Group Concept

Groups are used to control certain aspects of a user or to create teams of users that are somehow associated with each other.

Groups are administrated by a Group Manager who is usually the creator of group. User’s join a group by invitation sent by the manager.

Depending on the type of user (see below), users grant control of certain aspects of their user account to the Group Manager. In particular, if a user is a member of a group then the Group Manager determines the license and the depot to be used by the group members. It is also possible to set group specific Client Settings which override the Provider level Client Settings (see CLIENT_SETTINGS) for members of the group.

But, the Group Manager cannot change any other aspects of the user such as the profile data (email address, profile picture, full name, etc.). The manager can also not access the user’s devices, Spaces or the Key Repository, or delete any of these items.

However, the Group Manager can determine a Master User for members of the group (see Setting up a Master User), which grants the manager access to all new Spaces of the group members.

Members and Friends

User can either be belong to a group as a member or a “friend”. As mentioned above, members of a group use the Group License and Group Depot when specified by the Group Manager. Members are also effected by Client Settings set for the group.

Friends, on the other hand, are not affected by any settings made by the manager of the group. Friends just have access to the membership list of a group in the TeamDrive Client. This allows them to invite all members (or all members and friends) of a group to a Space.

Users may only be a member of one group. This is to ensure that there is no ambiguity with regard to the license, depot and Client Settings used. However, a user may be a friend of any number of groups.

Joining a Group

Users join a group by invitation. The invitation must be sent by the Group Manager. The invitation determines whether the user will become a member or a friend of the group on acceptance.

On invitation, users receive an email with two links. With the first link they can accept the invitation, and with the second link they can reject the invitation.

In the member invitation email, the user is warned about the consequences of joining a group, namely: that by joining the group, the user gives up control of certain aspects to the Group Manager.

If the user rejects the invitation, this is noted by the server. The user can be invited again, but after the user rejects an invitation 3 times, further invitation is not possible. Users that reject an invitation are not removed from the group. They remain associated with the group, but have the membership-rejected or friendship-rejected states (all possible states are described here: getuserdata). Such users can be removed from the group by the Group Manager.

If a user that is already a member of a group, joins a group, the user is automatically removed from the first group. This is to ensure that the user is only a member of one group. In this case, the user gains the invited-as-member state in the previous group, which makes it possible for the user to return to membership of the previous group, if the user still has the original invitation email.

If a user that is a member of a group accepts an invitation as a friend then the user becomes a friend of the group, and looses membership. Conversely, a friend of a group can be invited to become a member of a group.

Leaving a Group

It is not possible for a user to leave a group of his own accord. A user can only be removed from a group by the Group Manager.

The group membership is noted under the user profile information in the TeamDrive Client. Here the user may also find contact information for the Group Manager.

Type of Groups

There are two types of groups: Provider Level Groups and User Level Groups.

Provider Groups are managed by the Provider using the Admin Console.

User Groups are managed by the Group Manager in the Group Admin Portal or by the Provider in the Admin Console.

Group Licenses

The Group Manager can assign a license to a group. The license must belong to the Group Manager.

When this is done, all members of the group will use the group license in place of their own license. There is no way for a group member to avoid using the group assigned license.

The license usage applies to all users of the group in a membership state. This includes: member, invited-as-member and membership-rejected.

In other words, if a user is invited as a member, then the user occupies a license of the group until he/she is removed from the group. Alternatively, if an invitation is still pending or has been rejected then it can be changed to an invitation as a friend and, in this case, the license of the group will no longer be in use.

In general, users that are just friends of a group do not count towards Group License usage.

Group Depots

A manager can assign a depot to a group. The depot must belong to the manager. When this is done, the depot becomes the default cloud storage of the group members.

Only users that have accepted membership receive access to the depot. In other words, invited users and users that have rejected membership, or friends of the group do not gain access to the Group Depot.

When a member leaves the group, or becomes a friend of the group, access to the Group Depot will be removed from the user.

Group Client Settings

Client Settings allow the manager to change the behaviour of the TeamDrive Client in various ways. For example, the “auto-invite-users” setting contains a list of users that are automatically invited to all Spaces.

Client Settings can be specified for all users of a Provider by setting the CLIENT_SETTINGS setting (CLIENT_SETTINGS). Groups present another level of control over the TeamDrive Client Settings. Client settings set for the group take priority over the Provider level settings.

Which Client Settings may be changed is controlled by the Group Admin Portal. Unlike a Provider, Group Managers are not able to apply Client Settings in a free form field.

Client Settings for a group only affect members of the group. Group friends ignore the Client Settings of the group. Of course, the Provider level Client Settings still apply to these users.

Group Templates

The Group system uses a number of templates that need to be customised and translated into other languages according to your requirements.

Currently, all templates are associated with the invitation of users to groups.

Email Templates

  • group-member-invitation:

    This email is sent to users that are invited to join a group as a member. The email contains 2 links: one to accept the invitation, and one to reject the invitation.

  • group-friend-invitation:

    This email is sent to users that are invited to join a group as a friend. The email contains 2 links: one to accept the invitation, and one to reject the invitation.

HTML Templates

The HTML templates provide responses to the links in the invitation email.

  • group-joined:

    This HTML page is displayed when the user clicks on the link in the invitation email to join the group. The page is also displayed if the user clicks on the reject link, but the user is already a member of the group.

  • group-notfound:

    This HTML page is displayed if the user clicks on a link in the invitation email but the link cannot be recognised for some reason. This will usually only happen if the link is incorrectly copied to the browser.

  • group-rejected:

    This HTML page is displayed when the user clicks on the link the invitation email to reject the group. The page is also displayed if the user clicks in the link to join a group, but the user has already rejected membership of the group.