Hello:
I’d like to create a closed group. I will not be directly inviting the participants from within discourse. What is the best way to get these people into the group, and what is the best way to set it up so that o nly these select few can see and reply to topics?
Can you clarify the above?
Do you mean that the users don’t already have Discourse accounts, or that you don’t want to use Discourse to send the invitations?
If it’s the former, then you can invite users from your profile and specify any group membership along with the invitation. You can also upload a CSV of email addresses and group memberships.
If it’s the latter and you’re using SSO, then group membership can also be provided in the SSO payload.
We are not planning on using Discourse to invite them - we are providing a link to our platform if they want to create an account. So, if they create their own accounts, once they’re in the system, how can they get to the closed group?
Ok, can you confirm what you mean by ‘our platform’?
Are you referring to your Discourse installation, or something else?
Providing the group that’s created is visible to all users, anyone can apply to join, group owners can then approve or decline those requests. The group setting is called Allow users to send membership requests to group owners
As long as the category is secured to that group and any user who applies is vetted the audience to those discussion topics can be controlled.
There may be other options here, but we would need more information on how you’re using Discourse today and any other technology within your environment that these users might interact with.
You can add them to the group, once they have Discourse accounts. Otherwise you’ll need to send invites.