BuddyPress.org

You’re welcome! I’m glad you are up and running with BP Group forums.

With respect to a forum control panel in WP’s back end, you are not missing anything. When using bbPress as a BP Groups forum component, there is no sitewide bbPress admin control. Instead, each BP group has the ability to have its own forum. To get the group forums to work, a group admin has to navigate to the given Groups “Admin > Group Settings” menu and click the “Enable discussion forum” checkbox.