This is a sample planning guide for Grouper Installation and Deployment, with content contributed by New York University. It is intended to provide a framework as you are getting started implementing Grouper at your site. There are three primary stages :

• Planning
• Install/Test/Roll-out
• Developing Integration Materials

I - Planning Stage

Gain a basic understanding of Grouper

• Review Grouper introductory/overview documentation.
• Imagine how you expect Grouper to fit into your identity and application architecture
• (Install Grouper in a test environment to familiarize yourself with Grouper...)

Set initial goals

Establish a set of specific goals for your initial project.

• Are you planning an exploratory investigation of Grouper for possible future use, or have you settled on implementing Grouper in production for, at least, an initial set of purposes?
• What applications or application uses will be integrated with Grouper?
• What Grouper software components need to be installed for initial use?
• Will Grouper to manage ALL your groups, or will some group data be managed by other means?
• Do you have existing groups data and groups management software from which you need to migrate?
• Can you install, and begin to use, Grouper in phases?

Plan hardware and software environments

• What Grouper environments will you initially install? A development instance? A test (Q/A) instance? A production instance? All three or just one or two?
• For your software environments, what host machines will you run on? What ports will be used, what firewall settings might need to be made?
• Will you run Grouper software "as root" or as another user?

Plan groups data hierarchy and naming

• What basic categories of groups do you wish to manage? (e.g. classes, committees, workgroups, groups that share an entitlement, major subsets of your community, such as students/freshman/faculty/IT staff, etc. etc. etc.)
• Determine a basic stem / folder structure that supports two or more initial categories of groups.
• Determine your groups naming scheme.
• Flat or bushy?

Determine application and data components to use

The Grouper software consists of a number of major application and data components, not all of which you may wish to install and run from the beginning....

• What database (existing or new) will form your Grouper database repository?
• What database (existing) will provide you with subject data
• Do you plan to replicate groups data out to LDAP or some other database?
• Do you plan to automate groups management (for some or all groups) based on one or more data sources (and using the Grouper Loader)?
• Should you use just an application server or an application server + web server to enable web access?
• Which interfaces to groups data do plan to initially implement and support? Web browser access? Web services access? Grouper shell access? How do you expect end-users and applications to interface for read-only and for read-write purposes to groups data?
• Security considerations (e.g. wheel group)

II - Installation, Testing, Rollout

Sketch out your actual installation, testing, and rollout process, including:

• Confirm access to hardware/software environments, data sources and destinations
• Outline steps for installation and configuration of Grouper software elements
• Finalize initials stems/folders to create, authentication approach, initial groups to create and populate
• Plan basic testing of functionality
• Plan for ongoing operations, considering your desired approach to such duties as
• Monitoring / Management / Maintenance
• Support for Application developers/managers integrating their apps with Grouper
• Support for any end-users
• Plan to document your installation and configuration as your go along

Install & Test

III - Develop integration materials

Develop documentation, sample code, examples for use by app developers who wish to integrate their software with your Grouper installation.