I’d also like to see it where the admin can set what group and what post all invites made by members see, no matter who creates that invite. We have a standard topic and group that all members come into first - however because members can’t set those and there is no way for us to standardize this to what we want the admin have to create very single invite. This means members get no credit for invitees. And it’s a lot of work on the admins.
I pulled this out into its own support topic so we can focus on it. This feels a little complicated. Maybe we can try to address your problem by breaking down what it is you are trying to achieve.
If I understand correctly, you have an invite only community and would like to allow your members to invite more people to join and get credit for inviting people, but you want to be able to control what groups invited members are added to and what topic they land on first. Is that about right?
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Yes, that is correct.
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I think only admins and moderators are able to create invites that specify groups that invitees are added to and the topic that invitees see when they first log in. Invites by regular members don’t add groups and don’t take the invitee to a specific topic.
Can you tell us some more about what you are trying to do?
- what additional groups do all new members need to be added to, and why?
- what is the nature of the topic you want to send new members to upon first log in? Is it not enough to pin a topic globally to make sure everyone sees it?
It would be interesting to have a setting to specify what new members see when they first log in. Right now they are just taken to “TOP”, the list of most popular topics.
We add almost all new members to a group called “Newbie Peppers”. They stay in this group for at least two weeks as they learn their way around the community. Some categories are not open to this group to see. Once they have been in the community two weeks, they can then request entrance to the second group “Seasoned Peppers”, by answering the questions and requesting to join. This is the group that sees almost everything (except a few things reserved for Admins, Mods & Level 4’s).
The topic we want all new members to see first is one we have called “Some information for Newbies”. This details the things they should do first when joining our community and provides direct links to specific other posts we want them to read, including rules, tips & tricks for navigating our platform, etc, etc. etc. It is not enough to pin the topic globally, as 1. we have found they do not find it and 2. Once they are familiar with the community they no longer need the info in that post and pinning doesn’t seem to work well for us. Discourse is very new to most of them, they feel lost and we try to ease the frustration of learning a new platform (and the same time that they are very possibly brand new to our topic too) by providing some guidance step by step so they don’t feel so overwhelmed. [Sometimes that works, other times it doesn’t - lol - but we try].
New members jumping into the list of popular topics doesn’t provide the step by step things to do and they then miss those steps.
Additionally, due to the complex nature of our topic, sometimes they will sign up, do a couple things, and then come back later to do more, completing the steps from that post over time rather than right away.
I hope this helps explain why we need the ability to control the first post and the specific group for new members. Let me know if I can explain anything more 
.
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Nice! I love the community-specific group names. They are so cute!
Some other members here may have more ideas, but these come to mind:
You may be able to get part of the way towards what you want with Discourse Automation. For instance, you can send a PM automatically to all new members as they sign up with the step by step instructions.
You can also use automation to add people to groups, e.g. when they get a badge or complete a custom user field.
Thank you. We had thought about the PM to all new members; however we find that they don’t even find the greetings message from the bot, so we suspect they aren’t going to find the DM either. In fact that first post we want them to see explains to them about taking the Discobot training, providing them a link to directions we created on how to find the greetings message as one of the things we tell them in that first post they see.
This, by the way, is what our bot looks like, although we only use the top half since otherwise he’d be hard to see in his little circle. Gonna get around to changing his name too - just haven’t gotten there yet.
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Were you able to figure this out? I am going to move this topic into Community from Support because you are raising interesting questions about how to onboard your new members, and you have an approach (you describe in this post above) other members here might be interested in learning about and potentially helping you with.
It occurs to me you could also address the concern about making sure new members see a certain topic by bannering it. Bannered topics are shown to everyone and then they can manually dismiss it when they are done with it and no longer want to see it.
There likely are ways to automatically move people through the “Newbie peppers” and “Seasoned peppers” groups, using the trust level system and badges. Or you could just rename the existing trust levels and adjust the requirements for those. Other members here might have some suggestions!
No, I have not found a decent solution yet. The only work around is for me to create every single invite. Time consuming and totally wasteful. I’m still not sure why there can’t be an option to require every invite to have a specific post as the first post a person joining the community sees and a specific group for every invite created. In other words, no invites to topics or anything else except what admin chooses. I’m also unsure why members are not provided the same option as admins to adjust invites - then we could provide specific levels with instruction on creating invites and where people go for their entrance post and what group they go into. Our community has specific areas that new members are not to access until they have been in for a specific period of time and have requested to join those areas. Leaving things open by not being able to control what group they are in when they join by invite (we are an invite only community) and what post they see first is problematic for us.
Bannering doesn’t work for this. We’ve tried. 1. The banners are ignored, especially by those on mobile. 2. The first post is long and very specific as to what they should be reading and doing first in our community (with links included so they can just work through each step in the post). Much too long for a banner. With Discourse being totally new to these people, they don’t know what to do or anything, and I have learned in my many years of experience, step by step instructions increases their success. Thus, because we have these “locked” areas for lack of a better term, no one but admin can create invites. After creating almost 9000 invites, I’m a little tired of not being able to allow members to have the invite ability.
We have adjusted requirements for trust levels that advances them through the trust levels, however those are separate from the main groups - which are Newbie and Seasoned.
Perhaps someone will have a work-around, but I suspect not since it seems the ability for regular members to direct invites the way the admin want is not there and there is no ability to decide all invites go to specific places.
I will explore automation, but I’ve got so much on my plate and have not yet learned HOW to use the automation to accomplish things.