Creating user groups

Summary: a short overview of User groups in CollabNet Enterprise Edition
Related article: Project groups in CollabNet Enterprise Edition
Last edited on February 26h, 2007 by Ted Kuster

Last edited on February 26h, 2007 by Ted Kuster Picture this: Some of the projects on your CollabNet site have users who are hired to work on the project for a few weeks at a time. Do you have to go in and manually turn off access permissions for each of these users whenever the contract is up? No, you don’t. If you put those users in a special user group, you can assign and remove permissions for them all at once. A user group allows the domain administrator to designate a collection of users who share a special set of privileges for designated projects on the site.

In this case, you might create a project group called "Contracts." Add to this group all the projects that use temporary personnel. Now create a user group called something like “Contractors." Add any short-term staff to this user group, and assign roles and permissions to the group as a whole. Finally, add the “Contractors” user group to your “Contracts” project group. Now you can grant and revoke access to the whole group of short-term staff whenever you want to. You can also define user groups in alignment with your organizational structure, such as by departments or development teams, then tailor the roles and permissions to suit the types of site activities you want to allow these groups of users.

You can create user groups by going to the User groups page.To create a user group, follow these steps:

Log into CollabNet as a Domain administrator and click the Administration tab.
Click the User groups link to display the User groups page.
Click the Add new user group link in the top right corner to display the Add a user group screen.
Use the following conventions when assigning names for the user groups:
- The user group name should be a single string without any spaces or hyphen. Underscores are allowed.
- The user group name can be in upper case, lower case, mixed case (a-Z) or numbers (0-9). It is not case sensitive.
- Any other special characters, for example *, %, #, and others are not allowed.
- The user group name should not be the same as that of a user.
Enter users to be included either by their username, E-mail addresses, or full names in the Initial users field. Multiple users can be entered in the "Initial users" field, one per line or more than one separated by commas. If you need to look up users, click the Users link in the Administration tools. This displays the User list screen. Then use your browser's Back button to return to the Add a user group screen.
Click Create group to add a new User group.

After you have submitted the new user group, the All user groups page displays with the new group added.

Controlling user group membership

You can view, add, or remove members from a user group.

To control user group membership, follow these steps:

On the Administration home page, click the User groups link to display the User groups page.
Click on the user group name to display the User group edit screen.

This page lists all users who are included in the selected user group. You can conduct the following actions here:

Modify the group description.
View individual user account information by clicking on usernames.
Add more users with the Add new user to group link which displays the Add users screen allowing you to make one or more selections. Finish by clicking the Add to group button.
Remove users by placing a checkmark in the Remove from group column, then pressing the Remove elements button.
Remove the entire user group completely using the Delete group link. (This eradicates only the user group association; it does not delete the individual user accounts in the group.)

Adding user groups to project groups

To add one or more user groups to a project group:

In the Other operations section of the Edit project group screen, click on the Grant user roles in this group link. This displays the Add new member/role screen which lists existing user groups followed by individual users.
Select the users and user groups you want to add to the project group by checking the appropriate boxes.
Highlight the role or roles you wish to grant to the selected users and user groups. The roles you grant here will be effective only within the project group.
Click the Grant roles button. The users and user groups you have designated become members of the project group.

Managing user group roles in project groups

The Other operations section of the Edit project group page features links for managing user group roles pertaining to the current project group.

View User Roles in this Group

Click this link to display the Membership screen listing all users and user groups associated with this project group. Remember that project groups function as separate projects themselves, therefore adding user groups equates to make those user groups members of the project named "project group."

If no user groups are affiliated with the project group or if you wish to add additional users or user groups, you can use the Add new member link. The Add project member page is displayed with both user groups and individual users listed.

If the project group contains any users or user groups, the Membership page displays these along with their full names and any roles they hold in the project group. The View issues link applies only when you have assigned issues specifically related to the project group to these users. This is not a link to any project-specific issues.

Grant user roles in this group

Click this link to display the Add new member/role screen. For details on using this screen see Adding users/user groups to project groups above.

Delete Group

Click this link to remove the entire project group completely. This deletes only the project group; it does not delete any user groups associated with the project group.