Post in Group Invitations

2008 Jul 04 02:22 UTC

I have finished work on the new invitation system, but as it is Friday I
will not update OnlineGroups.Net. In summary, it is no longer possible to
add a person to a group through the standard GroupServer interface.
Instead, the user is *invited* to join a group.

Invitations are sent to existing users (and existing users only) in the
following situations.
  * A user is explicitly invited to join the group using the new Invite
    User interface.
  * A user is explicitly invited to join the group using the updated
    Invite Site Members to Join a Group interface.
  * A user is added using the Add a New Member interface, but the email
    address already belongs to an existing user.
  * A user is added using the Add New Members in Bulk interface, but the
    email address already belongs to an existing user.

The invitation email message contains a single link. When the user clicks
on the link, he or she is logged in and taken to the Respond to
Invitations page, which lists all the current invitations for the user,
who made the invitation, and when. There the user can accept or decline
each invitation. The person who invited the user is sent a message stating
what the user did; if the user accepts the invitation the participation
coach for the group is sent a message stating that the user has joined the
group.

I also took the opportunity to enhance sign-up, so the participation coach
is informed when a person signs up and joins a group using the Web, and
when a new user responds to the invitation to join a group. The only time
a participation coach is *not* informed of a someone joining a group is
when someone subscribes by email.

(We would love it if you could configure who received the join-notification
messages, but it turns out to be a non-trivial problem, for now.)