Invite link can be redeemed by multiple users and at the time of redeeming invite the user provides email address and username. User also has the option to set Name and Password.
Also, existing users can also redeem invite links and if the user already exists, it will skip that part of the invite and continue with the ‘add to group’ and ‘redirect to specific topic’ part of the invite.
Tracking Redemptions
Invite link redemptions can be tracked on /my/invited/redeemed page.
I so love this feature - it is super useful and we’ll be utilising it a lot over the next two years.
I’ve noticed a problem for my users: if a user who is already signed in to Discourse on that browser attempts to use the link, they get this message:
This means that my group owner (who has been sending the link about) has to instead add them to the group using the Group page. No biggy, but it means unnecessary confusion and emails flying about just when we are trying to make a good 1st impression.
What I suggest is that if an existing user attempts to use the link, then they are automatically added to any groups specified in the invite and counted as a successful invite.
Fair enough; it is consistent with the way single invites behave as well.
How would you feel about a simple workflow to cover this situation then? I suspect that it will crop up a bit as people use this. So: IF an existing user clicks a multi-user invite link which includes a group allocation (AND the user is not already a member of any of these groups) THEN:
a composer is automatically launched for a PM between the user and the link author containing this text (or similar), such as with the Request to join group feature.
(username) has attempted to use your invitation link which included group allocation to (groups in invitation), but this could not be actioned as they are already a user of (sitename). Please consider adding them to directly to these groups.
I think we wait on this for a bit longer and see how repeated this request here. At a minimum we improve copy.
There is prior art, when you are invited to a whatsapp group you are not expected to be a brand new user on the whatsapp platform, you are just plonked into the group, same goes for facebook.
That said this feature is all about getting users not on the Discourse platform, onto the platform. The group stuff is an added bonus, not the main menu item.
This has been working great for our new community; it streamlines the account creation to skip the moderation step, and the flexibility of the link means we can use it in custom emails, messaging, even sharing in project meetings.
We did an online conference presentation about our community (by screen sharing a topic thread), and we were able to have people in the audience quickly create acounts and join the conversation.
I like this a lot to track invites. If requests were possible, it might be nice to filter by the link requests, and even to see which links were used (I have 3 different ones in play).
I could use this feature. Our community is starting basic and we are adding new areas as we go. We have two areas that have been added that are limited access by group, and so adding users who may have joined earlier or the general join button is a lot of manual labor.
So in our community it would be useful to have a link that could serve to bring in new members and add to a group that could also add existing users to same group.
We could really use a way to more easily allow existing users to join groups via a link like @nathank mentioned.
If the link was smart enough to where we could generate a single link for both new and existing users that would really help too. Allow new users to join the Discourse instance and join the group. Or let an existing user just join the group.
Arpit, I’ve got another use-case that has cropped up for this same request:
Inviting non-users to a poll
I want to be able to use a topical poll to pull in users to our login-only site, and I do not have their email addresses. My only way to do this at present is either
share the link to the poll - this has double ‘friction’ as they have to confirm their email address and then wait in the approval queue
share the multiple use invite link and find some way to guide them to the poll after they have joined (none of them slick)
It would be extremely helpful to have them join and land on the poll in one slick movement (albeit it with an email confirmation blip).
If I fill in the email address of the person you want to invite in the single user section then switch to multiple user tab and get the link, drop the link into an email I send separately to them will that link only work if that specific email address is used?
That would be great if so because then I could more easily invite a specific user more personally from an email address I know wont end up in their junk and that they will recognise. Thanks
This has come up for us again, with a group owner getting frustrated that he has to work out who is already on the forum and join them up via a different mechanism. I’ve of course educated him about it and it isn’t a massive deal, but this will be causing quite a bit of friction for people making use of the Multi-use links (which rock by the way!)
I unfortunately sent an email inviting about 30 people to my forum, and the link expired before everyone signed up. I would love to be able to edit the link and increase the timeline. I didn’t see it as an option though and I had to resend another link which unfortunately shows off my user error
This content is now covered in Configure how users can create and send invites for others to join your community
