A while back I remember reading about group templates that were based on either group type or even an individual group.  My understand was that it was going to be as easy as creating a template on the portal that followed a specific pathing and/or file naming structure.

I'd like to know what this is as it would be incredibly useful to show group a with tabs 1,2,3,4 and group b with tabs 3,4,5,6 or vary the info shown within a group etc.

I've posted this before with no reply. 

Regarding specific groups:

Drop the template in the Portals/{PortalID}/activesocial/groups/{groupID}/ directory. Similar to other "portal" templates, keep the name the same (GroupView.ascx for example) and it will override the default template for that specific group.

Edit to add: This also works with the groupviewtabs.config file, which would do what you asked in your example.

Additionally:

If you want to have a specific template for a group-type:

Go to Control Panel > Groups > Global Group Settings > Group Types then click the little stack of papers icon. This will create a template in the Portals/{PortalID}/activesocial/templates/Groups directory with the filename in this format: GroupViewGroupTypeName.ascx

This template will automatically be used for any group with the specified type.

Thanks Ben, This has been helpful.

The only issue I find with Group Type is that when you create a new group from a Group List that is filtered for a specific type it reverts to the default Type when the new group is saved.

For Group Type specific Lists you cant use the [AS:CONTROL:NEWGROUP] token. You have to use a separate link (query string) to allow the Group Add to run from the list that specifies the Group Type when creating the new group. i.e http://domain.com.au/customgroup/asv/groupadd

Ben, thank you VERY much. This is terrific!

So, when we create new group types, I'm presuming in order get different tabs per group tab we would just recreate the groupviewtabs.config file to be similar to GroupViewGroupTypeName.ascx with something like this: groupviewtabsTypeName.config? Or is that file automatically generated through the CP when creating group types?

I would also like to define specific group properties for different group types. Is this possible?

I am not sure if you can have a type specific tab setup. I am pretty sure that you can not have type specific properties though.

Group type tabs is sorely needed. Is this on the roadmap?

Posted By Ben Thompson on 11 Sep 2011 09:31 AM
Thanks Ben, This has been helpful.

The only issue I find with Group Type is that when you create a new group from a Group List that is filtered for a specific type it reverts to the default Type when the new group is saved.

For Group Type specific Lists you cant use the [AS:CONTROL:NEWGROUP] token. You have to use a separate link (query string) to allow the Group Add to run from the list that specifies the Group Type when creating the new group. i.e http://domain.com.au/customgroup/asv/groupadd

Can you clarify a bit more on this? I have group types created and tried several variations of a url structure that incorporates the group type without success. I had recently also run into trouble when trying to create pages that had the same name as my group types (reported in another thread).