One interesting aspect of the Active Social integration with Active Forums is that the discussion threads really rely on being entered via Active Social groups, rather than Active Forums.

There are, of course, ways in which the permissions can be set to make group discussions visible (or not) within AF. However even if they're set to not be visible in AF, you can see them within searches, and functionality like My Topics.

Not a problem in itself - I wouldn't want the discussions to be completely isolated. However if someone posts to the discussion via AF rather than AS, the journal posting will not occur.

There's not really anything to do about this at the moment; it's purely behavioural and I'm pretty sure it's just a case of AS/AF not having got to that deeper level of integration yet. I''m not even really griping about it - it's just something I've observed.

The best suggestion I can give for now is to set the permissions so that the groups aren't visible in the forums - this at least will minimise the amount that it occurs :-)

The way I utilize mine, I don't really see those type of issues because I am only using the forums as group forums and not the traditional forum type.  When a member joins my site, they are automatically added to a specified 'default' group and are immediately able to post in the forums and have it show up on the site summary.  Non-members will see no forums at all.  I made the same observations and at first I was a little confused, but I actually like the way this works for me now.

Me too, I'm already running a different forum system so I don't want people to see this as a new forum and get confused.

If you are going to forums outside of groups in addition to group forums then the recommended configuration is for the forum instance you use within Active Social to be hidden. These prevents any kind of confusion. The most successful implementations that we have seen are setup like Ricky described; all forums belong to groups. Otherwise you are certainly going to create confusion among users.

Sadly, it's a bit of chicken and egg :D .. We started using the forums, then added group discussions, then I noted the behaviour.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

That was the same way I discovered it as well...Fortunately for me, I had the luxury of a small member base, so I went ahead and converted to group only forums.  I can definitely see the problem for people that already have a big member base and site participation in both areas.

Well .. 3 sql queries later, I've moved the discussions to a new instance of AF. Thanks for the suggestions guys!

UPDATE nArAZepRaD8Dr2pr_activeforums_Forums SET ModuleId=759 WHERE ForumId>=20;
UPDATE nArAZepRaD8Dr2pr_activeforums_Forums SET ForumGroupId=7 WHERE ForumId>=20;
UPDATE nArAZepRaD8Dr2pr_activeforums_Forums_Tracking SET ModuleId=759 WHERE ForumId>=20;

I went through the same process (and member issues) on BikeClicks. We had a pretty developed forum setup. Actually in our case....we had an instance of AF for each major user group that used out site (each on it's own page).

When I migrated to AS and groups I also moved all of those post from each of the various forums into newly create group forums.

At first users completely freaked out. It was hard to get them to understand how this was setup. Then...in time they began to use more and more of the AS features and less forum posting. Now they have it right....they use AS features for quick posts "Anyone know if the trails in the park are still wet from last night's rain" and reserve the forums for longer, more in-depth discussions.

While originally I thought I would open up the forum again I've now decided to keep it completely hidden from view. All interactions now go through AS and things have become much less confusing for users.

I think the paradigm of group discussions and separate forums does make sense for our site. It's kind of a shame that there's no easy way to push the Discussions tab into the menu so people can go straight to their own group discussion via navigation, but I've already created a "quick jump" link to Groups, and may even see if I can manage a dropdown list as a skin object (would be cool!).

What I've taken from this is the need to think about exactly how AS fits within your site structure- not necessarily to treat it like a simple add-on, but to rethink each part for whether it better fits inside or outside the AS structure.

Now to work out the same for our member links directory :-)

There could be some options for this shortly.

Would be great. I've kind of failed at my efforts to get this running :-)

We're just seeing our confusion on this topic within both communities:
http://www.MENtrepreneurs.com
http://www.MOMtrepreneurs.com

Hiding the group forums as Will suggests, and having only a public forum outside a group seems so far to work OK. We're promoting topical discussions within 'invited' groups and inviting new members through the public forum, as-in, come stick your toes in the water (public forum), then register and join in a group discussion.

I'll have to look at the 'search' returning 'private group' threads - that would be a bummer.

Search doesn't return private group threads if you have everything setup properly.

Cool. Good job on that one!