SOLUTION TO FORUM SUBSCRIPTION TO A GROUP ONLY
Okay so for the last few weeks, I've struggled to get the Front Page Forum emailing out to only a Group but allow everyone to still see the post, and then to set it up so that Middle Leaders at my school could sent out posts only to that Group not everyone.
I think I have found the following solution.
1. I used Autocreate Groups to create Groups from Cohorts (I think this could be done more easily using the Cohorts to Groups plugin) I did this several times until I could get a single Front Page Group that included students and academic staff but excluded Parents.
2. I set up the Front Page Role to default to Student.
3. I made sure Students had the Allow force subscribe
4. I set the Announcement Forum to separate groups
5. I assigned our Middle Leaders the role of Teacher in the discussion forum
In the permission of the Frontpage Forum, I did the follow
6. I made sure Students had to capability to Access all groups ( I want everyone to be able to see the posts even if they dont belong to the group )
7. I then prohibited the Teachers from Access all groups (This might seem extreme but I wanted Middle Leaders to only be able to post to the Group I setup - they didnt know how to restrict to only a group.)
So it seems to be working, please forgive me if I left out a step. Ill email back if I can remember anything else...
Ultimately though, this process could be simplified if Moodle simply allowed you to restrict subscription to a Group or Cohort without having to change the forum to separate or visible groups, or allowed you to default the forum announcement creation to a group of your choice..