How do people know I've invited them to join a secret group?

[#1]

Hi ACS Network!

I've established a secret group so our local section can share documents concerning private business. I invited a number of people, but only about half have accepted the invitation and logged in.

Q: How do they know they've been invited? How do they accept the invitation?

I thought they'd get an invite in their Inbox or Actions folder, but I looked over the shoulder of one of my invitees, and there wasn't anything there.

Please help! For most of our board, this is their first time using the ACS Network for something substantive.

Thanks. - Josh

[DonivanPorterfie]

Josh,

I haven't' needed to do a secret group so I'm presuming what I see for other forms of groups below will work for the secret one's as well.

If your the manager of the group you should see over to the right hand side of the Overview, Content, People, Reports, Calendar tabs a "Manager" link that would allow you to see who are members as well as send out invitations to one or many as the need arises.

Since the mentioned group is secret it would seem that expected members would have to join through those e-mail invitations instead of the more general option of searching out the group directly from within the Network.

Donivan

[Joshkurutz]

Donivan,

Thanks for your taking time from your Thanksgiving to respond.

I'm still a bit in the dark. Are you saying that the recipient gets notified by email? If so, what does the message say? If they get a link in their email, where does it tell them to go? Once they log in to the ACS Network, does the invitation appear in their Inbox? Or their Actions folder?

I know what's going on from the admin/inviter perspective, but I don't know what the invitee's experience is.

So  you know, I'm a site admin for Agilent's Spinsights community, which also runs on Jive. The ACS has done a lot of customizing, and the site's mechanisms behave differently that what one would experience if it used Jive straight out of the box. In our community, if you get invited to a secret group, you get an email announcing that you've been invited, and to accept the invitation you have to log in, go to your Actions folder, and click "Accept" on the invitation "action item":

I recently looked over the shoulder of one of my ACS Network invitees, and they didn't get this item in their Actions folder. I think they had to navigate to the secret group and click "Accept" there. Events moved rather quickly that day, and I'm having a hard time getting my invitees to tell me their experiences getting invited and accepting the invitation. So that's why I'm inquiring here - to see how ACS has set up their custom process.

I need to know what ACS' custom process is so I can provide instructions to my invitees - telling them what to expect. Can you please shed a little more light on the subject?

Thanks. - Josh

[DonivanPorterfie]

Josh,

Through the group manage menu I invite folks to join the groups I manage.  They get a message such as the following via e-mail.  For the example below I used an e-mail address that wasn't yet previously used in the ACS Network.  If I had invited someone already a member of the ACS Network I'm guessing the message content may have been a bit different.

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Hi, Come join me in the **** group in the ACS Network.

________________________________________

To join this ACS Network group, you will need to login at www.acs.org/network using your ACS ID. If you do not have an ACS ID, you may register on the login page. It is easy to register for an ACS ID (and you do not need to be an ACS member).

Email: ****

Token: ****

Once you complete the registration process, you can follow this link to join the group:

https://communities.acs.org/groups/****

Thanks!

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Donivan

[DonivanPorterfie]

Josh,

I'd note that you can re-send those invitations through the group manage function in the ACS Network.  That is good for those that initially missed or didn't get the invitation initially.

Also that you can see who has acted upon the invitation and who has not.

Donivan

[Joshkurutz]

Thanks, Donivan, this is very helpful.

[Joshkurutz]

I actually had some trouble with this function. For a number of people, I tried re-sending them invites, and I'd get a vague error message, saying something like "A problem was encountered" (no path to resolution was proposed).

I hypothesized that the problem arose because I'd invited them in the summertime, before the Network's software upgrade, and was re-sending afterwards. So I then Deleted their invitations and sent them fresh ones. Unfortunately, some people said they got disappointing messages (in either their Inbox or Actions folder, and maybe by email) saying "Josh Kurutz has rescinded your invitation", but then they didn't get the positive messages for the new invitations, which I could clearly see had been sent in my manager's window.

I might try re-sending again and emailing outside the network to avoid confusion.

Thanks for your help! - Josh

[ChrisbbSchmidt]

Just a reminder, once you invite a person to a secret group, the system knows to allow these folks into the group. The actual email that the system sends out has nothing special in it, so once invited, you can send a regular email with a link and as long as the user is recognized properly, they should be able to get in.

We sometimes see problems when users have accounts that have a different email address than the one used in the initial invitation. The email is the unique identifier so be sure that the correct email address is used.