Potential Bug / Inconsistent Behavior: Community Administrators unable to create the first collection in empty communities (DSpace 9.x /10)

[euler]

Hello DSpace Technical Community,

I would like to report an inconsistent behavior regarding Community Administrator permissions that I have consistently reproduced across local installations of DSpace 9.3, DSpace 10, and the official DSpace Sandbox.

It appears that a Community Administrator cannot create a collection within their designated community if that community contains zero existing collections. However, the moment a Super Admin creates a single "seed" collection, the UI immediately unlocks the ability for the Community Administrator to create subsequent collections arbitrarily.

Steps to Reproduce (Verified on DSpace Sandbox & 9.3/10):

1. Logged in as a Super Admin, created a new EPerson and a new Top-Level Community.

2. Added the EPerson to the COMMUNITY_..._ADMIN group for that community.

3. Impersonated/logged in as the Community Administrator.

4. Observation A: The user can create sub-communities and edit community metadata. However, the option/button to "Create Collection" is completely unavailable or restricted.

5. Logged back in as Super Admin and created a single test collection within that community.

6. Impersonated the Community Administrator again.

7. Observation B: Lo and behold, the Community Administrator can now successfully click "Create Collection" and independently add further collections.

8. Observation C: If the Super Admin deletes that initial test collection (returning the community to an empty collection state), the Community Administrator instantly loses the ability to create collections again.

9. Observation D: If this same EPerson is added to a different, pre-existing community that already contains collections, they can immediately add new collections there without issue.

This behavior seems highly counterintuitive. If a Community Admin has the structural authorization to create collections, their ability to do so should not depend on whether the community is empty or already populated. Forcing a Super Admin to step in and create the first collection completely defeats the purpose of delegating community management to free up institutional IT roles.

Is this a known/expected behavioral quirk of the Angular UI's authorization evaluation logic, or is this officially recognized as a bug in versions 9.x and 10?

Is there a server-side configuration or a specific authorization policy override that can bypass this constraint so that empty communities can be managed natively by assigned Community Admins from day one?

 Any insights, workarounds, or tracking Jira issues related to this would be greatly appreciated. 

Best regards,
euler

[Toni Prieto]

Hi Euler,

I was checking the error and found that it is an issue in the admin menu. This option should be available to community administrators, but it is currently configured to be shown to collection administrators instead. 

I have submitted a PR that should fix the issue: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/pull/5856

Regards,

Toni

El 18/6/26 a las 10:27, euler escribió:

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Toni Prieto
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya