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Overview

Building a strong community around your project or a particular effort within a project is crucial to success in free software. Launchpad teams help you to bring people together around an activity by offering:

• a focal point
• tools for members to communicate
• the ability for many people to share a role, such as a project's bug contact.

There are few rules about what constitutes a Launchpad team and any Launchpad user can create one.

Most teams are associated with a project but there isn't a formal link.

To create a team, visit the [https://edge.launchpad.net/people/+newteam new team] page. You'll probably notice that creating a team is very similar to [:YourAccount/NewAccount:registering a user account]. This isn't a coincidence: teams and people are very similar throughout Launchpad.

Of course, there are some differences. When you first register a team, keep an eye out for:

• subscription policies: whether you want the team open to anyone or you'd prefer more control
• subscription period: how long before someone's membership expires (if at all)
• membership renewals: choose how expired members renew their subscription.

You can change any of these details later on by clicking Change details on your team's overview page.

Branding your team

Branding is one of the ways in which teams are similar to people. Just like your own Launchpad account, you can upload images to help others identify pages associated with your team:

• Icon: this shows up in listings wherever your team's name is mentioned - e.g. on a team member's profile. Must be 14x14 pixels and no more than 5KB.

• Logo: appears in the top-left of pages owned by the team. Must be 64x64 and no more than 50KB.

• Mugshot: appears on the team's profile page. Must be 192x192 pixels and no more than 100KB.

What team membership means

It's up to you what membership of your team means. Some teams exist to give people the chance to make a public declaration while others grant access to privileged parts of a project's activity.

In general, members of your team get:

• upload rights for all of the team's code branches
• permission to upload and build Ubuntu packages in the team's PPA
• optional access to the team's mailing list
• any access that comes with a role taken by the team (e.g. bug contact for a project).

There are also two special types of membership for people who run your team:

• Administrator: change project details, approve/reject members.

• Owner: like an administrator but with the power to create new administrators and hand ownership to someone else. Teams can have one owner.

Subscription policies

Launchpad offers you three team membership policies:

• Open: anyone can join.

• Moderated: you or another team administrator must approve membership applications.

• Restricted: people can't apply to join, only team administrators can add new members.

The purpose of your team will help you decide which policy suits it best. For example: if you want your team to handle the security bugs for a project, you may choose moderated membership.

Managing membership requests

If you've chosen the moderated membership policy, Launchpad will email you whenever someone applies to join.

The email tells you:

From: the team's display name (e.g. Launchpad Beta Testers) Reply address: the prospective member's primary email address Subject: their Launchpad system name - name wants to join

Let's take a look at the [https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-beta-testers/+members membership list for the Launchpad Beta Testers team]. As a team administrator, you'll see a pencil icon beside each member's name. This allows you to edit teams membership and applications.

This is Chris Jones' application.

Here, Chris's name links to his Launchpad profile. A person's profile page offers you an accurate reflection of the sort of work they do in Launchpad. Not only does it give you the information they've written about themselves but it also automatically tells you which teams they're most active in, what sort of work they do and on which projects. If you still need more information, Chris's profile shows you different ways of getting in touch with him.

Whether you choose to accept or reject a membership application, Launchpad will inform the prospective member and all the team's administrators by email. You can add a custom message to this email, which is particularly useful if you want to suggest first steps to new members or explain why you've declined an application.

Membership expiry

Setting an automatic expiry on team memberships can be useful if your team is for a time-limited activity or you want to give people a reminder to review their membership.

You can both:

• set all subsequent memberships to expire after a specified number of days, on your team's Change details page

• and choose a membership expiry date for individual members, when editing that person's membership.

Launchpad emails anyone who has a team membership that is about to expire. How they renew their membership is up to you:

• the member must apply to renew: if you want to review someone's contribution to the team
• allow the member to renew: if you're happy for existing members to remain in the team but you want to ensure they're still interested
• automatically renew.

Teams joining teams

[https://launchpad.net/pyroom Pyroom] is a simple text editor designed to minimise distractions. The Pyroom developers use Launchpad to track bugs, host code and make translations. In addition to a general [https://launchpad.net/~pyroom-team Pyroom team], they also have a [https://launchpad.net/~pyroom-bugsquad bug team] and [https://launchpad.net/~pyroom-dev dev team] that has access to its trunk development branch.

Because teams behave just like people in Launchpad, the Pyroom bug and dev teams can join the main Pyroom team. Thanks to that, members of Pyroom's bug and dev teams are indirect members of the main Pyroom team: they have access to everything that a direct member has.

Launchpad doesn't impose a

Because teams behave just like people in Launchpad, they can also join other teams.

There are two ways for a team to join another team and which you choose depends on which of the two teams you run:

• invite a team to join your team

Teams can even take the owner and administrator roles in other teams.

A particularly powerful feature of Launchpad's team management is that teams can join other teams. When another team joins yours, all of its members get the same access as if they were a direct member of your team. Similarly, teams can take the administrator and owner roles in another team.

There are two ways for a team to join another team, depending on your role.

You want your team to join another team: if you're the administrator of a team

Add your team to another team

Similarly, you can make your team a member of another team

As a team owner or administrator, you can propose one of your teams as a member of another team.

Teams can join other teams. This is a powerful feature that allows you to All types of member - standard, administrator and owner - can

Subscription policies

As a team administrator, you have

To view all all pending membership requests click Show all members in your team's Actions menu. You can choose to accept or reject an individual request by clicking the pencil icon beside the prospective member's name.

Welcome/reject message

Bulk moderation

Chosing a membership policy

Automatic membership expiry

Edit conflict - other version:

If you want to help organise a group of people around a particular development effort or community, you can create a team.

Most teams are associated with a project but there isn't a formal link between teams and projects. This leaves your team free to work on anything in Launchpad.

To create a team, visit the [https://edge.launchpad.net/people/+newteam new team] page. The process is similar to [registering a user account. This is because teams and people are very similar in Launchpad.

Of course, there are some differences. When you first register a team, keep an eye out for:

• subscription policies: whether you want the team open to anyone or you'd prefer more control
• subscription period: how long before someone's membership expires (if at all)
• membership renewals: when someone's subscription expires, set how they can renew it.

You can change any of these details later on by clicking Change details on your team's overview page.

Branding your team

To make it easier to identify pages associated with your team, you can upload three images:

• Icon: this shows up in listings wherever your team's name is mentioned - e.g. on a team member's profile. Must be 14x14 pixels and no more than 5KB.

• Logo: appears in the top-left of pages owned by the team. Must be 64x64 and no more than 50KB.

• Mugshot: appears on the team's profile page. Must be 192x192 pixels and no more than 100KB.

Managing membership requests

Chosing a membership policy

Automatic membership expiry

Edit conflict - your version:

End of edit conflict

If there isn't already a Launchpad team to deal with

• There are a few things you should consider first:

Edit conflict - other version:

If there isn't already a Launchpad team to deal with

• There are a few things you should consider first:

Edit conflict - your version:

End of edit conflict

Instructional text

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