Grouper Groups Management Toolkit

Internet2's Grouper Groups Management Toolkit enables project managers, departments, institutions and end users to create and manage institutional and personal groups. It puts control of a group in the hands of its steward and enables the person to manage the membership and what resources it can access.

What your colleagues
are saying about Grouper

Grouper has made a tremendous difference in our ability to support both departmental needs and central services, while simultaneously creating a more integrated and robust authorization and collaboration infrastructure.
- Tracy Futhey, CIO, Duke University

News and Announcements

Grouper Groups Management Toolkit v1.6.1 released. (12-August-2010) more...

Internet2 and Kuali Announce Middleware Software Integration (30-June-2010)

Case Studies:
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) (pdf) NEW
Northern Arizona University (pdf) NEW

Interview with Grouper Working Group Chair Tom Barton (wav: 14 minutes)
(16-December-2009)

Grouper Update (PDF)
Tom Barton, U. Chicago
TERENA EuroCAMP, Budapest, November 2009

Video: Exporting Data from Grouper using Talend (Newcastle University, UK)

Grouper Groups Management Toolkit

Why Use Grouper?

Grouper helps collaboration happen. You can set up groups for many purposes, such as standing committees, ad hoc research teams, departments, or classes. Key collaborative applications -- mailing lists, wikis, calendars, etc. -- can use this group information to make authorization decisions.

Single Point of Control

When using Grouper, once a person is added or removed from a group, the group-related privileges are automatically updated in all of your collaborative applications. Grouper allows efficient management of the membership roster at a single point. For more information about the benefits, see this page.

Who Can Use Grouper?

Anyone needing to manage group access to resources can use Grouper -- from accountants to zoologists. A researcher might create a group and enable members to participate on an email list or view a web site. Students might use Grouper to set up and manage groups for similar applications as they work together on shared projects and class work. Your IT staff can delegate group management and enable those leading collaborations to set up and manage their own groups.

Getting Started

Download the software and join our community for tricks, techniques, and support.

Development of the Grouper Group Management Toolkit was supported with funding from University of Chicago and the University of Bristol with additional support from Internet2 through their NSF Middleware Initiative (Cooperative Agreements No. OCI-0330626 and OCI-0721896) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).