Managing User Groups

Default User Groups

By default, there are two specific user groups in YouTrack: 'All Users' and 'New Users'.

'All Users' Group

All registered users are automatically included in 'All Users' group. This group has the default Observer role, which allows to view any public issue and comment in all public projects, and thus all registered users in YouTrack by default have the Observer role. Administrator can only edit roles assigned to this group, but cannot change group name or disable the 'Auto-join' option. Also, the 'All users' group cannot be deleted.

'New Users' Group

When a user account is created, it is automatically added to the 'New Users' group, by default. This group has the default 'Reporter' role, which allows user (in addition to viewing public issues and comments) to report new issues, add comments to issues, view and edit own user's profile. Administrator can edit group's parameters or delete it, if needed.

Creating/Editing a Group

The following procedure describes creating a new group. To edit an existing group, click its entry in the Groups page, the process is similar to creating new groups.
To create a new group:

1. In the Administration area, click Groups.
2. Click Create new group.
3. In the group editing page, enter a name and (optionally) description for the new group.
   
4. Optionally, set an icon for the new group. This icon will be shown in a bottom left corner of an avatar icon for each member of the group. To upload an icon, click 'Change icon' button and specify a file in the appeared dialog. You can use JPG, PNG, GIF, ICO images, the icon will be automatically resized to 16x16px when uploaded:
   
5. Select Auto Join to automatically add any new registered users to this group.
6. Click Create.

Once you have created a group, you will be automatically navigated to the <group> > Roles tab to you can assign roles for this group.

Assigning Roles to a Group

To assign a role to a group:

1. In the Administration > Groups > <group> > Roles tab, click Add Role link. The Assign Role dialog box opens.
   
2. In the Role drop-down list, choose a role to assign.
3. In the Projects combo box, select one or several projects to apply the selected role:
   To apply chosen role in all projects, leave all check boxes deselected.
4. Click OK.

When you have assigned roles to a group, the Permissions View tab in group properties appears. It shows all permissions assigned to the current group via different roles:

Once you have prepared user groups with properly assigned roles, start adding users into your groups.

Configuring Group Membership for Users

Adding User to a Group

To add a user to a group:

1. On the Administration > groups page, click Add User link for a needed group.
2. In the appeared dialog select a user to add to the group:
   
3. Click 'Ok'

Copying Users from Another Group

To speed up adding users to a group, you can copy all existing members from another group to the target user group.

To copy users from one group to another:

1. On the Administration > groups page, click Copy Users link for a 'target' group, a group to which you want to copy users.
2. In the opened dialog, select a 'source' group, from which users should be copied:
   
3. Click 'Ok'. All users uniquely presented in the source group will be added to the target group.

Merging User Groups

Merging allows you to quickly get rid of similar groups or groups, which are no longer needed, but without losing configure parameters of a merged and removed group. As a result of merging, any roles and all unique users in the 'source' user group are transferred to the surviving user group.

To merge two user groups:

1. On the Administration > groups page, click Merge link for a 'target' group, a group, which should survive after merge.
2. In the appeared dialog, select a 'source' group, from which users and roles should be copied. this group will be removed after merge.:
   
3. Click 'Ok'.

Subtracting Members of One Group from Another Group

To subtract members of one group from another group:

1. On the Administration > groups page, click Subtract link for a 'target' group, a group, from which users should be deleted.
2. In the opened dialog, select a 'source' group.
3. Click 'Ok'. All users of the 'source' group will be deleted from the 'target' group.

Viewing Diffs between User Groups

To view lists of all users uniquely presented in each of groups:

1. # On the Administration > groups page, click Diff link for a 'target' group.
2. In the opened dialog, select a group to which the target group should be compared.
3. Click 'Ok': a pop-up window with lists of unique users in both groups will be shown: