Groups Directory, now the perfect tool to manage your Google Groups
Post date: May 22, 2015 9:42:22 AM
Last February, we released a new version of Groups Directory on the Google Apps Marketplace to let administrators install it in one click. Since then, we've been busy! It's now time to show everything we have added to the tool.
Groups privacy settings are respected
For every group on a domain, owners can choose who can find it and who can view its members. It's important to respect this setting, as you might not want to let everyone know who's behind a specific group name.
Previously, we were only using the Directory API to fetch all groups and members. Now we are also using the Groups Settings API to retrieve Groups settings, like "whoCanViewMembership" and "showInGroupDirectory", and display the right info to the right user.
Note that we are storing all those settings for each group in the Cloud Datastore of App Engine, otherwise the app would be way too slow (getting settings for a single group can take up to a few seconds, so imagine if you have hundreds or even thousands of them. We wouldn't be able to provide features like realtime autocomplete).
Simple edition of basic Groups settings and list of members
Google Groups has a lot of options - way too many in fact if you ask anybody discovering the Groups settings UI for the first time...
That's why in Groups Directory we now offer a simple way to do the most common tasks: add / remove members, choose who can view members, decide who can post and who can view the Groups messages.
We hope it will ease the life of every Groups owner struggling with the standard UI.
A better search experience
It's also not always easy to quickly find which Groups you can manage (there's no sort option in Google Groups), so when you are listing all the groups you've access to, we let you know your role on each of them and automatically sort by role.
If you don't know the exact name of your group, use the search bar to find all groups with a specific keyword!
And of course, as before, you can also see all the groups a user has access to.
And now on mobile too!
Next time you're on the go and receive an email from someone asking to join a group you own, you'll be able to simply click on a link, open your mobile web browser and approve the request.
