Adding Members in Bulk
Summary
- There are 7 posts — by 3 authors — in this topic.
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Posts with files From File Date Kirsty Wild 2008 May 11 21:08 UTC - Latest post made by Kirsty Wild at 2008 May 11 21:08 UTC
Hi All, An administrator asked if it is possible to add a message to the invitation that is sent to new group members, if the administrator uploads the details of multiple members using a CSV file. No, it is not possible. This is a deliberate omission on our part: while the message could be used to send cordial greetings to many new group members, it can also be used to send spam. It is also possible to send spam with the normal Add a New Member page, but it is awkward to do this, so it is less likely to be abused. Users tend to accept invitations more readily if they are sent a message first, telling them what is about to happen. If you are adding lots of people by CSV, then you have little choice but to send a bulk email to all the new members (using the BCC-field). If you want to write an individual message to each user, then there is little choice but to use the standard Add a New Member page. Kind regards, Michael
Thanks for that. Hey, I just have one further question in relation to this: I am just experimenting with adding bulk members, so I asked a couple of people if I could send them an invite, I uploaded the csv file, and all went well, but the two people ended up receiving two different emails. One received the email saying 'Click on the following link to accept the invitation to join ....'; while the other person got an email saying 'Welcome! You are now a member of ......'. I would like them to get the first email, inviting them to join, rather than email saying they are already joined up (without being given the opportunity to accept an invite!). Any ideas what might be happening here? Thanks heaps, Kirsty Kirsty Wild Researcher Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE) Massey University 09 414 0800 ext. 41357 <email obscured> www.shore.ac.nz
-----Original Message----- From: Michael JasonSmith <email obscured>] Sent: Wednesday, 7 May 2008 11:57 a.m. To: OnlineGroups.Net Administrators Subject: [OGN Admins] Adding Members in Bulk Hi All, An administrator asked if it is possible to add a message to the invitation that is sent to new group members, if the administrator uploads the details of multiple members using a CSV file. No, it is not possible. This is a deliberate omission on our part: while the message could be used to send cordial greetings to many new group members, it can also be used to send spam. It is also possible to send spam with the normal Add a New Member page, but it is awkward to do this, so it is less likely to be abused. Users tend to accept invitations more readily if they are sent a message first, telling them what is about to happen. If you are adding lots of people by CSV, then you have little choice but to send a bulk email to all the new members (using the BCC-field). If you want to write an individual message to each user, then there is little choice but to use the standard Add a New Member page. Kind regards, Michael ----------------------------------------- Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators: http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/4C8LLswym1BNb5oC5XIPNV To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email <email obscured>?Subject=unsubscribe OnlineGroups.Net Administrators is powered by OnlineGroups.Net http://onlinegroups.net
Hi Kirsty, If a user already exists on the system (based on the email address) then both the Add a New Member and Add Members in Bulk pages add the existing user to the group, without creating a new profile. The message returned by both pages states that this has happened, in the latter case the users are grouped by how they have been processed: * Created and added, * Just added (and not created, because they already exist), and * Not added (because they exist and are already a member). That is what happened to you this afternoon. Kind regards, Michael
Kirsty wrote > I would like them to get the first email, inviting > them to join, rather than email saying they are > already joined up (without being given the > opportunity to accept an invite!). We made the decision to "just add" existing site members to groups, rather then invite them to join, because existing site members already have some kind of trust relationship with the site administrator, who would usually only delegate group administration to someone trusted. We know that this is able to be abused, or that mistakes could result in people being added to groups that they don't want to be in, but we judge that this risk is minor. The impact of this is also relatively low, as it is not that hard to leave a group. We could use the same invitation process with site members that we use with new members, but that would make extra work for the existing site members.
Dan
Hi there, Thanks for that. Yeah, I think you really do need the same process for site members as for new members, as group administrators have no way of knowing whether someone already belongs to another group or not, so when they go to send an 'invite' to a site member, they will actually be signing them up without their permission, which is a) totally not something a group administrator wants to be doing, and b)something the person receiving the email is going to be understandly pretty unhappy about. Cheers, Kirsty Kirsty Wild Researcher Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE) Massey University 09 414 0800 ext. 41357 <email obscured> www.shore.ac.nz
-----Original Message----- From: Dan Randow <email obscured>] Sent: Thursday, 8 May 2008 5:15 p.m. To: OnlineGroups.Net Administrators Subject: Re: [OGN Admins] Adding Members in Bulk Kirsty wrote > I would like them to get the first email, inviting them to join, > rather than email saying they are already joined up (without being > given the opportunity to accept an invite!). We made the decision to "just add" existing site members to groups, rather then invite them to join, because existing site members already have some kind of trust relationship with the site administrator, who would usually only delegate group administration to someone trusted. We know that this is able to be abused, or that mistakes could result in people being added to groups that they don't want to be in, but we judge that this risk is minor. The impact of this is also relatively low, as it is not that hard to leave a group. We could use the same invitation process with site members that we use with new members, but that would make extra work for the existing site members. Dan ----------------------------------------- Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators: http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/22aFPcZDUAAarDQccvvaH6 To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email <email obscured>?Subject=unsubscribe OnlineGroups.Net Administrators is powered by OnlineGroups.Net http://onlinegroups.net
Hi Kirsty, You are totally and utterly right: we should not trust the admins with invitations; it also creates an inconstant user experience. I have lodged a bug about this https://svn.iopen.net/projects/groupserver/ticket/277 and set myself the task of implementing it. In the not-too-distant future I hope to be able to tell this group that this bug is closed. Thanks a lot, Michael
Thanks, Michael. Yeah, it's just that group admins (rather than site admins) don't have any way of knowing that they are in fact signing someone up rather than just sending an invite, so it puts them in a bit of an awkward position. Cheers, Kirsty -----Original Message----- From: Michael JasonSmith <email obscured>] Sent: Fri 9/05/2008 5:03 p.m. To: OnlineGroups.Net Administrators Cc: Subject: Re: [OGN Admins] Adding Members in Bulk Hi Kirsty, You are totally and utterly right: we should not trust the admins with invitations; it also creates an inconstant user experience. I have lodged a bug about this https://svn.iopen.net/projects/groupserver/ticket/277 and set myself the task of implementing it. In the not-too-distant future I hope to be able to tell this group that this bug is closed. Thanks a lot, Michael ----------------------------------------- Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators: http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/5t4khhlicV1bSwDYWamnMN To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email <email obscured>?Subject=unsubscribe OnlineGroups.Net Administrators is powered by OnlineGroups.Net http://onlinegroups.net <http://onlinegroups.net/>
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