feature highlight groups

source/_posts/2014-06-30-feature-highlight-groups.markdown

+---
+layout: post
+title: "GitLab Feature Highlight: Groups"
+date: 2014-06-30
+comments: true
+categories:
+author: Job van der Voort, Jacob Vosmaer
+---
+
+GitLab is a massive open source project with over 600 contributors, all working together to create an amazing platform to collaborate on code. Every month on the 22nd, a new version of GitLab is released, and every month new features are added.
+To make you aware of the power of GitLab, we walk through some of its features in these blog posts.
+
+![Barry effectively has 'Master' access to GitLab CI now](/images/feature_groups/override_access_level.png)
+
+We start by looking at GitLab Groups. GitLab groups allow you to group projects into directories and give users access to several projects at once.
+
+
+<!--more-->
+
+When you create a new project in GitLab, the default namespace for the project is the personal namespace associated with your GitLab user.
+Below we will see how to create groups, put projects in groups and manage who can access the projects in a group.
+
+## Creating groups
+
+You can create a group by going to the 'Groups' tab of the GitLab dashboard and clicking the 'New group' button.
+
+![Click the 'New group' button in the 'Groups' tab](/images/feature_groups/new_group_button.png)
+
+Next, enter the name (required) and the optional description and group avatar.
+
+![Fill in the name for your new group](/images/feature_groups/new_group_form.png)
+
+When your group has been created you are presented with the group dashboard feed, which will be empty.
+
+![Group dashboard](/images/feature_groups/group_dashboard.png)
+
+You can use the 'New project' button to add a project to the new group.
+
+## Transfering an existing project into a group
+
+You can transfer an existing project into a group you own from the project settings page.
+First scroll down to the 'Dangerous settings' and click 'Show them to me'.
+Now you can pick any of the groups you manage as the new namespace for the group.
+
+![Transfer a project to a new namespace](/images/feature_groups/transfer_project.png)
+
+GitLab administrators can use the admin interface to move any project to any namespace if needed.
+
+## Adding users to a group
+
+One of the benefits of putting multiple projects in one group is that you can give a user to access to all projects in the group with one action.
+
+Suppose we have a group with two projects.
+
+![Group with two projects](/images/feature_groups/group_with_two_projects.png)
+
+On the 'Group Members' page we can now add a new user Barry to the group.
+
+![Add user Barry to the group](/images/feature_groups/add_member_to_group.png)
+
+Now because Barry is a 'Developer' member of the 'Open Source' group, he automatically gets 'Developer' access to all projects in the 'Open Source' group.
+
+![Barry has 'Developer' access to GitLab CI](/images/feature_groups/project_members_via_group.png)
+
+If necessary, you can increase the access level of an individual user for a specific project, by adding them as a Member to the project.
+
+![Barry effectively has 'Master' access to GitLab CI now](/images/feature_groups/override_access_level.png)
+
+## Managing group memberships via LDAP
+
+In GitLab Enterprise Edition it is possible to manage GitLab group memberships using LDAP groups.
+See [the GitLab Enterprise Edition documentation](http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/integration/ldap.html) for more information.
+
+## Allowing only admins to create groups
+
+By default, any GitLab user can create new groups.
+This ability can be disabled for individual users from the admin panel.
+It is also possible to configure GitLab so that new users default to not being able to create groups:
+
+```
+# For omnibus-gitlab, put the following in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
+gitlab_rails['gitlab_default_can_create_group'] = false
+
+# For installations from source, uncomment the 'default_can_create_group'
+# line in /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml
+```