Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Jeff McCullough <>]

This question is both for other schools as well as the grouper team. As we 
look further at an integration with Google Groups, there are several mailing 
list options to think thru. There are the issues of external identities and 
options for requesting/subscribing/leaving a group (those standard mailing 
list functions). If we want one group source, grouper, that pushes groups to 
all the campus services, then grouper may need to have extra functionality. 
If you have mailing list service, aka mailman, the ability to add any email 
to a list is standard, send email to confirm are standard features. One can 
also request to be added to a list. Subscribing/leaving are also standard, 
and grouper already has those features in opt-in/opt-out permissions. When it 
comes to sending email, I know it is possible to have grouper send email when 
someone is added/removed from a group, but that is more a confirmation that 
the event happened rather than a confirmation cycle where the person being 
added is confirming they want to be added by replying or following a link. 
I’m not suggesting that the confirmation cycle be there in groups, but noting 
it is a standard feature of mailing lists. Lastly, when it comes to sending 
emails, there are times when sending an email might be confusing or 
unnecessary, so having a way to signal to the system that we want an email 
sent is useful. 

For any school that has made a conversion from a regular mailing list to 
Google Groups, how did you had those features above? Did you find work 
arounds or just decided they were not going to be available. For the grouper 
team, I’m wondering if there has been any design discussions around including 
email features and the ability to create an identity or to just include an 
external email account in a group. I know that last one has all sorts of 
issues, but just want to get a sense of direction. There are the external 
identities which have an invite process and there are the general external 
identity features offered through vendors like Cyrius Identity. There isn’t 
the ability to just add an external identity when that might be useful. 

Thanks,
Jeff