Hi @tgustilo
I seem to have gotten things working without recourse to any 3rd party plugins.
The built-in Automations plugin is the only one I am using, and a tip & a gotcha for this was posted just above in this thread.
I have (for now) given up on a conditional signup user dialog where the info a user is asked to provide differs depending on the forum they want to access. So no Discourse Authentication Validations or Custom Wizard Plugin
The result is not quite as elegant for public forum applicants, but to some extent there is probably utility in exposing most of the professional qualifications and working role etc custom user fields used for private forum applicants anyway, to capture any other professional qualifications and roles the applying member of the public holds, and displaying this on their public profile.
This info means anyone engaging with this person has a greater sense of what might be relevant to their level and area of expertise.
From here, I would really like a way for an administrator to be able to directly edit a user application before it is approved - all from the same approval dialog
That way someone attempting to apply for access to the private forum who clearly doesn’t belong (based on the other info provided), can at least be granted membership of the public forum user group without having to re-apply from scratch (wasting that effort), and any other obvious mistakes could be corrected in one hit (Perhaps with a color coded flag warning the user of their edited profile fields).
Right now addressing problems in submitted applicant user profiles (including the user’s selected user group) requires either rejecting the user’s application outright, with little if any detailed explanation, or undertaking a separate multi-step and error prone clean up process, with high risk of mistakes or omissions by the administrator.