Using Circles as a back end for Contacts

Since 0.18.0, it is possible to manage your Contacts and Circles' members from a single UI.

Limitations

- Password are not enforced anymore.
Because a Contact can have a mail address and a Federated CloudId, and a single share entry is generated per member, it is not possible to enforce the generation of a password. Even if the enforce password option is enabled, the link sent to the mail address of the contact will not be password protected.

- Delayed mail for existing shares.

Groups, Local users & external members

Existing shares

Setup

To enable this feature, you need to run this occ command from the command line:

./occ config:app:set --value '1' circles contact_backend

This will remove the Circles icon from the top-app-bar, disable the Circles UI and lock the API.

While this is not adviced, you can re-enable the access to the normal interface of the Circles app and let your users manage more circles using this command:

./occ config:app:set --value '1' circles still_frontend

This will makes the icons of the Circles app available in the top-app-bar and unlock the API.

As an admin, you can synchronize your users' Contacts using this occ command:

./occ circles:sync

By running this command, the groups previously created in the Contacts app will generate new Circles, and Contacts belonging to this groups will become members of those Circles.