Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Steven Carmody <>]

we're trying to move the group membership management to Grouper, but are 
also stumbling on some of the differences between a group used as a 
mailing list and a group used for other purposes (eg access control).

With google groups, we've got a problem with "announcement" lists -- 
these usually have one group as recipients and a second group as 
authorized senders. With google, the only approach we've found is to use 
two Grouper groups, and push them into a single google group but with 
different google roles. This also requires managing the properties of 
the google group.

We've started to let group managers specify a "type" or "category" for a 
group within Grouper, and the resulting value will affect the properties 
we set in each of the target directories. This is particularly useful 
since the defaults in google and in AD aren't consistent. A couple of 
sample Category values are PrivateProject and PublicProject.

On 11/13/15 3:44 PM, Jeff McCullough wrote:
> 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