Improving the Groups page for 1.7

[ChrisBeach (Chris)]

I use Groups to manage access to opt-in categories and it would be good to have a list of posts in those categories (only) on a group page. At the moment, the group page shows all posts by members, regardless of their relevance to the group

[scombs (Steve Combs)]

You can modify the “owner” label in Admin/Customize/Text Content. Seems flexible enough.

[scombs (Steve Combs)]

sort groups by title (not member quantity or make sortable (so groups are easier to find)

Would still like to see the default sort order based on groups name not quantity of members.

[tgxworld (Alan Tan)]

If the feature is turned on, it is possible to leave a group from the group page, but not to join. To join, you have to go back to the group list and find the link there. It would be suitable to display the join button directly on the group page as well.

This was a bug that has been fixed.

As I mentioned earlier, Last seen and last post date are still displaying blank above actual dates, which is less useful esp on our site where many members have still not signed into discourse. They noticed this and agreed it would make sense to display blanks below.

Fixed as well

Would still like to see the default sort order based on groups name not quantity of members.

Yea this makes sense. I can’t recall why I sorted by user count in the first place.

would be good to get the font-awesome spacing corrected if possible

Fixed the CSS for this as well.

Thank you all for the feedback!

[tobiaseigen]

Nice work, guys! This is fantabulous and I’m excited.

I updated, and noticed a few things:

• when sorting by posts or last seen, two users always appear at the top of the list. both admins, as it happens.
• when sorting by posts or last seen, blanks are omitted - is this intentional? I’d prefer to still see those members, just below the members who have posted or were seen.
• when I select the leave member button, it doesn’t change at all. It also doesn’t immediately get removed from the group list.
• after leaving a group, the member list disappeared. I’m not even sure why that is, since the activity is still visible. if the member list is not visible, then activity should also not be visible. admins should be able to see everything though whatever the visibility settings.
• generally I’m liking the new user profile like look for groups. I do miss the link back to the groups list, though, and perhaps the leave group button should be in the top right where the message button is on the user profile page and it should be blue and not red.
• I hope there’s a plan for a summary page, aggregating stats for the group like on the user summary page!
• I love the group action logs! can we have this for users too?
• it would be helpful to be able to sort the group list by name and number of members, to show how busy they are.

[Osama]

Fantastic work! I’m loving the new improvements

Here is a little something I noticed today while I was seeing the new changes while logged out of my account:

I don’t see the logs of course, but I do see the edit interface. I’m not sure whether or not the ‘Activity’ tab should be visible to everyone, but I don’t see it while logged in.

[JamesNorth]

In the admin on my site that I just upgraded to latest, there’s a bit of a buggy settings panel.

[JamesNorth]

Out of interest, I’d still like to have the +New button at the top of the list as one of my sites has a lot of groups and adding them and then editing them is tough.

Per this one (in the OP)

Move '+ New' Button to Top of Custom Group Page

Hello Feature Creatures of Discourse, I love this damn thing. My forum is very finely controlled - one user per group so that each user has their own ‘category’. It’s for clients of my business. As a result, I have a lot of groups and the ‘+ New’ button appears bellow the full list of groups when adding a custom group on that page. /admin/groups/custom Could it be moved to the top of the list of groups instead? I don’t think this would affect anybody other than those who have a lot of gro…

[scombs (Steve Combs)]

Some additional comments/bugs:

• The Request Membership button triggers a PM to the entire group. The PM should be addressed to owners of the group only.

• The individual group pages should have a Request Membership/Join button. Many users will visit the individual group directly and it’s a dead end if they can’t request membership/join from that page.

• Seeing some odd behavior on logged in/out and depending on whether a user is a member of a group.
  If logged in but not member of the group, just the group name and description is shown.

[tobiaseigen]

In the admin on my site that I just upgraded to latest, there’s a bit of a buggy settings panel.

I’m sure that’s an easy fix. Are there more groups admin settings coming? If not I don’t know if a new section is needed.

I’d still like to have the +New button at the top of the list as one of my sites has a lot of groups and adding them and then editing them is tough.

Also links back and forth between the group admin page and the new group edit page and group profile. Finding myself struggling a bit with multiple tabs open.

The individual group pages should have a Request Membership/Join button.

This is done already as of a few days. You should update again.

[jomaxro (Joshua Rosenfeld)]

The PM should be addressed to owners of the group only.

Many mailing lists support contacting the owners of a group/list by appending something to the email. For example, in Sympa, I have a list named hd. Sending an email to hd@lists.domain contacts the entire list. Sending a message to hd-request@domain contacts the owners. Perhaps Discourse could do something like @team-owners (or @team-maintainers if the name changes) to accomplish this.

[tobiaseigen]

I just noticed it’s possible to set up a group that users can leave and join on their own, that also awards a trust level. That should be disabled or come with a warning.

Also, it is possible to leave a group for group owners, but then not possible to become owner again without admin intervention via the group admin settings. That too should come with a warning or it should be reversible in case of an accidental click.

[scombs (Steve Combs)]

The downside to using email is that the workflow doesn’t stay in Discourse. I think it’s preferred to keep all the tasks in one place and out of email.

For the Request PMs, I would also like to confirm TL0 users can submit requests.

[jomaxro (Joshua Rosenfeld)]

Oh no, I wasn’t suggesting using email! I was using mailing lists as an example. I was suggesting a special Discourse mention for group owners. My concern is the default PM limit for number of recipients, and more than 5 group owners.

[tgxworld (Alan Tan)]

@scombs

The Request Membership button triggers a PM to the entire group. The PM should be addressed to owners of the group only.

Ahh good point. Fixed in

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/ad4a96d38765588a4288aaf760b92509f1ef331d

[ChrisBeach (Chris)]

Thanks for your recent work @tgxworld - you’ve resolved the problem I saw with the invisible member list and join/leave button on individual group pages. Also pleased to see the font-awesome alignment fixed too

[dani14_96]

Could this be a customizable option? It would be great to have:

• Group page option: choose the default number you notify on each group. If not, it could be just a checkbox to enable or disable the 5 people limit.

• Post/mention option: choose how many people you notify on each mention. I guess this one is a bit more difficult to achieve, but a workaround would be to change the previous option manually each time you want to post (only if you are group owner)

[scombs (Steve Combs)]

Not sure we need any cap since only owners are specified in the to: line. I guess last 5 active owners adds a sanity limit, but do people generally have more than 5 owners. Also, perhaps all owners should get the PM.

The larger issue IMO in the @mention in the body of the owner notification email. A workaround is here.

This @mention issue and who gets notified isn’t really related to this group feature, but the specific PM generated could use a fix.

[dani14_96]

Sorry if I misexplained my suggestion. I think the PM issue is ok now, but a mention in a post is only notifying the 5 last active members too. That’s why IMO you should be able to set the number, because on a normal post you usually mention a group to notify all members, or simply you can think that 5 is a low number for whatever topic. (I think 5 is a perfect number for the group request).