Today, Catalyst Group Manager allows you to create and manage groups of users who can access your Catalyst Tools.

In the future, Catalyst Group Manager will also allow you to create groups and then delegate them to others to manage. You could even reuse your groups to control access in Web-based contexts outside of the Catalyst Tools.

In anticipation of this future, Catalyst and other units within UW Technology have partnered on a pilot project -- a standalone version of Catalyst Group Manager that synchronizes with enterprise UW Groups services.

Using this standalone pilot version of Catalyst Group Manager, you can create and manage groups that are automatically published to the UW Groups Directory Service and UW Windows Infrastructure, where they can be reused to control access to other kinds of resources. Anyone with a UW NetID can participate in this pilot, but it will be most useful to you if you need to manage a group for use with enterprise UW Groups services. Participation in the pilot project comes with the following constraints:

• Only the groups created with the pilot will be published to the UW Groups Directory Service and Windows Infrastructure. Groups you already maintain in Catalyst Group Manager are not available for publishing.
• Group titles should be simple, and must contain only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores. Spaces will be converted to underscores. All non-alphanumeric characters will be dropped during synchronization.
• Groups you create and manage will be owned by the UW NetID account, either personal or supplemental, that you used to create them. During the pilot, you will also be able to give a group of UW NetIDs administrative access to all of your groups. These administrators will be able to use and modify your groups. This feature will be replaced with stricter and more granular management controls as the pilot proceeds.
• Until privacy policies have been reviewed and addressed, you will not be able to attach class lists to a group created with the pilot.
• Group updates will propagate to the UW Groups Directory Service within 5 minutes. Group updates then will propagate to the UW Windows Infrastructure within 2 hours.
• Availability is not guaranteed 24/7. This is a pilot project and the service will be subject to limited downtime (as little as possible). New features might be added without prior notification.
• Groups created in the pilot version of the Catalyst Group Manager might not persist once the pilot moves to production status. They might need to be recreated. UW Technology is currently working on the transition plan.

This pilot project will last through Summer Quarter 2007, or until it has been replaced. Feedback from participants will help shape future versions of Catalyst Group Manager and its integration with enterprise UW Groups services. For further information and support, please contact catalysthelp@u.washington.edu.