Investigate groups as means to join assembly

[RCheesley]

In discussion with @froger we realized that we could maybe use groups as a way to have people join an assembly via the front end. Currently it's only possible to add people as a contributor, for example, through the backend - which is a time intensive task.

To explore the following:

• creating a group for a working group
• add the group as a member of an assembly
• add an individual to the group as a member
• check for that individual is able to access the assembly as a member of the assembly
• find a way to make groups more prominent
• document the whole process of joining a group to become a member of an assembly

[RCheesley]

So far so good, I created a group and added a user to that group as a member.

I then added that group to a couple of assemblies as a contributor role.

The member received notifications that they were added to the assembly.

The member is not able to represent the group when registering for events, so it does indeed seem like that is restricted only to administrators of the groups.

🤔 One small thing though, when you view members of an assembly it does not show the individual people, because it shows the group being the member.

Likewise it does not show on the user's profile that they are a member of that assembly.

Compared with another member who joined directly by the backend:

I wonder if that might be a suggestion as an option to have a checkbox which shows everyone who is a member of groups as a member of assembly individually, and list that on their profile?

I could imagine there being a checkbox option in the actual assembly which allows you to say show members of groups as individual members, and for it to show on their profile - maybe having some way to denote on the members overview of the group that they're member via a group.

[RCheesley]

Somewhat blocked by #37

[froger]

Thanks for documenting the process. Just thinking out loud, I would love to find a solution without any "checkboxes"… we have already too much options in this admin.

To me one solution could be to have a feature like this:

• Given a working group "MautiCon Working Group", with an administrator "Ruth" and a member "Hadrien"
• As admin, I add "MautiCon Working Group" as member of an assembly, with the status text "contributor"
• As a visitor, I go in the Members tab of this assembly. I see:
  • Hadrien, @hfroger, contributor, designated 25/10/2023, member of MautiCon Working Group
  • Ruth, @rcheeslet, contributor, designated 25/10/2023, representative of MautiCon Working Group

This way assembly member refers only individuals, and their presence are delegated to groups. This could be a powerful hack for delegation of power with decidim.

[RCheesley]

• Ruth, @rcheeslet, contributor, designated 25/10/2023, representative of MautiCon Working Group

I would tweak this to:

• Ruth, @rcheeslet, contributor, designated 25/10/2023, member via MautiCon Working Group

Representative has a different meaning in Decidim (being able to take actions representing a group), so we don't want to confuse the two. Saying they are a member due to their group membership might be more accurate?

[froger]

honestly, loved it. I see much potential in this "group expansion" in the member tab.

[RCheesley]

Is this something we could do in our instance, or to propose/contribute upstream (or both?)