Organic Groups

Intro

Overview

Organic Groups module can "Enable users to create and manage their own 'groups'. Each group can have subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves. They do so by posting the usual node types: blog, story, page, etc. A block is shown on the group home page which facilitates these posts. The block also provides summary information about the group. Groups may be selective or not. Selective groups require approval in order to become a member, or even invitation -only groups. There are lots of preferences to configure groups as you need."

Tutorials

Quick introduction video. It has more clips about OG, but most of them are not free.

Some helpful tutorials for starters

• Organic Groups: Social Networking for Drupal

• Organic Groups for Drupal 7

Example

ERI's Cosmos web is utilizing OG to manage its "Networks"

Setting Up Organic Groups

• Enable Organic Groups, Organic Groups Access Control, Organic Groups field access and Organic Groups UI
• Create new content type called Groups (or Research Groups) and in the "Group" tab, click the option "Group Type" under "Group"
• Save the group
• Go to Configuration->Organic groups->Organic groups field settings
  • Under bundle, select the name of the content type that will become a group (Group or Research Group)
  • Choose Group under fields -- this will enable a checkbox on the Group content type that allows administrators to specify which nodes should be treated as groups.
  • Click the X at the top right corner to close.

Adding Users to a Group

A site administrator must give the Group Administrator administrative privileges to that group. When the group administrator is set, that user can add new users to the group and administer all content and settings related to that group.

• Go to a node (or create one) of the 'Group' content type and click edit below the title.
• Check the 'Group' option and click save.
• Click Group below the group title.
• Select "Add People"
• Type a users username into the "User name" textarea and check the Group Administrator roll if he/she is the group PI / administrator.
• Click "Add users"

Note that the creator of the group node will automatically be registered as the Group Manager -- to remove this user as manager remove the users name under the 'authoring information' section at the bottom of the node's edit page.

Group Visibility

Sometimes a groups content should be restricted to only members. To implement this functionality, a "Group visibility" field must be added to the Group content type.

• Go to Configuration->Organic groups->Organic groups field settings
• Select Group under Bundle, Group visibility under Field and then click Add Field
• Set up a new group node (or edit the existing one) and under the "Group visibility" field choose 'private'.
• Save the node.

Group Dashboard

• The group dashboard (where group members can create menus, administer members etc. can be found under the "Group" tab on the group's node.

Removing Groups

• In addition to removing the group and all nodes associated, to completely remove a group you must remove it from the 'og' table from in the Drupal database using drush.