Question

What are user-defined Groups in the FogBugz permissions system?

Answer 1

Permissions can be set on FogBugz Projects, Wikis, and Discussion Groups. Permissions can be assigned to individual users, to built-in groups (e.g. 'All Community Users'), or to user-defined groups. A group is simply a set of users to whom you want to assign the same set of permissions.

Built-in Groups

There are four built-in groups that are available in every FogBugz install.

1. Site Administrators (automatically have full permissions on everything)
2. All Normal Users
3. All Community Users (if community users are enabled on the install)
4. Anonymous Users

User-Defined Groups

When you want to set more restrictive permissions, but have several users who should have identical permissions on some project or set of projects, you can create a group to make assigning those permissions convenient. To create a new group, go to Admin | Groups, and select 'Create New Group'. There are two types of groups, Normal and Community User groups. This distinction exists because there are certain things Normal FogBugz Users can do that Community Users can't. For example, normal users can be Project Administrators while Community Users can't.

Normal User Groups

A Normal User Group can contain any non-community user. When editing a group, you can add users by clicking the Add A Member link at the bottom of the users table.

Community User Groups

You can add any community user to to a Community User Group individually, just as with Normal User Groups, or you can give permission to an entire domain of community users by adding a domain wildcard.

Assigning Permissions to Groups

Once you have created a group, you can assign permissions for the group directly on the configuration page for the Project, Wiki, or Discussion Group. For instance, here we are giving the 'Developers' group access to a project that already includes the user Robert Tarjan as an administrator.

Upgrading from FogBugz 7 and Earlier

Previous versions of FogBugz used an 'umbrella' permission model rather than giving permissions on each Project, Wiki, and Discussion Group individually. Projects, Wikis, and Discussion Groups were each assigned to a "Group", which was entirely different from a FogBugz 8 group. In FogBugz 7, users were granted permission on Groups which were passed onto any Projects, Wikis, or Discussion Groups which were assigned to that group. The concept of Groups in FogBugz 8 and later is entirely different from this notion, but to maintain continuity, FogBugz 8 user groups will be created from the old Fogbugz 7 groups when upgrading. These new groups ensure that permissions remain the same when upgrading, and you may continue to use the newly created groups or use an entirely different group setup after you upgrade.