Also, as I was clicking through stafftool trying to find all of the new stuff for group leaders, the FIRST place I clicked to see the permissions was the actual group. I realize now that there is nothing new to see - it is a behind the scenes thing. BUT, something I did realize is that the groups info page (when you click to create or edit a group) does not list the leader in it.  The ONLY way that I found to identify the leader is to click on the name of the group in the groups tab. Now that I know where to find this I will get there all the time. However, I was wondering if there were a few tweaks that might be made to make it more intuitive for people who think differently.

For instance, when you click on a group and get a list of people, perhaps the leader's name is in a color like dark blue instead of black, or their name might be highlighted or something? Or when you click on the group to edit it, could it show the leader there as well?

I see that group leaders can add new people (like visitors). I am assuming it is an admin issue as to whether or not they can add people to their groups... because once added they have some authority there. Should there be a way that they can select the people who should be in the group and "request approval" for them to be added to the group so that an admin can approve and the people are "in". Otherwise each group still has to have an admin assigned to it to add people to the groups or the admins(most likely the pastors) will need to assign everyone to their groups. This could get to be a pain if you start tracking individual attendance.

Mike, to answer your first post, no, they don't have to be an admin with permissions, they come along with being a group leader. And yes, I think you guys are right in that the permissions need to start being broken down at the group level to make things more explicit. I will definitely add the capability to add leaders to a group from within the group editing page. I also like the idea of listing the group leaders a bit differently when viewing all of the group's people. However, since I'm planning to make actual pages for the groups in the future, it will be easier to do that. I'll think about that some more. I'm not sure what you mean by leaders adding people to their group being an admin function? The thinking right now is that if you assign someone as a group leader, you trust them to manage their little microcosm, and can freely add people and events to the groups they lead (and at this time not associated with groups as discussed above). I just got your permissions document, so I'll check that out and let you know what I think, looks like some great stuff. Hopefully we'll get this permissions stuff squared away soon :)

Adding people to the groups: I create a new group called "Donuts Club" and make Bubba the groups leader. How does Bubba populate the group with the people that have signed up? An admin has a button when viewing people that allows them to add people to groups. As a group leader Bubba can create NEW people and add them to the "Donut CLub", but how does Bubba add people who were previously entered into stafftool?

Toby, thanks for the new version. I like giving Group Leaders more access to administration. Here's some thoughts on tweaking it a bit. I realize you may already have some of this planned. Some meetings don't need to be published to the whole church: Staff meetings, Trustee Meetings, Music Groups which require auditions, Committee meetings, etc.. Would it be possible to make the creation of events visible only to their group. In the cases where it needs to be public to everyone, you could make a check box. Ideally, it would be nice if once the check box is marked, a Church Administrator would be alerted so he could review the creation. The alert for review would be nice for people as well. I agree with your observation that Group leaders are trusted individuals. Although, it would be nice if this privilege could be extended to sub-groups, for example, a High School student who is leading a Junior High Group. I would want this type of person given a little more supervision in operating the system. Again, I suspect this type of stuff is already planned, just count this as a vote of agreement.

Mike: you know, you're right, I actually discussed that with someone last week...hmm. The problem here is that if a group leader could add existing people to the group they lead, they effectively can see and edit anyone. So this is kind of a pickle. Some random thoughts:

• We'll assume that group leaders should always be able to add events for the groups they lead, as well as be able to view (but not necessarily edit) people within them, regardless of how they become part of the group
• Do group leaders need to see members' complete contact info since they can communicate with them via Stafftool messages (internal and emailed)?
• Perhaps groups need to be populated by admins and leaders can just view and send messages to the members and create events?
  
• Perhaps existing members need to be added to the groups by admins, but leaders can create new ones to add to them?
• Do group leaders even need the ability to edit people? should they only be able to edit people they've added themselves? where does the line between admin and group leader end?
  
• Perhaps private people are always listed by name but just don't display any contact information to people who can't view them... this way, leaders could still add them to their groups but not necessarily see their info.

I'm kind of thinking this last point might actually be something I should do anyways...can you think of a reason that everyone's name shouldn't show up in the people list? Where everyone who is now currently marked as private would be listed, but without any contact info for everyone who they previously would have been invisible to, just their name? Nothing detrimental comes to mind from other members of the church just knowing a person exists within the body...I'm wondering if I should have done it this way from the beginning. It would certainly help out a bit with this conundrum. The question still remains, though, of what capabilities a group leader really needs before they should just be promoted to admin status. If the only thing a group leader really gets is adding events, new people, and communicating with their members via Stafftool messages, then the line between them and admins is a bit more distinct, yet it would still be useful.

Of course, perhaps this whole thing is moot and needs to be rethought like we've been discussing...I'm going to be spending this week going through the permissions ideas and trying out a way to integrate them so I'll be working on figuring out the future of "group leaders" in general. I like the idea of them in concept, just need to figure out how they work out within a more group based system...

Sam: the public/private event thing is actually how things work right now, save for the administrator alert. The event editing form has a public checkbox, and it will only show up on the public calendar if that's checked, otherwise it only shows up for people with full event permissions and people in the groups that it belongs to.