Adding new users vs inviting them

feature
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We are trying to use Discourse in more of an intranet setting, and one that uses group based categories and membership. The “catch-22” of needing a user to signup, then adding them to the group, is a bit of a hassle for both end users and admins. Complicating that is that we are using oAuth2 with local accounts disabled, so invitations aren’t even an option.

I thought I’d throw the question out here first to see if there’s any functionality I’m missing, or even more of a “conceptual” reason why it might be a bad idea. Using the API is the most commonly suggested route, and we can certainly do that. But I wonder if writing a “add user” plugin would be a better contribution to the community.

Feedback appreciated!

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I started a reply, then second guessed myself because I wasn’t 100% sure of the question you were throwing out. :slightly_smiling:

Are you more worried about synchronizing users, groups, or something else?

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I don’t really want to synchronize users; we have 50,000+ of them.

Simply put the use case is:

  • Steve wants a private category that includes 5 people

Right now the workflow is:

  • Steve creates a group with 1 - 5 members, depending on who has already logged into discourse
  • Steve creates a category with access to that group
  • Steve emails the people, says “Please log in”
  • Steve checks discourse every day, needs to add people to the group as they show up
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Via the api you could create staged users and add them to the groups

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