simplify the user interface for group admins

I agree that this would be nice to have. Can't get it into the pending 3.6 release, but I think its a good candidate for 3.7!

I'm also looking for a way to simplify the UI for group administrators. My users are having a horrible time figuring out how to approve members. I can understand their frustration, as I had the same issues my first time approving a test membership.

Does anyone have a good way to simplify the group administration UI? A one click solution for membership approval is a must in my case.

Thanks

Anyone? I desperately need to resolve this issue with my clients site, but I would rather not make a new post since this one is already here.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Sorry, unfortunately there hasn't been any movement on this. I agree that the OG admin interface is cumbersome at best, but I'm not sure exactly how to tackle this issue at the moment.

Thanks for the responses. I'm still working on finding a solution, but my understanding of this portion of Organic Groups is still lacking. The progression of my site is at a standstill until I find a solution, so any help in figuring this out would be very helpful. My solution needs to be as easy as it is to approve / deny a friend request on facebook.

I'm currently trying to configure a "pending members" view that is listed on the current groups page. This view only shows pending members for the current group if the current user is a group administrator. I successfully created this view, showing the pending members name and photo, but I cannot for the life of me think of a way to display an Approve / Deny link that will modify the users membership status. I have managed to create a footer that links to the group admin people page, and by default shows only pending members. I achieved this by creating a global footer text area using filtered HTML with the following: href="/group/node/!1/admin/people?state=2&uid=">Approve / Deny Membership . (Use replacement tokens from the first row must be turned on for this to work.)

It baffles me that this is not a more common issue for others using drupal commons, or a drupal based site with OG. If / when I get this figured out I will be sure to write up a detailed tutorial as to how, but I could really use some help figuring this one out.

I'm still working on this issue, but am having no luck. I have a few questions that would be great to find answers for, if anyone is able to help me out here.

Is there a way that this can be accomplished with rules? I know that rules is a very powerful module, and it has been very useful for accomplishing complicated task during the creation of my site, but I'm having trouble thinking of a way to use it for this application.

I'm thinking a connection could be made somehow using links for both approve and deny in my "Pending Members" view, and creating a rule that would change the pending members OG Role to "Member". I'm just not sure how to set up my rules to react when a specified link is clicked. I've thought about trying to link to a content type that is automatically created by a user once they subscribe to the group (using rules to do so), then triggering my "Approval" rule event based on something along the lines of "Content is Viewed", but I fear that this route is over-complicating the issue. Also, I'm unsure of how the system differentiates between a "Pending" and "Active" members. Are these statuses merely aliases of Non-members and Members? If so then I'm thinking that finding a way to simply update the pending members OG role to member via a link should work for the approval process.

I feel as if I'm over thinking this, as Drupal Commons 3.x already has the ability to view pending members (via a custom view) and the ability to update a members status (via over-complicated admin process). Is there no way to simply create a link within a view that would change the listed pending member's status to "Active" and another link which would "remove user from group"?

I'm not a programmer, but I am no stranger to coding when dealing with drupal. If anyone has ideas as to how to accomplish this, please let me know. Even if you do not have a solution, simply discussing this issue with others would help me greatly.

Thank you for all your help,
Kyle

Is there a way to change membership states from "pending" to "active" using rules?

I've noticed that og.modules defines group states as ('OG_STATE_ACTIVE', 1) , and ('OG_STATE_PENDING', 2). I have created a user flag that shows to group administrators in a custom Pending Members view. I would like to create a rule where the event is when the group manager clicks the Approve user flag, with the action of changing the OG_STATE of the flagged member from Pending to Active for the group the view is located on. This sounds to me like it would work, but rules does not currently have an action to change membership state.

Am I on the right track here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Kyle

I have created a new support request here in order to obtain information more specific to my current approach. I'm now looking to create a custom action that would change the flagged og_memberships status when an og_membership is flagged by the group administrator.

If anyone is able to take a look at my current approach and provide some input it would be greatly appreciated. Anything that would point me in the right direction here would be great. Recommended reading materials pertaining to my current project are welcomed, as I'm running out of resources.

Design idea for Commons group admin UI...
I rough out a simple admin interface using the "commons tabs" design -- to start the conversation.
Group Admin Tabs include - Members, Pending, Add & Delete (with site admin permissions "Roles" and "Permissions" too)
List all members (default view)

Pending membership tab:
Solves this issue: Confusing wording in Add user UI - by showing "request message" under pending only.

Add Members to group:
Get rid of "request message field, just name and role field.

Delete members from group:
Remove button.

The delete tab is confusing. Just add the remove link to the overview. Also the add tab could be an action link on the overview. Other than that it is a nice improvement.

Wow awesome Mockups!

I agree with lsolesen about delete and add. Make the add an action and delete an action next to edit on the overview page. We also need to figure out how to manage trusted contacts a bit better since pending and ignored users cannot really be changed at the moment.

Why not have it just same as facebook
add new member request because tabs add more pages and more steps

i.e a block on the home page

i.e "Sam asked to join your group"
click on "add" or "deny" link

That would remove the need for "pending" and "add" tab
and reduce the steps needed for managing members

For deletingmembers.
You would only do this for something they have posted

1,Instead of having to take down their name.

2.Goto the group tab
3.find the user
4.then confirm you want to delete them

Have a link next to group members posts for admin use only

Called "Block" for blocking certain users.

You click "block" link
it asks "Do you want to block this user"

Click "yes" done! :)

Jumping in here a few months too late, but I had a similar concern and went about it in a very... interesting way with flags, flag actions, and rules.

I created flags for "approve for group" and another one for "block from group"

With flag actions and views I created toggles to allow group admins to have a one-click interface for approving members, removing members, or blocking members. Views flags refresh kept everything on the groups front page instead of diving into the back end, which will hopefully help with group admins not familiar with drupal.

Rules was used to keep everything in order - for instance, when someone is blocked from the group, the "approved" flag needed toggled the other way, so a rule fired to do that.

The only part I can't figure out is how to integrate OG roles into this. There is a "change OG roles" flag action, but I can't get it to work - get a WSOD on my site.

Hi, as this ui been added to drupal commons?