BuddyPress.org

I am using Woffice theme with Buddypress included, as an intranet. I would like to use Buddypress Groups without the Friendship aspect. It is weird in our small, flat organization if you need to invite people to become your friend. The Groups feature would be for example to share some files with a level of confidentiality, for photoalbums to share publicly and the communication of our lunchgroup.
If I deactivate Friendships from BP settings, I cannot invite people in a group anymore (the button disappears), nor can I see any members on the member directory page. Couldn’t we all be friends by default (or made by Admin)? ​The Group feature seems unusable without Friends feature. So why is there an option to deactivate Friends. Also I would like to keep options in Profile menu simple as can be: Groups and Profile. No Activitystreams, Friendships or Notifications in the Menu.

Anyone any suggestions to solve this? Thanks!