Manually adding and removing faculty, staff, students, and alumni to and from appropriate email lists and security/collaboration groups takes staff time and is prone to errors and delays. Organizations that appropriately automate these group management processes based on institutional data management processes benefit not only from time-savings but also from better security and customer service resulting from more accurate and timely management of memberships.
Institutional groups are those provisioned from institutional data sources with institutional standards for data management in mind. For many UW organizations incorporating institutional groups into their own group hierarchies and the appropriate application of those groups in multiple contexts is essential to organizational efficiency and information security (see Figure 1).
The following table summarizes the types of institutional groups currently supported in the groups service.
| Type | Example Group IDs | Example Description | Creation | Membership Provisioning | Documentation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Course Section Groups | course_2012aut-art100a | ART 100A students and instructors, Autumn 2012 | Automatic | Real-time - students Nightly - instructors | UW Course Groups |
| Student Major Groups | uw_major_art uw_major_art_next uw_major_art_prev | Art majors | Automatic | Nightly | UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Major by Pathway Groups | uw_major_art_pathway-70 uw_major_art_pathway-70_next uw_major_art_pathway-70_prev | Art majors in the Ceramics pathway | Automatic | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Major by Pathway and Degree Level | uw_major_art_pathway-70_lvl-1 uw_major_art_pathway-70_lvl-1_next uw_major_art_pathway-70_lvl-1_prev | Art major in the Ceramics pathway, bachelor level | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Major by Degree Level Groups | uw_major_art_lvl-1 uw_major_art_lvl-1_next | Art majors at the bachelor level | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Major by Degree Level and Type Groups | uw_major_art_lvl-1_type-4 | Art majors bachelor of fine arts | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Major by Class Groups | uw_major_art_class-soph | Art majors, sophmore class | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Student Minor Groups | uw_minor_art uw_minor_art_next uw_minor_art_prev | Art minors | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Student Major Groups |
| Curriculum Groups | uw_curriculum_art uw_curriculum_art_next uw_curriculum_art_prev | Students and instructors of all courses in the ART curriculum | By customer request | Nightly | UW Curriculum Groups |
| Curriculum Groups (students only) | uw_curriculum_art_students uw_curriculum_art_students_next uw_curriculum_art_students_prev | Students for all courses in the ART curriculum | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Curriculum Groups |
| Curriculum Groups (instructors only) | uw_curriculum_art_instructors uw_curriculum_art_instructors_next uw_curriculum_art_instructors_prev | Instructors for all courses in the ART curriculum | By customer request | Nightly | see UW Curriculum Groups |
| Human Resource Groups | uw_org_costcenter_* | Members are people who have a working relationship with the UW, paid or unpaid. Organized by cost center, supervisory org and academic unit. | By customer request | Nightly | UW Human Resource Groups |
| Affiliation Groups | uw_affiliation_undergraduate | Undergraduate students | By customer request | Nightly | UW Affiliation Groups |
Further planning and research (subject to available resources) continues toward enabling other institutional groups. Other UW administrative systems and processes may make natural group information sources for institutional groups, particularly in the direction of faculty and staff groups for UW organizations. Data management governance and advances to the groups service access control model are evolving to support a diversity of institutional groups. Refer to the following link(s) for further information:
Contact help@uw.edu or post a comment to this page if you're interested in getting involved in these provisioning capabilities within the groups service. We would like to hear from you.