How to Invite Contacts to Join the Community or a Specific Group


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This is a legacy feature and is not available for new customers that onboarded after May 2022. We plan to rebuild this feature in H1 2023 to make it more reliable, more self-service and allow for more invitation metrics.

A ‘Contact’ is a person who has not joined the community yet, composed of an email address and (optionally) a name.

Contact invites + authentication method support

☑️All SSO methods support

☑️inSided default email authentication support

Platform visibility

☑️Public communities support

☑️Private communities support

?There is currently no support for invite-only communities (i.e. if you set ‘allow registration’ to no for a private community, then invited users will not be able to create an account).

How to invite one or more Contacts to join the Community

 

Make sure you’ve customized the ‘Join the community’ email template to your preference (see the how to below).

  1. Log in to Control as a Community Manager/Administrator.
  2. Go to Control > Users > Contact Overview.
  3. Press ‘Import contacts via csv
  4. Select a file containing the Contacts you want to import (download the template CSV file to see the expected format).
  5. Press ‘Upload file’
  6. Press ‘Send invite to all imported contacts’ and choose ‘Join community.
  7. (Optional) Add a custom invite message (max 500 characters).
  8. Press Send invite via email, and you’re done

How to invite one or more Contacts to join a Group

 

Make sure you’ve customized the ‘Join a group’ email template to your preference (see the how to below).

  1. Log in to Control as a Community Manager/Administrator.
  2. Go to Control > Users > Contact Overview.
  3. Press ‘Import contacts via csv
  4. Select a file containing the Contacts you want to import (download the template CSV file to see the expected format).
  5. Press ‘Upload file’
  6. Press ‘Send invite to all imported contacts’ and choose ‘Join community and a group’, selecting the Group  you want to invite the Contacts to join.
  7. (Optional) Add a custom invite message (max 500 characters).
  8. Press Send invite via email, and you’re done!

After sending an invite, you’ll be redirected to the Contact overview, where you can see the Contacts you imported and their invite status.

Good to know

  • You can import a maximum of 1000 contacts at a time via the CSV import.
  • Invites expire after 30 days

How to customise the phrases shown on the accept invite page for end users

These phrases are shown to end users on the registration/sign up page when accepting an invite.

 
Module Key English translation Description
join.community.invite head You’re almost there. Last step: create an account. Shown as a subheader on the ‘accept invite’ page.
join.community.invite   title {inviter_username} has invited you to {community_title}
 
Shown as the header on the ‘accept invite’ page (when the user is invited to join the community only.
Forum register.join.group.invite.title {inviter_username} has invited you to join {group_name} group Shown as the header on the ‘accept invite’ page (when the user is invited to join the community and group).

 

How to customize the email template for joining a Group

  1. Log into Control as a Community Manager/Administrator.
  2. Go to Control > Email > System Emails.
  3. Edit the ‘Join a group’ email template, and save your changes.

Note: it’s not possible to customize/remove the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

See the following guide for a reference on the email variables for the join a group email.

 

 


20 replies

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How to customize the email template for joining a Group

  1. Log into Control as a Community Manager/Administrator.
  2. Go to Control > Customization > Email Template.
  3. Edit the ‘Join a group’ email template, and save your changes.

Hi @daniel.boon. I just tried to do this but don’t see an Email Template option. I’m logged in as an Administrator. I looked around but didn’t see the Email Template option elsewhere.

Perhaps other community members can advise?

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Thanks for catching this @LPortalupi - we recently moved the email template configuration - it now lives under ‘Control > Emails > System Emails’. I missed this article when updating documentation.

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Thank you so much! 

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My group invitation template contains this:

<a href="{invite_url}">Accept Invitation</a>

But when I click the “Accept Invitation” link in the email, I arrive on our community homepage, not the group landing page.

Is this expected? Thanks!

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Hey @LPortalupi - are you testing whilst logged in? If you’re logged in already (which is unexpected in the case of a user being invited), I believe the redirect won’t work.

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Oooh interesting. Yes, I was logged in. I’ll test again while logged out & let you know if it still happens. Appreciate the quick reply, @daniel.boon!

Is it possible to invite existing community members to groups?

For example if we create a new special-interest group and we have members we think are likely to be interested, it would be nice to specifically invite them to join - is the only option to PM each of them?

Alternatively, I would take being able to just put members into a group (though it seems a tad rude), but I can’t see a way to do that either.

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Hey @triskaideka thanks for the question! That’s not possible yet, although we have an idea open for it.

 

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At the end of the “Join a group” email there is a text:

This invite will expire in 30 days.
Unsubscribe from invitation emails

 

How can I edit and style this text?

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@bjoern_schulze unfortunately this cannot currently be edited/styled as of yet. We made this decision based on the fact that the notification targets a contact who is not yet registered on the community, and opted for enforcing compliance to give the contact an unsubscribe option over customisation - at least for the initial iteration of the feature.

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I must be overlooking something simple. Where is:

  1. Go to Control > Users > Contact Overview.

I have Users then Users Overview or Company Overview. Where is contact overview? 

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Hi @Kgastaldo - we haven’t officially launched this feature yet, so that’s why you couldn’t see it - I’ve enabled it for you so you can get started 🙂.

Hi all,

 

Im trying this for hours and it doesn't work. 

I downloaded the sample csv file, added my name and personal email to test it. I keep getting the error, import failed, use the .csv template from Insided. 

 

Its quite annoying at this point as it should work :(

 

Any tips?

Is it possible to remove a contact?

Is it possible to remove a contact?

Or re invite someone who didn’t see the invite email? I don’t have an option to delete the contact or send the email again. Any workaround?

Is it possible to remove a contact?

Or re invite someone who didn’t see the invite email? I don’t have an option to delete the contact or send the email again. Any workaround?


I am also curious about the answer to this! 

Userlevel 3
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How to invite one or more Contacts to join a Group

 

Make sure you’ve customized the ‘Join a group’ email template to your preference (see the how to below).

  1. Log in to Control as a Community Manager/Administrator.
  2. Go to Control > Users > Contact Overview.

 

I dont have such option in Control? There is only Users > Users Overview.

 

Is it possible to send invitation via email no matter is the Group Public / Private / Hidden?

What if we only need to invite one user to the community? do we really have to create a csv? it would be awesome to have a quick feature where we could quickly create a user and invite them on the fly without any additional steps

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Hey @TAHGP !

I agree with you there, but my lack of a testing instance means I can’t answer this one myself and I’m not seeing any obvious answers from existing threads here. Are you OK if I use my Phone a Friend lifeline? :)

I choose @timcavey !

If it turns out you can’t do that, feel free to suggest this as an Idea. I’d definitely vote for it!

Userlevel 3

I want to re-invite users with expired invitations.  Does their status change to invited on xxx or does it stay on “expired invitation” after I send invite again?  Am I sending repeated invites to users because this status does not update?

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