GI-Joe is experiencing an error when trying to invite members to private messages, specifically with older messages. The error message reads “Sorry, that user can’t be invited.” This issue started around September 3rd and occurs even when the username is correct.
Reproduction Steps and Observations
The issue is not related to the user’s ability to be added to other messages, as they can be added successfully.
The problem seems to occur with messages that have 20+ members already.
GI-Joe has noticed inconsistencies in the error, including:
Some messages accepting invitations for some members but not others.
Rejected members being able to be invited to other messages.
The issue is not related to the max allowed message recipients setting, as GI-Joe has messages with over 100 members.
Potential Solutions and Questions
Stephen suggested using a private category instead of personal messages for sharing topics with users.
Codinghorror asked if there are any relevant errors in the /logs when logged in as an admin, but GI-Joe reported no relevant errors.
Codinghorror also asked for clarification on the reproduction steps, specifically whether the issue only occurs with old PMs or not.
I’ve been frequently getting this error message the past 3-6 days.
It must have been due to a recent update.
It happens with old messages.
Here is the scenario:
We have some sort of a guideline shared via private messages with members if they’re interested in something. These kind of messages are evergreen and old. We’ve been adding members frequently to these messages.
We have few of these that we use the invite feature regularly on daily basis.
We’ve 10x checked the problem and the username is fine. I can actually add him to other messages just fine.
I had to copy the same message and send it to the user. It works just fine.
I could guess this happens with multiple old messages [Same error. Everything checked.] but not with newer group messages.
Would you like to make a screenshot of anything in particular that could help you debug this error?
Just how many people do you have invited to these messages?
If you want to share topics with users the solution is nearly always to do so using a private category, rather than a Personal Message. Create a category, secured by a group. You can give the group see or reply/see permissions so that they can’t create new topics in said category.
max allowed message recipients used to default to 100 recipients, but since 2017 the default has been 30. Do either of those numbers sound plausible?
A particular message I’m having this error with is 1-2 weeks old (I was kinda referring to the date this has started occurring. It was ~ the 3rd of September. I thought it could be due to a particular update or so. “Old or new message” in relation to the 1st day I’ve encountered the error.)
I have messages that have easily crossed a hundred member.
The message that I’m currently having errors with most of the time, already has 45 members invited. Inviting members to this message was a daily task and I’ve got this error suddenly and persisted.
