People Functions Plugin - getgroupsoftype

Question

I'm using the People Functions plugin (v1.0.12) and have a form used for managing user groups. On the form, the function used to get all the groups of our selected group type is 'getgroupsoftype' from the People Functions plugin. The result is that only some of the groups in this group type are being returned. All the groups are public so I don't think group security is the issue here. Are there any known bugs with this function from the plugin? My first thought would be to update to the latest plugin version, but I checked the changelog and don't see anything specifically related to this function. I confirmed the Appian version I'm using is compatible with the plugin. Any advice on this plugin function?

gianninol · Answer

This is most likely a group security issue. In Appian, a non-admin user cannot know if another user is a member of a group unless they are a member of that group themselves. There is no security setting to get around this. The "public" security setting just means that any user can see that the group exists; it does not affect group membership visibility. The "privacy policy" setting is the one that affects membership visibility, and you'll notice even at the lowest setting ("low"), only members can see each other. I've gotten around this in the past in two different ways. The first is getting all the users for the groups in-process ahead of time since that can be run with admin privileges. The second is making the users who manage the group memberships admins of all groups they manage so that they can see the members without being members themselves.

sureshg57 · Answer

HI andrewr865 
 
In order for a basic user to see all the groups that a user has using getgroupsoftypeforuser function, all groups should have below 
 security settings. It is not necessary to be a member of the group to retrieve the group name of a different user if below settings are set in the group security. 
 
Type :- Public 
Privacy Policy : - Low 
 
Any group that do not have this configuration will not be returned form the function is the user who execute is not a member/ admin of the group or user is not a sys admin. 
 
Regards 
Suresh