topic Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS? in Alfresco Archive

How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:33:03 GMT

Hi,what would be the easiest way to add all Alfresco users to the group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS (or any other group)? Unfortunately it is not possible to add the group EVERYONE to another group like EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS (or did I overlooked the obvious solution)? Certainly one could add user by user to th

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

amitabhandari1 — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:47:05 GMT

Hi mpeters,

You can write a javascript to add users to group.
Get all the users using query :

1 . you can fire a lucene query to get all users for e.g. QNAME:"usr:user" or use a javascript api : Array getMembers(ScriptNode group)
2 . You can apply a for loop to get the user one by one and add in a group using another query :addAuthority(ScriptNode parentGroup, ScriptNode authority)

Thanks,

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:09:10 GMT

Hello Amita,

thanks very much for your answer. That shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Now I wonder about the best way to trigger the execution of such a script. Certainly one could start the script by defining an appropriate rule to execute the script or by calling the script via URL. But due to the fact, that we are doing a regular scheduled LDAP sync I would prefer to call the script right afterward the LDAP sync (so newly imported users can immediately added to the targeted group).

Is there a way to execute the javascript right after (or very close to) the LDAP sync?

Kind regards
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

amitabhandari1 — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:01:53 GMT

Hi mpeters ,

If that is the case you should write a scheduler which will run in a time interval and will execute a business logic written in java class.
So there you can add code similar to the one I suggest for a java script.You can check AuthorityService Interface for fetching users and adding to a group.
Users can be fetch using : getContainedAuthorities(AuthorityType type, String name, boolean immediate)
add users to group using : addAuthority(String groupName,
userName);
Thanks,

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mrogers — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:43:06 GMT

It should be possible to add EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS. If it doesn't work then please make sure its raised in JIRA.

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:51:47 GMT

It should be possible to add EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS. If it doesn't work then please make sure its raised in JIRA.

Thanks for your response. I tried to ad EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS within Alfresco Share, but EVERYONE doesn't appear in the "Add Group" dialog (unlike other groups).

I actually opened a ticket regarding this problem, which responded in "It's not possible to add EVERYONE as a subgroup".

But if you can confirm, that it is possible to add EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS I would be happy to hear from you, so I could reopen the ticket (or raise it in JIRA).

Kind regards,
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mrogers — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:06:23 GMT

Thanks for your responses. I found a couple of issues that were fixed and validated in 3.4 Last September. And in addition there is a work-around for this problem which is to use Alfresco Explorer. What version are you testing on?

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:09:49 GMT

Hi mpeters ,

If that is the case you should write a scheduler which will run in a time interval and will execute a business logic written in java class.

Hello Amita,

thank you for your detailed answer. Well, what can I say? We are actually not involded with Alfresco so deep yet. Thus extending Alfresco with Java is not a solution at the moment I guess (shame on me).

I'm thinking about this easy solution: creating the javascript you recommended in your first response and then call it by a rule assigned to the "User Homes" space whenever an Object will be created, changed or deleted. So when the LDAP sync is executed and a new user is imported, then a new user space will be created and the rule triggers the script to be executed. Ok, if there are 5 new user, the script will run 5 times, but I tend to accept this "little" resource overusage.

Any comments regarding this idea?

Kind regards
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:17:30 GMT

Thanks for your responses. I found a couple of issues that were fixed and validated in 3.4 Last September. And in addition there is a work-around for this problem which is to use Alfresco Explorer. What version are you testing on?

We are using this configuration: Alfresco Enterprise 3.4.0 (168) 64bit, Windows 2008 Server 64bit, MS SQL 2008

I also tried to do this in Alfresco Explorer, but I couldn't even found a link (or button or menu item) to add a subgroup in the Groups Management form of the group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS. I can only add users or create a new group within EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS (or any other group).

Kind regards
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

amitabhandari1 — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 04:58:05 GMT

Hi mpeters,

I'm thinking about this easy solution: creating the javascript you recommended in your first response and then call it by a rule assigned to the "User Homes" space whenever an Object will be created, changed or deleted. So when the LDAP sync is executed and a new user is imported, then a new user space will be created and the rule triggers the script to be executed. Ok, if there are 5 new user, the script will run 5 times, but I tend to accept this "little" resource overusage.

This should be fine if you have no issue in resource overusage.

Thanks,

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

piski — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:33:10 GMT

Hi everybody,

I have the same issue … on Alfresco 3.4.b Community.

I try to add the group EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS but the group EVERYONE doesn't appear in the search facility.

It doesn't work neither Share nor Explorer :
a) In Share -> Admin -> Groups -> Browse -> EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS
I have 3 options :
- New subgroup (If I create the group "EVERYONE", I get

Échec de la création du groupe '02230003 Wrapped Exception (with status template): 02230382 Failed to execute script 'classpath*:alfresco/templates/webscripts/org/alfresco/repository/groups/children.post.js': 02230381 Authorities of the type EVERYONE may not be added to other authorities'.‍

- Add group (the choice "EVERYONE" does not appear)
- Add user (unusable for this case)

b) In Explorer -> Admin -> Groups -> Show All
I have 3 options (not the same as Share) :
- New subgroup (If I create the group "EVERYONE", I get the same error as Share)
- Add user
- Delete group

I think it should be "normal" to have the ability to put "EVERYBODY" in a group, an easy way to admin Alfresco rather than write scripts …

Can you confirm this behavior ?

Thanks.

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mrogers — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:48:32 GMT

This should have been fixed. I've asked QA to re-validate the issue and find out what happened.

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 08:52:19 GMT

Hi everybody,

I have the same issue … on Alfresco 3.4.b Community.
[…]
Can you confirm this behavior ?

Yes, this is the behaviour we experienced as well.

Kind regards,
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:44:12 GMT

Well, I tried to implement the solution I proposed in http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37704#p110745, but unfortunately it does not work.

I made a script in Repository>Data Dictionary>Scripts and tied it to a rule in User Homes. I can confirm, that the script will be executed when a new space is created within User Homes.

Here is the script:


// define the names of source and target group
var nameSourcegroup = 'EVERYONE';
var nameTargetgroup = 'ALLUSERS';

// get the source group *PROBLEM HERE*
var groupSource = people.getGroup('GROUP_' + nameSourcegroup);

if (groupSource) {
   // get the members of the source group
   var membersSourcegroup = people.getMembers(groupSource);

   if (membersSourcegroup) {
      // get the target group
      var groupTarget = people.getGroup('GROUP_' + nameTargetgroup);

      // if not existent, create the target group
      if (!groupTarget) {
         groupTarget = people.createGroup(nameTargetgroup);
      };

      if (groupTarget) {
         // loop over all members of the source group and add them to the target group
         for(var i = 0; i < membersSourcegroup.length; i++) {
            people.addAuthority(groupTarget, membersSourcegroup[i]);
         };
      };
   };
};
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I guess, the code is easy understandable. It should copy all members of the group EVERYONE to the group ALLUSERS. As you can see the group ID needs to be prefixed by 'GROUP_' when called in people.getGroup() (didn't found this documented btw).

The problem is to get the source group for group EVERYONE (see comment *PROBLEM HERE*). The code works well with an ordinary group (i.e. created by me in Alfresco Share) as the source, but will fail with group EVERYONE as the source (either with or without prefix 'GROUP_'). The return value of people.getGroup() is null for group EVERYONE.

It seems, that Alfresco treats EVERYONE different than other groups.

Did someone find a solution for this issue?

Kind regards,
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mrogers — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:56:00 GMT

Yes indeed. EVERYONE is not a group. Its a different type of authority.

I think it would be far easier just to add EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS. There's clearly currently a bug on the UIs however the underlying services will work fine.

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:11:55 GMT

I think it would be far easier just to add EVERYONE to EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS.

That's just, what I want to do! But I cannot find a way even avoiding the UI.

Can you provide information, if and when the bug will be fixed?

Thanks,
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mpeters — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:24:01 GMT

Ok, while it's not possible to catch group EVERYONE with the people.getGroup() statement my next approach is to get all users by a lucene search. Here is the script I wrote:


// define the names target group
var nameTargetgroup = 'ALLUSERS';


// get the members of the source group
// var foundUsers = search.luceneSearch("QNAME:\"usr:user\"");
var foundUsers = search.luceneSearch("user://alfrescoUserStore", "QNAME:\"usr:user\"");

if (foundUsers.length) {
   // get the target group
   var groupTarget = people.getGroup('GROUP_' + nameTargetgroup);

   // if not existent, create the target group
   if (!groupTarget) {
      groupTarget = people.createGroup(nameTargetgroup);
   };

   if (groupTarget) {
      // loop over all found users from the lucene search and add them to the target group
      for(var i = 0; i < foundUsers.length; i++) {
         people.addAuthority(groupTarget, foundUsers[i]);
      };
   };
};
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

As you can see I used the two parameter version of search.luceneSearch(), because without specifying the store (here: user://alfrescoUserStore) I didn't get any results from search.luceneSearch().

Executing the search query in the node browser of Alfresco returns six entries (i.e. six users). Executing the search query in the script above returns also six users.

The code does not work, because:

1. The users found by the lucene search won't be added to the target group. In the log file I found the error "Authorities of the type WILDCARD may not be added to other authorities". I have absolute no idea, what an authority of type WILDCARD is meant to be.

2. The six users found by the lucene search are the users created manually in Alfresco. But there are also a few hundred users more created by LDAP sync, which are obviously not catched by the query.

So I wonder how I can add users to a group (with people.addAuthority) the right way and how I can catch all users (including users created by LDAP sync) in my search query.

Any hints and solutions are more than welcome.

Kind regards
Markus

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

cnguyen — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:57:45 GMT

Has there been any update on this? I am running Alfresco 3.4.4 Enterprise and I am still unable to add 'everyone' to the Email Contributor group. I would like to allow everyone (including non-users of the system) to email to specific email aliases in Alfresco. Manually adding users or groups to Email Contributor group is not an option for us.

As an aside, I think the current share GUI incorrectly conflates the two concepts of "role" and "group". Alfresco really needs to rework this GUI so that the two concepts are clearly separated out.

Regards,

-chi

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

mikeh — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:43:30 GMT

As an aside, I think the current share GUI incorrectly conflates the two concepts of "role" and "group". Alfresco really needs to rework this GUI so that the two concepts are clearly separated out.

Have you got any specific areas where you find this confusing?

Thanks,
Mike

Re: How to add all users to group EMAIL_CONTRIBUTORS?

cnguyen — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:25:15 GMT

Hi Mike,

"Have you got any specific areas where you find this confusing?"

I think in the admin GUI, conflating the two concepts of roles and groups is confusing and wrong. First, a role is really a set of permissions, whereas a group is a set of users. Applying that to real world situations, the logical operation one would do is to assign a role to specific users or groups, ie. user X has role Z, or group X has role Z. As it stands in the GUI, an admin user, without being aware of the implication, can assign a group to a role. In English, this translates to saying "role X has group Z", or "role X has user Y", which really doesn't make any logical sense. If Alfresco thinks that role and group is the same "thing", then the documentation should reflect that. But clearly they are different concepts, and as such, the GUI should reflect that.

However, I do not want to detract from my main concern which is the subject of this thread regarding the inability to have 'everyone' being assigned to the 'email contributor' role/group?

Regards,

-chi