Group Collaboration

[Fr3elanc3r]

Now getting this error after creating a collab category. This error came after another error EX1132 i think, that appeared when creating the collab group.

 

Edit: Reinstalled the application to duplicate the error. I got the error after assigning "topic forum" -> Yes to the collab group.

 

Edit2: It errors out when assigning any perms whatsoever, and corrupts the whole app.

Edit3: Ok, the error is when "saving". I dont even have to change a setting and simply clicking "save" will give me the above 1146 error.

[Kevin Carwile]

When on a form or the app in the GC clicking on the Name of the Group doesn't do any thing - it should probably go back to the Home Page for the group.

​Agreed.

I plan to use iMenu in connection with CG to help highlight groups, out of the box the all group's content is about 3 levels deep. ( Collaboration > Category > Group )  So initial content discovery is not readily apparent.

​Look for new abilities in an upcoming release which promotes "featured" groups on their respective parent's category page, which would allow you to highlight certain groups with ease and they would be "featured" not only in the category they are in, but in their parent category ( i.e the Collaboration main tab ).

What would be nice is to cross pollinate some sort of forwarders in the Main forums that redirect to the group: (or some other means where admin can promote these in the forums ) - I guess the reason for the forums is that's what most people are use to and where most traffic reside.

​Can't forums be created as links already? Just create some main forums that point to your groups of interest that you want to cross pollinate.

also perhaps some sort of "about page" as to what is Collaboration ( or what ever title its given ) when you land there you can an "about" link to explain the purpose and with permission the end users abilities.

​Pages are outsourced to the pages app. No need to recreate existing functionality. You can create independent pages via the pages app and either link to them or include them as content however you wish on the collaboration index page via the theme layer.

[Kevin Carwile]

@Fr3elanc3r I'll PM you to get more details and see if I can't get you squared away.

[Christophe]

Any chances you could provide either screens of what it looks like without having to install it to test it? I am very interested in having a group functionality on our site if the members can join groups themselves

[Kevin Carwile]

Any chances you could provide either screens of what it looks like without having to install it to test it? I am very interested in having a group functionality on our site if the members can join groups themselves

​Absolutely they can join groups themselves. There are lots of screens, which ones are you interested in seeing?

Members can create their own groups, and can set how they want memberships to be processed. They can set their group to allow anybody to join without approval, or they can allow members to join with approval ( meaning a member requests to join and a group member with permission to approve new members approves them ), or the group can be invite only, or it can be closed to new memberships altogether.

The group leader can create "roles" for the group, and assign permissions to those roles, and then assign those roles to group members to give group members permission to do just about anything the group leader can do.

[Christophe]

I would like to see how do groups show for example on the forums index. For example do the groups show as forums or differently...that kind of screen is what I would like to see, i.e the front end. Also lets say you have a movie group and a cooking group, can you assign images to each group and for example use these images as links to go to the group instead of a text link? (Sorry not sure if I am making myself clear).

What I am looking for is to create several groups but have them show lets say on top of the main forums as images, banners or icon if you know what I mean instead of just links so that it looks nicer to click on a group and view it...makes sense?

[Ocean West]

CG is separate from your Forum's and Forum index any groups setup are not displayed in the Forum Index. (or in the Forums Management in the ACP - or any other App) 

If you want to "advertise" the groups in your forums at this time I think we have to create banners or links that point to them until, future release does more promotion or awareness, (blocks etc )  from other contexts.

I plan to have an "affiliate" group and then several affiliate sponsors will be able to manage and maintain their own forums / blog / gallery / download / calendar.

However once I do this users looking at the forum index will not know they exists - as they will have to go elsewhere to view it. Hence we will have to at the very least mange and maintain a pointer in the main forums to the CG. (until other features come to light ) I am still in the planing stage and may also use iMenu app to make my own menus to assist with this.

The nice thing is that based on permission people looking at VNC will be able to new content posted regardless if its in the main forums or any groups independent forums. 

@Christophe - if you have a test site I encourage you to download the demo version it's a great way to kick the tires. 4.0 makes it easier to install / uninstall apps. 

If I have time later I will make a walk thru video demo - if Kevin doesn't mind or someone else doesn't beat me to it. 

 

[Kevin Carwile]

Group Collaboration does not modify or interfere with your forums index. Rather, it allows individual groups to have their own forums index, or gallery index, or calendar index, or whatever. It's designed to keep group content separate from your main site content so you don't have one obnoxiously unorganized "top level" site.

I've put together some more screenshots for you. Hopefully this helps you to understand what's going on a little better. But nothing beats getting hands on with it. Make sure you download the demo version as soon as you get a site going!

Download Group Collaboration Demo   |    View Screenshots

 

[Christophe]

Does the purchase comes with help or tutorial files on how and what to set up if you want a particular setting i.e: if you want a group that accepts members automatically do this or if you want a group where only an admin can accept do this?

Not that it looks complicated on a first test install but

[Adam Sanderson]

I'm getting an error EX1146 when saving any group setting.
I don't even have to alter anything in a category, just click save and this error shows.

Anyone got a clue what this error means, or how to resolve this. Really want to try this out before I buy.
From what I have seen in the screenshots, this is a very usefuly plugin.

[jackflash]

This looks like a fantastic app. and one in which I will get once we get a board on 4.X

[Kevin Carwile]

Does the purchase comes with help or tutorial files on how and what to set up if you want a particular setting i.e: if you want a group that accepts members automatically do this or if you want a group where only an admin can accept do this?

Not that it looks complicated on a first test install but

​All configurations are supported and the product is built using standard core management interfaces. It extends all of the same management options, permissions systems, and application features that you will already be familiar with from the IPS4 suite and puts them into group context and makes them available from the front end. It's as if you are allowing your groups to manage their own IPS4 suite's inside of your own IPS4 suite. Aside from GC's addition of membership management features for the group, everything else is stock IPB. This way any other content types, apps, and plugin features you add to your site will also be available inside of groups the same way they are outside.

For example, the forum configuration form a group leader uses to create forums inside his group is the same form you use in the ACP. And post counts inside of a group are tracked independently from main site posts, so when a group leader chooses to have a minimum post count to create topics in his forum, that limit applies in context to just his group. Or if he changes a member's title, it applies only in context to his group. So when that member posts inside the group, his member title may be different than if he posts outside the group. But the behavior of the app (such as forums) is exactly the same either way.

I imagine that I will have written a book on it all by the time the product has fully matured. But for now, you'll have to take it in foreword and cliff notes.

[Ocean West]

its like renting out a room with kitchen privileges

[Kevin Carwile]

I'm getting an error EX1146 when saving any group setting.
I don't even have to alter anything in a category, just click save and this error shows.

Anyone got a clue what this error means, or how to resolve this. Really want to try this out before I buy.
From what I have seen in the screenshots, this is a very usefuly plugin.

​I was finally able to dig into someone's board that was doing this also and it turns out that it's a bug in IPS core. It has to do with the fact that you are using a database prefix and that prefix is not handled correctly in certain fringe cases by the internal database driver. I've submitted a bug report in the tracker so this should be fixed by the next release, RC4.

For those of you who are having this problem and don't want to wait for RC4 to come out, PM me and I can send you a core patch that you can upload to bypass the issue in RC3.

 

[z1000-forum.de]

i just had a qucik look into the demo version and i think if there with some improvements it will be an app for our board with ips4.

a bug i recognized:

• a non member can see forums/posts, calendar events, collaboration adds, etc. in the activity stream in the user profile an the VNC view
  when clicking on an item i.e. collaboration topic you will get "You do not have permission to view this content. Error code: 2F173/H"
   

my feature requests:

• would be nice to have some blocks like "upcoming events", "todays members birthdays", "recent images", "recent topics", "newest members", "who is online", etc. that are restricted to the current collaboration content in specific collaboration view and content of all my collaborations in the collaboration overview page
• pm/notification to all collaborations members
• news block for collaboration
• change collaboration owner
• possibility to migrate/integrate existing forums/galleries/calendars (we already have the structure and don' t want to setup everything from scratch)
• enable collaboration view and post permission for everybody not only group members

 

and i have a question: what is the sense of the collaboration dropdown menu that has "Homepage" as the only entry?

[Kevin Carwile]

a bug i recognized:

• a non member can see forums/posts, calendar events, collaboration adds, etc. in the activity stream in the user profile an the VNC view
  when clicking on an item i.e. collaboration topic you will get "You do not have permission to view this content. Error code: 2F173/H"

​Thanks for pointing that out. Since collaboration permissions extend the core IPS member group permissions into the collab group level, the core IPS is not aware of the additional permissions that need to be enforced. I'll make sure to hook into VNC and get that hooked up so everything can stay buttoned up tight.

my feature requests:

• change collaboration owner
• enable collaboration view and post permission for everybody not only group members

​These two items are already built into GC. You can manage your collaborations by clicking your account username dropdown at the top of the page and clicking "Collaboration Memberships". You can transfer collabs that you are the owner of into the hands of another member.

Any content containers ( such as forums ) owned by the collaboration group have their own permission matrix available through the collab management. When you see the permissions for "Guests", that would be referring to collaboration guests ( in other words, everybody that is not a group member ).

my feature requests:

• would be nice to have some blocks like "upcoming events", "todays members birthdays", "recent images", "recent topics", "newest members", "who is online", etc. that are restricted to the current collaboration content in specific collaboration view and content of all my collaborations in the collaboration overview page
• pm/notification to all collaborations members
• news block for collaboration
• possibility to migrate/integrate existing forums/galleries/calendars (we already have the structure and don' t want to setup everything from scratch)

​These are all very great ideas. In fact, we've discussed most of them to a degree in this thread already and they will all be baked into GC for the next minor release.

and i have a question: what is the sense of the collaboration dropdown menu that has "Homepage" as the only entry?

​Originally, I had all of the collaboration management menu options in that dropdown when I built the prototype. During development at some point, I had realized that it would be prudent to give collaborations their own customizable menu to link to their own pages of interest, so I moved the collab admin menu to its current position and left the dropdown for the collab menu where it is.

So to answer your question, that is where your custom links will eventually go.

[z1000-forum.de]

thanks for the answer. then another question regarding permissions. is the guests group in collaboration all the users that are not member of the current collaboration? if yes, which group are the real guests (not logged in users)? 

for the collaboration menu there is already or there will be a customization option? 

 

 

nethertheless this is a great tool, fits much better into our needs than social groups that we are using today. i am looking forward to see it growing. 

 

[jeece76]

Hi, great job for this app.

However, i have one sugestion :

Possibility to groups/collaborations to have an friendly url for their group/collaboration like namecollaboration.domain.com. It will be better for share on social network.

I dont know if i was clear. Sorry for bad english

[Kevin Carwile]

if the guests group in collaboration is all the users that are not members of the current collaboration, then which group are the site guests (not logged in users)?

​The "site guest" member group permissions are controlled by the permission matrix on the collab category itself (set by the site administrator), since global site member groups are outside the domain of individual collabs. For example, If the site administrator has set a permission policy to not allow site guests (non logged-in members) to post to collaborations, then it should not be within the authority of a collab group owner to override that.

[Kevin Carwile]

I have a suggestion :

Possibility for groups/collaborations to have a friendly url for their group/collaboration like collaboration.domain.com. It will be easier to share on social networks.

​GC has built in support and comes equipped with friendly urls via the core IPS system. They can be customized in the same way that any other friendly url's can be customized within the system. However, doing more advanced customizations of friendly url's outside the abilities of IPS core is also outside the scope of the GC app since it is not a FURL management product within itself.

Even so, I have no doubt that there will be such apps produced for IPS4 which will cater to those types of advanced needs. And since GC operates within all the same parameters as core IPS products, it will be fully compatible as well.

[wohali]

Though I have been happy with rsyvarth's Social Groups app in 3.x, he's been slow to get plans announced for 4.x. As we have a well-established and large (few thousand member) active community, a migration option from Social Groups (we have 50+ of these) would be mandatory before we could consider moving to this solution. Is something on the drawing board? If so, care to take a guess at a timeline?

[Kevin Carwile]

Yes, there will be migration tools coming. The plan is to build them right into the app. And it is a priority feature so I wouldn't expect a very long wait. I'll PM you with more details.

[BomAleold]

 

Hello I have some question to ask you before purchase it:

1. the edit/revision are stored like Pages doing?

2. Can you clear the way how a new user could join on a group? the are a "recruitment flags" to assign a early joined user?

3. There are any block that group members could configure on front side? (personal note private/public such as status, next challenge, suggest as featured content...)

4. There are some stats for history/activity for groups? (to view what groups are better than other...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin Carwile]

 

1. Are the edits/revisions stored like in the Pages app?

2. Can you explain how a new user could join a group?  Are there "recruitment flags" to assign to a newly joined user?

3. Are there any blocks that a user could configure on front side? (personal note private/public such as status, next challenge, suggest as featured content, etc...)

4. Are there any stats for history/activity of groups? (to view what groups are better than others...)

​1. There seems to be confusion that Group Collaboration replicates the functionality of core apps for groups, but actually, the core app is still in charge the whole time and GC just manages the additional permissions and "groups" all app content together based on the the group it belongs to. This means that whatever features that are available in the app are untouched. So if you set up a pages database and allow it to be used inside of groups, then revisions are part of the options you use to set up the database in the ACP.

2a. A group leader can choose how the group accepts new memberships. It can be changed by the group leader at any time.

• A "free join" group setting allows members to join without needing approval if the group is not full or the member has not reached any limits imposed by the site admin.
• An "approval required" group settings allows member to REQUEST membership. Any group member with "approval" permission will be able to accept them into the group.
• An "invite only" group setting removes the ability for outsiders to initiate membership on their own, and new members must be "invited" by existing group members with the invite permission. After a user has been invited, they can accept or deny the membership invitation.
• A "closed group" setting means that the group is not accepting any new members. Users cannot apply for membership, nor can group members send invites.

2b. Any number of "roles" can be created inside the group, and those roles can have different permissions and member titles assigned to them so you can differentiate between the members in your group. You can set a default member title for new members and also a member title based on the highest role assigned to them (and optionally change their member title on an individual basis). You could create a role for "New Recruit" to assign to new recruits if it suits your needs.

3. A user has a "membership" to any group that they are a part of. That "membership" can be edited and has a notes section. You could decide as a site administrator what, when, where, and how you want to display that information via the theme layer.

4. All post counts activity is kept as a separate tally inside the group. Based on how you configure the category, it can also add to global site counts, but all activity internal to the group can be tracked individual to the group as a whole, and on a member by member basis.

[BomAleold]

Thanks you for explanations, when i will convert my website on 4.0 i probably will buy this app... I should decide based on the demo if make the transition to the full version.