Can I add a group of users to a PM without inviting them?

[yoel.koenka (Joel Koenka)]

Hi, I’m the admin of my self-hosted Discourse-based forum.
I’d like to restrict topic access to a certain group.
Therefore, I’ve seen that I can turn it into a PM, and then invite the users I’d like to add.

My question is: Can I skip the invitation and simply add them? I don’t want them to need to do anything (like approving, pressing buttons etc.). I simply want these users to have access to this topic.

Thanks!

[osioke (Osioke Itseuwa)]

Have you seen and tried this guide for this?

Understanding groups and category permissions (security settings)

See this video tutorial for an example of how to use these features: Create a private category with limited access for a certain group The Security tab on the category edit page is used to control both the visibility of categories and what users can do in a category. This is done by defining an access list of groups that associate a group name with an access level. The default permission for a new category is that the group everyone can Create/Reply/See. This means that a…

Private categories and groups may be better than PMs, and using groups makes adding members and bulk adding them easier.

[yoel.koenka (Joel Koenka)]

Thanks for the tip!
I actually know of this option, but I’d rather use the PM method.
The reason is that I already have another categories division for the topics, and I’d like to keep it as it is.