[Deprecated] DMZ 1.5.3 (DataMapper OverZealous Edition)

[eluser]OverZealous[/eluser]
[quote author="macigniter" date="1251306892"]Is it possible to populate (and query) the join_field 'group_id' WITHOUT having a relationship to an office?[/quote]

No, because the table is really showing the relationship between offices and users. Therefore, a row only exists if there is a relationship between an office and a user.

There are two ways to handle that:
1) Use the other method I suggested, having a dedicated class to represent the 3-way relationship. This would be a little tedious, because it sounds like you already have some work put into this.

2) Add a group_id column to the users table. Then you can populate this manually for users that have no office or for the non-office group. Of course, you can't easily query this group the same time as you query the other one.