Grouper Groups Management Toolkit

Grouper^TM is an open source toolkit for managing groups. It is designed to function as the core element of a common infrastructure for managing group information across integrated applications and repositories. Grouper combines multiple sources of group information, both automated and manual, in managing memberships and other group information in a Group Registry, a central information asset complementary to a site's Person Registry.

Grouper Groups Management Toolkit developed out of a need for higher education institutions and organizations to manage institutional and personal groups, and to control group access to applications and resources.

Why Adopt Grouper?

Separate applications may use groups to track an individual’s role, or to determine which users are authorized to access a resource. Since groups are managed separately in each application, keeping the membership roster consistent across these services becomes very difficult. If a member leaves a project, for example, the group’s email list, wiki space, calendar, research database and other shared resources need to be updated separately.

Grouper helps collaboration happen. You can set up groups, roles, and permissions for many purposes, such as populating and administering standing committees, ad hoc research teams, departments, or classes. Key collaborative applications -- mailing lists, wikis, calendars, etc. -- can use this group, role, and permission information to make authorization decisions. Some of the advantages of adopting Grouper are:

Define a group once and use that group across multiple applications
Manage groups from one location
No technical skills required to create and manage groups
Encourage collaboration within groups (e.g. email lists, calendars)
Separate the management of group memberships from the supporting technology, reducing end user support calls

History of Grouper

Grouper is one of the projects led by the Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE). The Internet2 Middleware Initiative comprises a number of open/community source projects that address challenges in the middleware space, such as identity and access management.

Find out what's new with Grouper.