Chris,
As an alternative you could consider writing a roles subscription solution (or partnering with one) that implements the Active Social API. That would allow you to easily add users who purchased roles into a group (connect the role to the group in a table).

GroupsAPI ug = new GroupsAPI();
ug.JoinGroup(PortalId, UserId, GroupID, true, true);

Then a SQL Server or DNN scheduled task could handle group removal for expired roles.

This said, I understand the limitations in roles and why Active Social can't rely on it for group membership but in cases when membership in a role drives access decisions to resources on a site it would make sense to include both ways in upcoming releases. Then let admins know about the role limitation but not prevent them from choosing an implementation that best meets their needs.

---

Steven Webster
Manager, Community Platform
F5 Networks, DevCentral

Ventrian has one and it includes source. Scott is also very reasonable if you want to "sponsor" an enhancement to his modules. He's also done a number of Active Social integrations with many of his more popular modules. www.ventrian.com

---

Steven Webster
Manager, Community Platform
F5 Networks, DevCentral

Hi,

Thank you very much for the input.

@Steven - I understand now what you mean by Role Subscription Solution and I understand how this can work - probably by hard coding some kind of completion event that signs a user into the AS User/Group link list. This works for a one off site, but as I mentioned before: "this is not practical when you have 100 clients 'in the wild" who don't know what a "proc" is. Each client has their own separate roles names, configuration, etc. and, if we can make this work, AS group setup. " In addition who know how many third party modules, or custom solutions exist for assigning roles that they are using.

@Brandon - when you say you have "a solution to this issue", do you mean a) the ability to assign AS Groups directly via Roles or b) the ability to have hundreds of Roles in DNN or c) another Role Subscription solution?

@Will - even if "Using a role to simply identify a user as being part of a social group certainly is convenient, but that doesn't mean it is the best or even intended purpose", the fact is this is how the rest of the world is using roles AND other enterprise class portal frameworks can support hundreds of roles for just this reason. It would be great if the non-role solution you are working on could fix this, but if it's of no use in my >>very straight forward<< requirement, I have no doubt that other needs will go unmet as well.

@Cathal - Will and I are both working on Enterprise applications and we're having to come up with non-standard hacks to work around DNN's inability to handle large amounts of roles. If DNN wants to attract more enterprise clients, like Government of Quebec (who bought a Pro license) or Brother International, you might want to give handling large role counts some priority.

Thanks,
Chris

---

Chris Wylie
Chief Executive Officer

1775 W. State Street Suite 371, Boise ID 83702 USA