Moderators Editing Profiles (ACL question)

I am trying to set a moderator group to be able to edit profiles of other users.

I have a "Staff All" ACL group (which contains other groups within it), with it's parent group being the default Joomla "Author" group.

I have a "Clients All" group (which contains other groups within it), with it's parent group being the default Joomla "Registered" group.

So it looks like this:

Registered > Author > Staff All > Staff Groups

Registered > Clients All > Client Groups

When I make the "Staff All" group the moderators (in the CB Config page), anyone of the "Staff Groups" who tries to edit profiles of the "Client Groups" gets a "You cannot edit a `xyz_group`. Only higher-level users have this power."

Does there need to be a direct ACL relationship between moderator group and the profiles they are trying to edit?

They have to be directly related. So you'd need the below.

Registered
- Clients All
- - Client Groups
- - - Staff All
- - - - Staff Groups

The alternative being the following.

Manager
- Staff All
- - Staff Groups
Registered
- Clients All
- - Client Groups

Staff Groups would in this case have the highest permissions. This won't really matter for CB 2.0 though as we've changed that parameter to a View Access Level, which is significantly easier to use as it doesn't do parent inheritance anymore and you can select whatever groups you want for the view access level.

What happens if I have numerous "client groups". I have to create a staff group inside of every client group I want the staff to have access to?

Can I put my entire staff group under the Joomla Administrator group and change the setting in CB Config to be administrators instead of a specific moderator group? Will this work? Would be better than having to put a staff group under each client group (that would be a nightmare).

What happens if I have numerous "client groups". I have to create a staff group inside of every client group I want the staff to have access to?

You can't have moderators for a specific group of users. Such a feature doesn't exist. So your moderator group needs to have as high as permissions as you can allow. Typically that's done by making them Manager or Administrator.

Can I put my entire staff group under the Joomla Administrator group and change the setting in CB Config to be administrators instead of a specific moderator group? Will this work? Would be better than having to put a staff group under each client group (that would be a nightmare).

Yup, that should work.