Using OA for a consultant-led project collaboration system

Apologies in advance for the long post, but I'm at the point that I need to lay it all out to get over this hurdle :)

I’m pretty sure I understand the basics of OA but I’m finding some things a bit more difficult than I expected to, so I just want to validate my approach before I sink more time into this. I'm using version 2.65.

I’m looking to use open atrium to build a project collaboration system for consultant-led projects.

Consultants should be able to create projects as independent, private spaces which they will use to communicate and collaborate with the clients that they work with.

I want to have an entity of “client” and for each client entity to have multiple project spaces underneath it, with these project spaces optionally inheriting users from the client.

I would like to validate the approach I’m taking as I’m struggling with a few things (details at the bottom).

Here’s the approach I’m trying:

• I have a group called “Consultants” - only a system administrator (user id 1) can add users to this group.

• I have a top level space called “Clients” which inherits users from the Consultants group. I want consultants to be able to add Client spaces using a space blueprint called “Client”. Within the “Clients” top level space, consultants can only add spaces of the “Client” blueprint - they should not be able to use any other space template at this level, including the default template.

• Once a consultant has added a Client subspace to the Clients top level space, within this client space they can add client members. At the individual client level, they can also begin to add Project spaces using a “Project” blueprint. Consultants should only be able to use the “Project” blueprint at this level, they should not be able to use any other type of space template, including the default template.

Use case/workflow example:

Stealth SEM is a small SEM consulting agency. The agency is managed by Dave, and Carla is one of the consultants on his team.

• Dave, who is an admin user, adds Carla to the “Consultants” group.

• This gives Carla access to the “Clients” space where she can see a list of all clients the agency works with.

• Carla is kicking off a project with Dodgy Donuts, who are a new client so don’t appear in the list.

• To add Dodgy Donuts as a new client, Carla clicks “create subspace” and chooses the “Client” template, which is the only one available to her.

• Once she has added Dodgy Donuts as a client, she navigates to the Dodgy Donuts client space where she adds Mike - the contact at Dodgy Donuts she will be working with on the project.

• Within the Dodgy Donuts client space, she clicks on “add subspace” and chooses the “project” template, which is the only option available to her in the Dodgy Donuts client space.

• She creates the project, calling it “SEM Audit”.

• Mike automatically gets access to the project “SEM Audit”.

• In this project, Carla sets up the necessary tasks, events etc.

Questions:

1. Am I going about this the right way? It seems to me that OA is more geared toward System Administrators (i.e. user 1 in Drupal) creating spaces. I’m sure I’m probably wrong, but I want to make sure I’m not trying to jam square pegs in round holes.

2. What permission do I need to give consultants to allow them to create spaces? Giving members of the Consultants group the permission to create space content doesn’t have any effect. I know it is possible (see next question), I’d just like to know the correct way to go about it. I've logged this issue to report what appears to be a bug in this respect: https://www.drupal.org/node/2776719

3. How can I restrict what space templates consultants are allowed to use? At some point in an earlier test environment I was able to give consultants the ability to create spaces (unfortunately can’t remember how - I think I had to give them permission to administer the group/space) but they had access to all space templates, including default - I tried setting the permission to only allow them to add spaces of a certain blueprint but it seems that the permission to create spaces overrides this.

4.How can I let consultants create Client spaces within the Clients top level space but deny them the permission to add users to the top level Clients space?