Manually adding members to a chat channel

[Shoq]

I’m new here, and struggling with adding users to an existing CHAT channel. When I click on "Members (# ) for the channel, i see those in the channel, and can find them, but there is no ADD MEMBER button. Auto-add is disabled for this channel. I assume the members I have are from when I created it, but since then, I cannot add nor invite anyone new. Is inviting people to an existing channel simply not possible? I sure hope not. But if so, what is the reasoning for such a limitation?

What am I missing here? TIA

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

If and when that channel is connected with some category, everyone who can see that category is automatically a member, so there is no need to invite users. Changing their group to match that category is enough.

But if that channel is a group chat, private one, you might want to read this first:

Improvements to group chats — add users to existing chats, easily create new groups, name your group chats

In addition to channels and direct messages, Discourse chat supports group messages (i.e. personal chats with 3 or more members), which makes it easier for small groups to stay connected with each other. We recently introduced a number of improvements to group chats to let you add new members to an existing group chat, easily create new chats, and support naming your group chats. Note: We’re using the word “group” here in a general sense to describe multiple people — we are not referring to Gro…

[Shoq]

Thank you , Jakke. That gets me started and I will read that post now. Not clear why it would be assumed that EVERYONE who would be able to see it, would be allowed to chat in it. What if the purpose is just to enable a small group to opine about it, but everyrone else is allowed to view it?

[HAWK]

@Shoq

What if the purpose is just to enable a small group to opine about it, but everyrone else is allowed to view it?

Then that small group have the option available to make a private group chat. Public channels are designed to be public.

[Earnie_Baird (Earnie)]

I am also looking for a way for an admin (or moderator) to be able to add users on an ad hoc basis to a chat channel.

We have lots of users who meet up IRL and are organized by regions or other groupings outside of Discourse. For example let’s say I have these 3 kinds of users:

• Miami
• Philly
• Beginners

I’ve created ~ 20 or so channels all based on the “General” category as they are open to anyone to join when they browse the chat channel list. On our server there isn’t really a 1 to 1 relationship between categories and chat channels at all.

People have already joined the Miami, Philly and Beginner chat channels themselves but I can’t figure out any way to manually add new users to those channels.

In general managing the chat channel user list via a Discourse group doesn’t feel like the right approach as people should be able to join/leave the channels regardless of what Discourse group I’ve put them in… Also once a channel is made I don’t think I can change the Category/Group it is based on anyways.

Is there any way for an admin to add a user to an existing chat channel?