Grouper Developers Forum

["Hyzer, Chris" <>]

Hello,

 

Internet2 is pleased to announce the release of Grouper 2.5, which includes many important enhancements.  Grouper is an enterprise access management system designed for the highly distributed management and diverse information technology environment common to universities. Grouper is one of the key components in the InCommon Trusted Access Platform.

 

Grouper 2.5 picks up where a fully patched 2.4 leaves off.  Upgrading from 2.4 to 2.5 is a minor upgrade and should be planned for soon.  The Grouper team will now focus on 2.5 patches and 2.6 development.  We have a lot of exciting plans for new features; we are interested in your priorities so please let us know.

 

What’s new in Grouper 2.5

 

Expirable groups	Groups can have enabled / disabled dates and can be disabled (RBAC feature)
Container required	Grouper requires a container to run.  No tarballs will be distributed.  No more patches, no more confusing upgrades, no more inconsistent environments, no more lengthy installs.
Container redesign	One servlet container, easier mounts, one directory structure, fewer processes, maven build, patchless
Grouper installer installs container	Grouper installer wizard walks through running Grouper in container
Improve pagination in WS	Cursor based paging allows fewer memory problems and paging which does not skip records
Gantt chart for jobs	See when jobs have executed, job overlap, how long jobs take, success or error
Add new web services	Get audit log Web Service   Add point in time options for WS get members, get groups, group save, get memberships
Attributes on memberships in UI	Allow direct and indirect attributes on memberships in UI (see JIRA). See wiki documentation here
WS and UI authentication	Basic authn stored in database.  Passwordless WS authn in future.  This is more friendly for containers
Simple custom UI	Analyze access for a policy.  Allow easy join/leave.  One-pager application
Automatic DDL upgrades	Grouper can automatically adjust the database structure in a controlled way when a new container is run

 

 

To learn more about the Grouper 2.5 release, to download the software and release notes, for upgrade instructions, and a link to a Grouper demo server, please visit: https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+Downloads

 

For an introduction to Grouper, please see the Grouper Deployment Guide (revamped Dec 2019 and in wiki form).  There is a virtual training “Grouper School” June 2^nd and 3^rd for access enthusiasts of all levels.   Please encourage any colleague to enroll who you feel could improve their access management practices.  You are invited to visit the Grouper website, wiki, and join slack and the email lists.

 

A big thank you to the Grouper team and community for their work in getting this release finished.  I look forward to the next three months where no one asks me when the next release is coming out.  😊

 

Thanks,

Chris Hyzer on behalf of the Grouper Team