Bulk adding email addresses to group sends invitation emails even when “Notify users” is unchecked (latest branch)

Contribute Bug
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1

Summary

Bulk adding email addresses to a group appears to send invitation emails even when “Notify users” is unchecked.

Expected behaviour

When “Notify users” is unchecked, no emails should be sent.

Actual behaviour

Discourse sends invitation emails with subject:

“[Name] invited you to join [forum]”

Brevo transactional logs confirm delivery and classify them as invitation emails.

Environment

  • Discourse version: latest branch (self-hosted Docker, up to date via git pull and rebuild)
  • Hosting: self-hosted Docker
  • SMTP provider: Brevo
  • Action performed:
    Admin → Groups → Add members → bulk add email addresses → “Notify users” unchecked

Question

Is this expected behaviour because the email addresses did not yet correspond to existing users (invite flow), or is this unintended?

Related older discussion

My experience suggests invitation emails are still sent even when “Notify users” is unticked.

Evidence

Brevo transactional logs show:

  • Event: Delivered
  • Event: Opened by proxy
  • Subject: “[Name] invited you to join [forum]”

These emails were triggered immediately after the bulk add action.

Goal

Clarify whether this is expected design behaviour for staged / non-existing users, or a regression / UX ambiguity in newer Discourse versions.

1 Like
2

Thanks @Ethsim2 for the report :+1: Will be fixed by

3

Ah, thanks!

would it be feasible to toggle this and the previous behaviour with a site-wide, or similar setting?

4

Not sure what you mean :thinking: I just made it so the “notify users” checkbox is respected.

5

in use cases where you have directory lists where one member can be a member of the other list, it would be nice to have a setting where only emails with no associated accounts yet are notified