# What is a staged user?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [January 29, 2019, 4:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843 "2019-01-29T16:45:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Kyle\_Risi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Kyle_Risi)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2019, 4:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/1 "2019-01-29T16:45:25Z")
I am struggling to find any resource on **what a staged user is** , what makes them different from a regular user and how this is beneficial to the community, the admin or the stages user themselves.
What is/are staged users? š
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### Author:  [@maja](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maja)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2019, 4:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/2 "2019-01-29T16:54:15Z")
> [@Understanding user statuses, roles, and permissions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-user-statuses-roles-and-permissions/35171/1):
>
> ### Staged
>
> A special placeholder account which is created automatically by the system for email integration
>
> - No email digests are ever sent
> - Automatically watches all messages it participates in and receives notifications of replies
> - May reply via email to notifications
> - Username and Name are automatically picked
> - Account may still register with the same email and ātake overā the staged account.
> - Forgot password will do nothing ā¦when you attempt to send a password reset to a staged account
You can find more about other user states here:
> [@Understanding user statuses, roles, and permissions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/description-of-various-user-states-in-discourse/35171):
>
> bookmark This is a guide for understanding the various user statuses, roles, and permissions within Discourse, including how they affect user capabilities and how they are stored in the database. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator Discourse has many built-in user statuses, roles, and permissions. These statuses and roles can be seen for a given user when viewing their profile from the usersā section of the admin dashboard: Permiā¦
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### Author:  [@Kyle\_Risi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Kyle_Risi)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/3 "2019-01-29T17:04:01Z")
Hi Maja,
I did read this page, but it didnāt make much sense to me regarding the applications of staged users.
Am I correct in assuming you donāt set up a stage user?
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2019, 5:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/4 "2019-01-29T17:20:19Z")
A very oversimplified explanation of a staged user:
A user that probably exists in real life but has never registered to your site but has somehow managed to create a topic (usually through the email in option)
The only use case for a staged user that Iām aware of is when someone has an email ID which is set up in discourse to allow topics in email and allowed the creation of a staged user account for any emails that do not have an account associated with discourse.
The benefit it has is that people who want to create a topic but donāt have an account can still send in their topics without going through the process of registering an account and then creating a topic.
Use case 1: anonymous posting from throwaway email (not sure how itāll work but still)
Use case 2: creating a support email and using discourse to keep track of it (we use it)
Use case 3: Mailing list (again, Not sure)
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/5 "2019-01-29T21:27:22Z")
> [@Kyle\_Risi](#):
>
> Am I correct in assuming you donāt set up a stage user?
If the `enable staged users` and the `email in` Site Settings are enabled on your forum, staged users are created automatically when they send an email to create a topic on your forum. For details about the `email in` Site Setting, see: [Configuring incoming email to create new topics or group messages](https://meta.discourse.org/t/start-a-new-topic-via-email-e-mail/62977).
On the meta forum, the Discourse team has enabled incoming emails to be posted a group. When emails are sent to our groupās incoming email address, staged users are created.
The benefit of this is that it allows the whole Discourse team to participate in answering support requests directly from Discourse. This lets us use Discourse tools to manage support requests - we can assign tasks to members of the team, tag messages to allow us to sort them later, search messages with the `in:private` search filter, communicate privately within messages if we have questions that need to be answered by another team memberā¦ Itās a huge improvement over trying to handle communication through an email client.
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### Author:  [@kimardenmiller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kimardenmiller)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2020, 6:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/6 "2020-06-01T18:28:07Z")
We use Staged Users extensively, but in a way I donāt think has been mentioned hereā¦
We SEND PMs to new potential users, creating a Staged User under that email address. We can then turn the PM into a Topic, which allows any number of regular users to interact with that Staged User by reply to that topic.
That said, we do not like how Discourse creates staged users for any ccād party on regular replies to Topics and PMs. Thatās a total pain. Restated: Outbound Staged User creation good, inbound bad.
QUESTION: How can we turn that behavior off, while preserving our ability to SEND and create Staged Users? Will turning off `enable staged users` do the trick?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2020, 7:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/7 "2020-06-02T07:11:23Z")
We donāt have that level of fidelity at the moment, it would require a plugin.
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### Author:  [@kimardenmiller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kimardenmiller)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/8 "2020-06-02T15:29:55Z")
So to be clear, I assume you mean that turning off `enable staged users` would prevent us from sending to and receiving from non-user email addresses in PMs.
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### Author:  [@bquast](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bquast)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2023, 12:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/9 "2023-02-26T12:57:34Z")
Very interesting @kimardenmiller.
Could you please explain a bit how do you PM a potential user?
Thank you
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### Author:  [@kimardenmiller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kimardenmiller)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2023, 1:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/10 "2023-02-26T13:40:29Z")
I think you can from the Message Center?
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### Author:  [@bquast](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bquast)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/11 "2023-02-26T13:46:56Z")
Sorry, I tried to add an email address the way I would add a username to a message, but it wonāt accept it.
How exactly should I add the email address?
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### Author:  [@kimardenmiller](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kimardenmiller)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/12 "2023-02-26T14:07:43Z")
Donāt have access to the site right now, but it seems as if there might be a setting that allows you to just add an email address at the PM window.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2023, 4:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-a-staged-user/107843/13 "2023-04-29T16:02:14Z")