Drupal Organic Groups, DrupalCamp Finland 2014, Kari Kääriäinen

1. Kari Kääriäinen
DrupalCamp Finland 2014

2. What are we going to talk about?
 Organic groups, a contributed module,
version 7.x-2.x
 Laying a foundation for understanding OG
 Background
 What is it good for?
 Setting up
 Testing access control
 These slides will be available in SlideShare

3. Why?
 OG is powerful but complicated
 Many ways to adjust permissions and access
control
 No out of the box solution for layout
 OG has gone through some major changes
from 6 to 7, and 7.1 to 7.2

4. Who am I?
 Kari Kääriäinen, kari.kaariainen@nettimaakari.fi
 1980 fooling around with Intel 8086, Assembly
language
 Mostly self taught on computers and web
 Master of Music, Sibelius Academy
 Worked at Sibelius Academy IT department
 Used to develop my own CMS on PHP until finding
Drupal 2008
 www.nettimaakari.fi, self employed
 I build sites, do migrations, some design/theming,
some module programming

5. Who are you?
 How many of you know at least something
about OG?
 How many of you have tried it but don't
have anything in production at the
moment?
 How many of you have an actual OG
application in mind?
 How many of you are using OG in
production now?

6. What is Organic groups (OG)?
 Create user groups...
 Only admin creates groups
 Let users create groups ("organic")
 Let users assign admins for groups
 ...Make users become members...
 users apply for membership, you accept
 you assign them
 ... share content with members

7. Compared with Facebook groups
 Public, Private or Hidden
 Pros
 Finished, complete product, ready to use
 Many users already know it
 Nice layout
 Cons
 You don't own your data
 No exceptions, no tweaks
 No styling or customizing
 Unexpected changes
 OG hooks to the rest of Drupal

8. Fun fact from the early days
 2004 Carl-Magnus Dumell was looking for a
gallery and club functionality for Finnish
Broadcasting Company, YLE
 Emailed Drupal core developers, Moshe
Weitzman was available -> Organic Groups
4.6.x-1.x
 YLE has been actively promoting Open
source

9. Short history of OG versions
 Rewrite 6 -> 7
 Entities and fields
 Major change 7.1 -> 7.2
 Group entity was discarded
 Now status quo, good time to come
onboard

10. Distributions using OG
 To name a few
 Open Atrium 2 (based on Panopoly)
 Acquia Commons
 Open public
 Open publish
 Explore to learn and to see if a good fit for
your needs
 Make sure you have a powerful machine

11. Testing(/development) environment
 Keep it simple, really simple
 Install WAMP, MAMP, XAMPP, or similar
 Install Drupal, Standard profile

12. Testing environment (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/install.php

13. Testing environment (cont.)
 When installed, disable these modules
 Toolbar
 Search
 Overlay (for now, just to keep urls simple)

14. Testing environment (cont.)
 Download modules to sites/all/modules
 Needed for OG
○ Chaos tool suite
○ Entity API
○ Entity Reference
○ Organic groups
○ Views Bulk Operations
○ Views
 Not needed for OG, but for our environment
○ Administration menu
○ Module filter
○ Devel

15. Testing environment (cont.)
 Enable modules
 For OG
○ Chaos tools
○ Entity API
○ Entity Reference
○ Organic groups UI
○ Organic groups
○ Views Bulk Operations
○ Views UI
○ Views
 For testing
environment
○ Administration menu
Toolbar style
○ Administration menu
○ Module filter
○ Devel node access
○ Devel
○ Switch user

16. Testing environment (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/

17. Testing environment (cont.)
 Delete the core content types (you’ll thank
me later)
 Article
 Basic page

18. Testing environment (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/structure/types

19. Testing environment (cont.)
 Create users Insider and Outsider
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/people/create

20. Testing environment (cont.)
 Give both Anonymous and Authenticated
roles permission to switch users -> you are
able to switch freely between any user
(never on production site)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/people/permissions

21. Testing environment (cont.)
 Assign Switch user block somewhere you
can easily see it

22. First scenario, public groups
 Everybody can see the group
 Everybody can post to the group

23. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Add content type ”Group”
 Name: Group
 Display settings, Display author and date
information: off
 Comment settings, Default comment setting for
new content: hidden
 Organic groups, Specify how OG should treat
content of this type: Group

24. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/structure/types/add

25. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Add content type ”Posting”
 Name: Posting
 Display settings, Display author and date
information: off
 Comment settings, Default comment setting for
new content: hidden
 Organic groups, Specify how OG should treat
content of this type: Group content

26. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/structure/types/add

27. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/structure/types

28. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Configure OG's permissions
 For Member role, add
○ "Create Posting content"
○ "Edit own Posting content"
○ "Delete own Posting content”
 Note that by design, Non-member cannot get
the right to create Posting content

29. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/config/group/permissions/node/group

30. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Create a group ”First group”
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/add/group

31. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/1

32. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Assign Insider to group
 http://localhost/ogtesting/group/node/1/admin/people/add-user

33. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Switch user to Insider and post to the group
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/add/posting

34. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/2

35. Rudimentary layout
 Panels
 Preferred by module maintainers
 Pros: flexible, powerful, popular
 Cons: challenging to set up, maybe overkill for
some sites
 OG extras
 Brings back what was in OG 6

36. Rudimentary layout (cont.)
 Group members block
 Enable OG extras
 Assign OG Extras group members block
somewhere

37. Rudimentary layout (cont.)
 Group contents listing (also by OG extras)
 Enable EVA (Entity Views Attachment)
 “Latest news” listing automatically appear

38. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Testing
 See who can actually see and do what by
switching users
 Test as Insider and Outsider

39. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Test as Insider

40. First scenario, public groups (cont.)
 Test as Outsider

41. Vocabulary in Drupal and OG
 Some fuzziness in term usage
 Permission
 Used as an general term
 Can we DO something to a piece of content, i.e. create, edit or delete
 Can we perform some other action (join a group / subscribe to a group)
 Access
 Can we VIEW a piece of content
 Field access: view field, edit field
 Visibility
 In OG, a user friendly synonym for “Access”
 Is a piece of content private or public
 Private: only group members can see a piece of content
 Public: anyone (who can view published content) can see a piece of content
 Context: when viewing a node, are we "in a group" or not
 Audience: list of groups a piece of content is posted to

42. Second scenario, private groups
 Everybody can see the group
 Only members can view the posts and post
to the group

43. Second scenario, private groups
(cont.)
 Core has no (granular) access control, "who
can view"
 Enable OG access control
 Permissions need to be rebuilt

44. Second scenario, private groups
(cont.)
 Most OG functionality is powered by fields
 Special OG field settings admin tool at
http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/config/group/fields
 Some of this functionality is duplicated for
convenience elsewhere, for example on
Content type edit page, Organic groups
vertical tab, for both Group and Posting

45. Second scenario, private groups
(cont.)
 Add visibility (=access) fields to Group and
Posting

46. Second scenario, private groups
(cont.)
 Make Group public
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/1/edit
 Make Group content private
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/2/edit

47. Second scenario, private groups
(cont.)
 Testing
 Test as Insider and Outsider
 Insider should see Group and Posting
 Outsider should see Group but shouldn't
see Posting (Access denied)

48. Exceptions to public or private groups
 Visibilities can be mixed
 Private posting to a public group
 Set the visibility to private
 Public posting to private group
 Set the visibility to public

49. Third scenario, hidden group, one
private field
 One field will be accessible only to Admin members
 Enable OG field access
 New set of permissions appear at
http://localhost/ogtesting/admin/config/group/permissions/node/group
 Initially nobody can see anything
 OG permissions so far
 Creating nodes
 Editing nodes
 New set of permissions added
 Viewing fields
 Editing fields

50. Third scenario (cont.)
 Create Groupadmin user
 Add it to First group and make it
administrator member

51. Third scenario (cont.)
 Make Group private
 http://localhost/ogtesting/node/1/edit

52. Third scenario (cont.)
 Add view permission for all existing fields
for Member role and Administrator member
role
 Create new field,
“Private field” to “Posting”
 Add permission to view “Private field” for
Administrator member only

53. Third scenario (cont.)
 Why was it
important to keep
it simple?
 Already 14 rows,
3 columns,
42 checkboxes
in just the OG Field
access section

54. Third scenario (cont.)
 Testing
 Test as Groupadmin, Insider, and Outsider
 Groupadmin should see everything,
including the private field
 Insider should see everything, except
the private field
 Outsider can't see either the group or
the posting (Access denied)

55. Things to consider
 Managing users
 Let users subscribe to groups, with or without
approval
 Add users to groups

56. Things to consider (cont.)
 Migration from 6.x
 Migrate module (7.x-2.5 even though it's old) is
needed, OG uses that
 Other options exist
 Migration from 7.x-1.x
 Should work, make backups!

57. Things to consider (cont.)
 Email notifications
 Message notify module preferred by module
maintainers
 Rules module practical for small needs

58. Where to learn more
 modulesunraveled.com, videos
 lullabot.com, videos
 drupal.stackexchange.com, questions and
answers
 drupal.org/og, issue queue
 Community Documentation, Organic Groups
Version 7.x-2.x at
https://drupal.org/node/1603460

59. Questions?
 There are no dumb questions
 The next person may be thinking about the
same thing

60. Thank you!
 Review at SlideShare