Automatic group life cycle management

Groups tend to have the problem that they are never deleted. Users leave the group but nobody feels responsible and knows when a group can be deleted. An automatic life-cycle management needs to be implemented similar to users and courses:

• Implement a status on the group datamodel
  • active
    • normal as today
    • status after creating a new group
  • inactive 
    • group still accessible by all members
    • group visible in personal group list
    • all group tools are read-only similar to the closed courses
      • no new forum posts, file uploads etc
      • read-only also for WebDAV access
    • the admin menu shows a special panel
      • Info about the creation, inactivation and automatic deletion date
      • button to re-activate the group
        • will set group back to active state
      • button to delete the group
        • will trigger delete state
  • deleted
    • similar to course behavior
    • all users are removed from the group
    • all references to courses are removed from the group
    • the group itself remains, no data is deleted
    • the deleted groups are listed in a new segment "deleted" or "trash" similar to the authoring site
• Implement the automatic group life-cycle
  • Similar to the learning resource / user module  implement options and dates to manage the life-cycle
    • automatic inactivation after # days with no group opening
    • inactivation email
    • automatic deletion after # days of inactivation
    • deletion email
    • automatic permanent deletion after # days of deleted state 
• Manual group management
  • Implement manual group status change  as a batch action or single group action
    • when performing status change show optional mail form
  • When reactivating groups, set a grace period date or just update the last visit date
  • In the deleted or trash segment add action to reactivate or permanently delete the groups
  • When manually delete a group by the group administrator give him the option to put group to trash or execute the permanently delete right away.