I have a general question and a few thoughts for discussion.
Are there some people who manage over 40 groups (quite possible in intranet solutions) of users in one XOOPS site? What impressions of the management of so many groups and permissions settings (with module own permissions)? Any advice?

In my case, for full flexibility would have to have the group for each department and each role. For example, we have 5 branch locations across the country and at least 10 roles (directors, managers, logistics, traders, etc.).. What gives 5x10 = 50 groups. It's getting quite a bit. Especially, it can not be set once and for all powers, because the requirements from time to time change.

Standard options in the admin panel are a bit limited in this area (although XOOPS 2.5 brings some usability improvements in users management).

I use the Group Manager by kaotik. It is very helpful, but still insufficient. The second module groupsforxoops failed to start.

I think that would be useful subgroups and propagation rights. That would probably require too many changes in the core. So I think about an module that would be a sort of overlay on the standard group and brings more organisation. For example, would create something like a virtual groups for groups with core functions propagation settings, etc.

PS. Has anyone played around with [url=http://www.doitwithdrupal.com/free-videos]Drupal and Organic Groups[url]?

I started to create my own module, which is to support groups and permissions management by providing summary information about them. Far only for the alpha test several ideas.
Runs on XOOPS 2.4 and 2.5.
Download

The concept of PHPGACl is a solid one and could possibly be added to Xoops.

I will look into this further after I get further with the Stuff I am currently working on.

The organic permissions as mentioned for Drupal are user based and not system based. Those are more to make a permissions system like the one for Facebook or something similar.

Note that I should mention when I say look into the MOST I am able to do at this time is to write "hacks" for xoops and hope that the concept works and is something that gets added to 2.6. I am not a core programmer.

If I build something it will be a sort of "drop in" solution that will be specific to a specific version of Xoops. This will be the case for any of my Group update stuff.

Do all of the roles (independent of location) have the same rights? If so then you can create groups that give 'directors' a certain set of rights and a 'location' group having another set of rights. Then you just add people to multiple groups (say 'trader' and 'Memphis' groups) to give them all of the permissions they need.

This only requires 15 groups (5 for locations, 10 for roles).

Just a thought....

I will look into this further as I said, I think that the permission system can be revamped without affecting the modules because the system will simply just tell the module if a user has a permission or not. It should be a simple matter to be able to modify those permissions behind the scenes before the module sees them.

My first thought was to add a User based over ride per module. I may still do that depending on if it looks to be not needed.

This php gacl looks promising but I would have to rewrite it to work with Xoops. The idea seems solid and it appears to be relatively simple so It shouldn't require much to pull the core of it out. This system is designed to work out of the box as an add on to most systems and it adds things most of us do not need or would be done differently.

At the moment I will be looking into the groups system altogether and as it looks now I will look at the following.

Group based theme support

Group Permission system Revamp (as already discussed above)

Group members utility (Think the group membership system to replace the current system)

Group based membership system. This will support things such as password expiration, group membership depending on profile questions (Think Male/Female as example) , subscription support. To support subscriptions there will be a time system added that will allow someone's group to be changed automatically. This could be used to expire passwords, have a waiting period for users before they become full members or simply subscriptions. Would also support bans that could expire automatically etc. Up to the imagination of the webmaster. This will simply have an expiration setup to change the group. To support subscriptions an add on module will need to be used. I expect that any current subscription module should work with this system as is but you will have a more powerful system to work with.

Again, these will be done as a drop in replacement and will be designed to work with the latest stable version. If they work well I would hope they get included into 2.6 at some point.

Quote:
If I understand what he is saying, basically each branch may have different structures and so he ends up needing a separate group for each one. Essentially the only group that multiple members can belong to are the lowest level employees. If the structure at each branch and through out the whole system was the same then what you say is correct. However if you have a dozen or more modules installed this could take a week or more to work the bugs out of just the permissions. However with an ACL or similar the same job could likely be done in an afternoon. I do see the reason behind what he is asking.

Even with 15 groups it can take a couple days to get the permissions worked out with the current system.

I think we might be able to do better.
Also here is an example of one being done now as well...
http://groups.drupal.org/node/205928

At this time I will still say I think it can be done in a manner that we can change the system without it affecting modules. I will see if I can make it work. But this is much more involved than the other group changes so it may take a bit to accomplish.

Just downloaded Xoops will look into how to Improve the management of groups.