If you want to send an mass email to ask users to join a community and respond to a particular thread, it works great so long as the user isn’t existing. If they’re existing, they get an error that says:
Sorry! This invitation is intended for new users, who do not already have an existing account.
This is not helpful. If they’re an existing user, it should add them to any groups indicated by the link and redirect them to the topic specified.
I know @tobiaseigen has worked on this before and might have suggestions. Also, you’re sure this reflects invites sent on the current, released version of Discourse?
This does sound like the current functioning of the invite system. As the error says, it is not intended for interacting with existing users - only new users. If you want to add existing members to a group, you want to do that via the groups page or their user admin page.
What is your process exactly and why are you sending invites to existing users? Is this a problem that actually affects your users or just something you noticed when you yourself clicked on your own invitation link to test it out?
It’s true that this is not the friendliest, most inviting response. @dan what do you think? Can we just send existing users to a specified topic and add them to any groups? I can imagine this being a handy way to reach both existing users and new users at the same time to announce a new topic or start a new group.
If not, we can just change this message to make it clear and to offer a pathway instead of a deadend, e.g. by contacting site staff.
The use case is that I want to send a mass email for a specific event that people have signed up for. In that email, I want to invite people to respond to a particular thread in our community.
The problem is that I have to figure out in advance who is already part of the community and who is not because the link only works for the latter group (the former group gets the error message).
I understand this isn’t your intent for the invite system, but I think it’s unnecessarily limited. If they’re already in the community, add them to the new groups as specified in the invite (if needed) and just direct them to the thread. I don’t see any reason they need to get an error message.
Is this a public topic, or a topic behind category security? If it is a public topic, why not mail people a link to the topic?
That’s what I ended up having to do, but (a) it doesn’t then encourage users to register (which I want) and (b) it doesn’t allow me to add them to a group.
There is automatic encouragement of users to register if they browse the site for a while, e.g.
This is built in and happens automatically.
If you need people to be a member of a group to see the topic due to category / group permissions, that’s a different issue of course.
That only works if they come back. I am intentionally forcing them to register so they get alerted.
Plus it doesn’t solve my grouping issue. And everyone keeps just ignoring my actual suggestion that there’s no reason this link cycle shouldn’t just work for existing users.
Right, we’re just not generally fans of forcing users to do things 
That said, I completely agree the error message could be better – and if the group is required to see the topic, the merging of functionality for existing users can make sense.
Obviously they aren’t actually being forced to do it. If they don’t want to join, fine, but I’m losing people because they visit once and don’t sign up and never get notifications. And these aren’t random people; they’ve signed up for an event that specifically includes using our community for engagement. I’m trying to help them by getting them to sign up the first time using this process.
But the bottom line: the current flow does not work for existing users at all and I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t. Sure, you guys could change the error message, but that negates the whole point of having a link that can not only encourage signups, add them to a group, and send them to a specific topic (functionality you created) when it just … breaks in the middle of that process if you happen to be someone already in the system.
Ah, I see, that was important context I was missing from the original request. So you have a giant list of emails, but you don’t know which of those emails already has an account?
That makes sense, we’ll see if we can improve the invite system to better handle this case.
It seems to me that if a line in the CSV file matches an existing account, they should also get a notification email and directed to the provided topic (if specified), as well as have that existing account added to any groups specified.
Indeed! I highlighted this issue last year soon after the new invite system was rolled out:
I’d love to see it addressed as it is a major hiccough in the quest to bring people into our communities.
Merci @Monte_Kalisch @nathank @downey ! C’est incroyable de savoir que cette idée n’existait pas jusqu’à ce que les membres de la communauté la partagent, merci beaucoup ! Et merci à l’équipe de Discourse pour son soutien. J’espère que cette fonctionnalité spécifique ne sera pas annulée 
avec les nouvelles modifications du système d’invitation.
@tobiaseigen, c’est exactement ce à quoi nous sommes confrontés maintenant avec la page des liens d’invitation qui n’a pas le bouton de connexion dans l’en-tête supérieur pour les utilisateurs existants. Cela confond les utilisateurs existants qui voient un formulaire pour ‘s’inscrire’ plutôt qu’une option ‘si vous avez déjà un compte, veuillez vous connecter’ 
(No 'sign in' option in the accept invitation page, only the signup form is shown - #12 by gassim)
Oui, une correction est en cours, je pense, pour ajouter un petit texte ‘connexion’ en bas de la page, mais ce ne sera pas clair pour les utilisateurs existants (surtout s’ils sont “nouveaux” en premier lieu (c’est-à-dire déjà enregistrés mais peu familiers avec la plateforme) ou s’ils ne sont pas très doués en technologie.) La réaction attendue est que les utilisateurs existants penseront que le lien d’invitation est uniquement destiné aux ‘nouveaux utilisateurs’ pour s’inscrire, ou ils cliqueront sur le logo de la page d’accueil au lieu du petit texte ‘connexion’ à la fin de la page. Le problème est que s’ils ne voient pas la petite option de connexion à la fin du formulaire ‘inscription’, ils ne seront pas redirigés vers le sujet prévu.
Je pense que cacher le bouton de connexion ne sera pas utile pour les utilisateurs existants. Je ne pense pas non plus que les nouveaux utilisateurs considéreront le bouton ‘connexion’ en haut de la page au lieu d’un formulaire ‘inscription’.
Ceci a été résolu - les personnes sont maintenant ajoutées aux groupes de manière transparente, qu’elles soient déjà utilisatrices ou non.
Ce qui reste, c’est l’impossibilité de permettre à des personnes de confiance de contourner le processus d’approbation. C’est actuellement tout ou rien :
