All posts in the topic Adding Members in Bulk (Short link)
Summary
- There are 7 posts — by 3 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Kirsty Wild at 2008 May 11 21:08 UTC
| From | File | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Kirsty Wild | 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
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.
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
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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