A Group is a set of people who work together — usually a lab. Each Group is
one such set. A Group holds no records of its own: it is a name you can grant
access to, so that everyone in it gets that access at once instead of being
added one by one.
What gets shared, and who with
Two kinds of record are shared in BrainSTEM, and they cover different things:
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Projects carry the research records — subjects, sessions,
and everything hanging off them.
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Setups, Inventories, Protocols, Licenses, Behavioral assays, and
Data storages carry the lab's own resources — the rigs, the
reagent stores, the methods and licences.
Both kinds can be shared the same two ways: with individual people,
by invitation, or with a whole Group. Neither is a special
case — a Setup can be shared with one colleague without any group involved,
and a Project can be shared with a group. Sharing with a group is the option
that keeps working as people join and leave the lab, since access follows
membership rather than a list of names.
Access does not travel between the two kinds. Adding a collaborator to your
project does not let them select your equipment, because the equipment belongs
to a Setup and the Setup is shared separately. So when a colleague cannot pick
a rig or a stock, the question is whether that Setup or Inventory has been
shared with them — either directly, or through a group they belong to.
A Group is not the same as an Admin group. An Admin group
applies security policy — two-factor authentication, session limits — by
email domain, and grants no access to anything. This page is about
membership.
Creating a group and filling it
The add form asks only for the name. Once the group exists, its own
management page is where the rest happens: adding the Laboratory details,
inviting people, and setting each member's role. That is deliberate — a group
with no members is not useful, and the invitation flow needs a group to
invite people to.
Group fields
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Name
Required
Text
-
What the group is called. This is the name people pick when
sharing a Setup, Inventory, Protocol, or Licence, so use
something a colleague in another lab would recognise — the PI's
name or the lab's, rather than "Group 1".
-
Members
Managed separately
Multiple selections
-
Who belongs to the group. Members are not edited on this form —
use the group's management page, where you can invite people by
email and set their role. The list shows the current member
count.
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Laboratory
Added after creation
Structured details
-
The lab this group represents: institution (required),
department, city, country, website, description, and the
principal investigators. Filling it in is what turns a bare
group name into something identifiable to people outside your
lab, which matters once you share resources or publish.
Permissions
Group membership is managed from the group's management page by its managers
and owners. Being a member grants exactly what has been shared with the group —
which may include projects as well as setups, protocols, and the rest — at the
level each of those was shared at. Removing someone withdraws all of that at
once, but leaves untouched anything they were given individually.
API access
Groups can be read through /api/private/users/group/. Membership
changes go through the invitation flow rather than by writing the member list
directly.
