Not sure if this belongs here or in the dev forum, but here it goes.
Is it possible to create persistent groups from the client? I am new to Jabber/XMPP, but I have noticed that when the client creates a group, it is added only to the roster of that particular client, i.e. there is no notification to other JIDs that may have been added to the group (XML consoles in Exodus and Psi are great!). This is normal behaviour from what I have been reading, so I then looked at persistent groups, but found no documentation on whether these can be created and managed by the clients.
What I want, in the end, is to be able to create a group on a client, add users to it, and have this broadcast to said users, so that they can in turn create the same group in their own rosters. I cannot do this from the management console, it has to be done by the clients.
this sounds weird. Let’'s assume that you are A and have added B and C to your roster and added them to your group BC-GROUP. This does not mean that B knows C or that B (or C) wants to have AC (or AB) in a group named BC-GROUP.
That’'s one of the reasons why only the administrator may define such shared groups.
There is currently no ACL support but would it help to have a second administrator which can just define shared groups?
Thanks for your reply - I know it sounds weird, but I want to use the group management for other purposes, additionally to just chat. Even if we stick to chat alone, right now I can invite several people to a groupchat, and they don’‘t need to know each other (i.e. they are not in each other’‘s rosters). When they do join this group chat, presence information is also sent between them, even if they have not authorized or subscribed to each other’'s presence.
In my work scenario, these groups would basically include people who know each other, or share a common interest and thus are included in the group. Rather than having 30 users each create the same individual roster group then add the other 29 people to it, I’'d rather have the group information propagate. However, I cannot rely on having an admin sitting there to manage all this, it has the be user-managed.
You mention having a second administrator just for the groups - can this be done using XML remotely, i.e. as if being done from a client, or would he still have to use the console?
Very nice feature request. In fact we were discussing some time ago the idea of creating ad-hoc commands for group management. We need that in Smack so we can create shared group test cases. If your client has support for ad-hoc commands then you should be good to go. Wildfire 3.1 was deferred one week so I will see if I can include this new feature into the next release. BTW, only admins will be able to manage groups from the client (as they do now from the admin console).
Thanks so much for your comments, it would be excellent if this feature made it into the build! It’'s OK that only admins can create groups, but it would be even better if some granularity was allowed, i.e. allow users to create groups, as owners, etc. - pretty much the way it is done with persistent chatrooms. I am developing a custom client, so I can send ad-hoc commands, and actually control what users can or cannot do by restricting the UI command set.