alex Matthews

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust - Event and Wellbeing Programme Management

Ruby on RailsA bespoke event and participant management system for Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, supporting the organisation of nature-based wellbeing programmes. The application brings session planning, participant administration, attendance and programme reviews together in a shared web platform.

The Trust runs a range of outdoor activities, including practical conservation, wildlife walks, woodland crafts and other nature-based sessions. Organisers need to manage the events themselves while keeping a consistent record of enquiries, approvals, attendance and ongoing participant involvement.

Developed in Ruby on Rails, the system supports event scheduling across different programmes, participant records, referrer organisations and role-based access for staff. Event registers connect participants with individual sessions, making it easier to follow enquiries through to attendance and review engagement over time.

Correspondence and document attachments keep supporting information alongside participant records. SMS integration supports communication with event groups, while structured programme reviews and reporting help staff bring together participation and feedback information.

The application includes participant-register output, PDF generation and spreadsheet exports, providing practical tools for day-to-day administration and programme reporting.

Key Features

  • 1. Event scheduling with date ranges, programme, work type and activity details
  • 2. Participant enquiries, approvals and attendance registers
  • 3. Participant and referrer-organisation management
  • 4. Configurable staff roles and access permissions
  • 5. Programme reviews at initial, mid-term, exit and follow-up stages
  • 6. Correspondence records and document attachments
  • 7. Event-group SMS communication through ClickSend
  • 8. Participation, review and equal-opportunities reporting
  • 9. PDF participant reports and Excel exports

Technologies

  • 1. Ruby on Rails
  • 2. MySQL-compatible database access
  • 3. JavaScript, jQuery and DataTables
  • 4. Bootstrap and Haml templates
  • 5. Devise authentication and role-based authorisation

Additional

  • 1. ClickSend SMS integration
  • 2. Grover and Puppeteer PDF generation
  • 3. Excel exports with caxlsx
  • 4. Active Storage document handling
  • 5. Docker and Linux deployment

Roles

  • Systems Architect - Alex Matthews & various contributors
  • Testers - Alex Matthews & various contributors
  • Developers - Alex Matthews & various contributors

Illustrative application views

These interface previews use fictional demonstration data to show the types of tasks supported by the system.

Illustrative event list with fictional data
Illustrative participant register with fictional data
Illustrative programme report with fictional data