2-column Groups window - gone?

[Guest]

Hi, in older versions of Hyena, there was a two-column display of the Global Groups. You could see which groups were available and what the user had. In more recent and up-to-date versions, the two column display is gone. Is there an easy way to get this back? This was invaluable tool for us!

Thanks,
Dan

[cmccullough]

Re: 2-column Groups window - gone?

The older groups dialogs are no longer available for AD groups. They no longer worked properly under AD so we removed them.

[Guest]

Re: 2-column Groups window - gone?

How are we supposed to know what groups are available to put the user in? Don't get me wrong, I have years of experience in this area, but it was so nice to have the choice of global Domain Groups to add to the user's account, just by literally clicking an arrow and have it be there. Now we have to either a) copy another user's account and then modify the groups or b) find out what groups are available before user ID is created. This just creates more overhead during time-sensitive requests.

If possible, I would like to have this investigated and have the feature reinstated. It always worked for us.

Thanks,
Dan

[cmccullough]

Re: 2-column Groups window - gone?

When you click the Add button to add groups to a user, you can then click the Advanced button, then click Find. That will then bring up a list of all groups. You can then select as many groups as you want and it will add them all.

Will that work?

[kstanush]

Re: 2-column Groups window - gone?

We have not used the older display of user group memberships for many years, probably about 6 or 7 years. It didn't work anymore for a number of technical reasons, but the main ones are that AD does not work real well when you retrieve all of something from it, ie all of the groups. We use Microsoft's interfaces for all member management and while those interfaces leave a lot to be desired, Microsoft's own ADU&C properties work the same way: they only show you the active user or group members.

Many Hyena users also use the shell interfaces for user and group management and here again you are using Microsoft interfaces so even if we came up with a custom interface, it would not be easily accessable to anyone using the Microsoft interfaces.

The older 2-column list also relied on old NT functions that do not retrieve universal groups, but had the advantage of having only one 'name' for a user or group, now called the SamAccountName AD attribute. But to get anything to fit on a dialog into two columns you can only display a small amount of information, and due to the design of AD, there isn't any consistent 'name' anymore. There is the name/cn name, the older samaccountname which might be different, and then the displayname which may be blank. So its hard to know what to use for a 'name' anymore, which may be why Microsoft does not use this technique anymore either.

If you don't have two many groups, I can certainly see why it would be nice to have an easier to visualize layout. The only idea I have would be to display the groups in the right window (assuming you only have a few dozen) and then you can have a full list to see while looking at the current listing.

You can also always manage the users through an older NT domain object. Just add the domain to the view (File->Manage Object View) as an NT domain and manage the users that way. It will probably be faster although no AD functionality is used or available.

We are also working on implementing our own Object Picker into Hyena's GUI so that you don't have to go through Microsoft's. This is currently only implemented for group management (again through our interface...not Microsoft's), but we hope to offer it soon for users. This won't help your display issue though of seeing both what groups a user is a member of AND what groups they are not a member of, but you will eventually be able to resize our dialog, customize it, filter, and put it side-by-side with the properties dialog.

To see this new Object Picker, select Tools->Settings->Advanced, scroll down to near the end of the list, UseHyenaObjectPicker, set to true, then display a group's properties, click Members, then ADD to see the new interface.

Unfortunately, I don't have any other ideas.