Forum Permissions Help - A "master" usergroup and a sub-usergroup
 

Hello,

I need some help figuring out an issue I am having with special permissions on my forum (4.2.0 PL2).

I am running my forum for several projects in software development and have several teams that need to be split into their corresponding project forum so that they cannot view each other's project (very important). Even deeper than that, the sub-forums within each project forum requires sub-usergroups. Setting usergroups and usergroup forum permissions feels backwards to me because you're always having to set what forums users CANNOT view, rather than assigning a forum to only allow a specific group (which I would find easier in my situation).

Here is my forum hierarchy layout and usergroups to try and understand better. I am trying to be as clear as possible:

My Usergroups:

• Project #1 Usergroup
  Only this group can view the Project #1 Forum
  • Team #1 Usergroup
  • Team #2 Usergroup
  • Team #3 Usergroup
• Project #2 Usergroup
  Only this group can view the Project #2 Forum
  • ... and all the Team usergroups, set up same way as above

My Forum:

• Project #1 Forum (category)
  This forum is only for the teams that belong to this project. The teams below should not see any other forum but this forum
  • Team #1 Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #1 Usergroup
  • Team #2 Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #2 Usergroup
  • Team #3 Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #3 Usergroup
    
• Project #2 Forum (category)
  This forum is only for the teams that belong to this project. The teams below should not see any other forum but this forum
  • Team #4Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #4 Usergroup
  • Team #5 Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #5 Usergroup
  • Team #6 Forum
    This forum can only be viewed by Team #6 Usergroup

The dilemma I am having here is that I cannot easily set a "master" usergroup that pertains to one particular project forum. For example, I want to grant users that will belong to Project #1 to be able to have a "master" usergroup that controls purely the visibility of other top-level forums. So, for any Project #1 Usergroups, I can easily control what other Projects they cannot see. If I try and make this "Project #1 Usergroup" the primary usergroup that would mean that all the sub-team usergroups can be controlled easily without having to set permissions for each sub-team usergroup. Basically, any of the sub-team usergroups need to be constantly set to 'not view' permissions for ANY other forum outside of Project #1. That's unneeded work. It would be best if I could just say that their Primary Project #1 Usergroup does not have access to specific forums. Saves a lot of time if the sub-teams start growing. I have tried to set a Primary Usergroup that only controls if the project teams can view a specific project forum. Those project teams can only view their corresponding sub-forum within by way of usergroup. But this sub-level usergroup idea is not working for me. If I assign a user a sub-team usergroup, it completely overrides the primary usergroup. If I set the Primary Usergroup and Additional Usergroup to both be "View Forum = NO", even if I go and select "YES" for View forum on the specific forums they need to see, they still do not have permissions to view the forum. This doesn't make any sense. I hope I making sense!

I understand that "Yes" overrides "No" with permissions, but it seems backwards with my situation. I would like to have everything by default set to "No" so that I can only choose which forums they can view, set to "Yes". But it still locks the usergroups out from the forum completely.... even if some forums are set to YES for view.

Help!