Working on molecular modeling projects often involves more than just simulations and structures — it’s also about sharing, collaborating, and managing contributions across institutions and teams. Scientists, educators, and developers frequently hit roadblocks when trying to organize access to shared data or coordinate efforts across disciplines. SAMSON Connect offers a streamlined and secure solution to this with its robust group management functionality.
Whether you are coordinating a multi-institutional grant project, mentoring students, or building an extension with peers, organizing roles and content access can be a major administrative task. With SAMSON Connect, you can create and manage groups to make those processes seamless.
Why Use Groups?
In SAMSON Connect, groups allow you to organize collaborators by project or domain, securely share files and jobs, and manage access rights — all in one place. Here are some common reasons molecular modelers use groups:
- Running shared cloud jobs and simulations, such as AlphaFold or GROMACS runs
- Collaborative editing and access control of research documents
- Developing and testing SAMSON Extensions as a team
- Teaching students or mentoring junior researchers through curated content
Getting Started with Groups
To manage your groups, head to the Groups section in your User menu on SAMSON Connect.
You’ll see the groups you belong to, and for those you own, you can update their settings. Group settings include:
- Group visibility: Choose whether your group is public or private
- Membership options: Control how others can join: by invitation only, open applications, or automatic approval
- Roles: Assign roles like Editor or Member to manage permissions
Adding and Managing Members
Inviting collaborators is easy. Group owners can search by username, full name, or email address. If the person doesn’t yet have a SAMSON account, emailing them an invite works too.
After adding members, fine-tune access by updating their roles and optionally setting membership end dates — useful for temporary collaborators like interns or visiting researchers.
Editing Groups
Just like editing your personal profile, you can update your group’s page. Add descriptions, links, profile images or logos using Markdown to keep everything neatly presented to group members or the public.
Real-World Use Cases
Consider these examples:
- Teaching: Share curated documents and simulations with a class, adjust membership as semesters change.
- Consortia Projects: Collaborators across labs can share computational jobs and simulation data securely.
- Software Development: Debug and test private extensions among internal group members before public release.
By tailoring access and roles precisely, you can keep your work organized without depending on external file-sharing platforms or emails.
For more details on setting up and working with groups, visit the official SAMSON Connect documentation on Collaborating through Groups.
To learn more about group management and all other collaboration features, visit the official documentation at https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/collaboration/.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.