gs.group.member.add.base

Add a member to a GroupServer Group

Author:	Michael JasonSmith
Contact:	Michael JasonSmith <mpj17@onlinegroups.net>
Date:	2015-03-03
Organization:	GroupServer.org
Copyright:	This document is licensed under a `Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License`_ by OnlineGroups.net.

Introduction

This product provides the "just add" system for GroupServer. Normally people become participants by actively accepting an invitation [1], signing up [2], or joining a group [3]. Generally these methods are better at getting people into a group than the Add Form. People who are added have no password, so they cannot use any of the features on the Web. They are added are dependent on the administrator for all help. In addition all the help pages, all the email footers, and most of the notifications are written assuming that the member can log in.

Add Form

The Add form is very similar to the Invite a New Member form. It inherits much of the functionality from the Invite system. Like the Invite system, it requires two email addresses: a From address and a To address. The latter is used as the email address of the new member. All the required profile fields have to be filled out, also. There are three possible outcomes from submitting the Add form.

New Profile:

If the email address is unrecognised then a new profile is created, the member is added to the group, and he or she receives the Welcome notification.

Existing Profile:

If the email address already belongs to an existing profile, and that participant is not a member of the group, then he or she is joined to the group and sent the standard Welcome notification from gs.group.member.join [3]. The (somewhat vein) hope is that the participant would have set a password and is able to log in by the time the new member is added to a second group.

Existing Member:

If the email address already belongs to an existing group member then no action is taken.

The Email delivery settings selector is not present on the Add form. This is because the new member cannot login [4], so he or she generally cannot view the posts on the web, which is necessary for Web only and the Topic digest options to work [5].

Welcome Notification

The Welcome notification sent from this product contains no links to the group or the profile of the member. This is because generally the member cannot view anything without logging in [4], and the member is unable to log in without a password.

The notification does

• Welcome the new member,
• State that the new member will get email,
• Tell the new member how to post,
• Contain a Reset password link, and
• Contain an Unsubscribe mailto.

Resources

• Code repository: https://github.com/groupserver/gs.group.member.add.base/
• Translations: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/gs-group-member-add-base/
• Questions and comments to http://groupserver.org/groups/development
• Report bugs at https://redmine.iopen.net/projects/groupserver

[1]	See <https://github.com/groupserver/gs.group.member.invite>

[2]	See <https://github.com/groupserver/gs.group.member.signup>

[3]	(1, 2) See <https://github.com/groupserver/gs.group.member.join>

[4]	(1, 2) In the experience of OnlineGroups.Net almost all groups are secret, with the majority of the remainder being private. The public groups are enough of an exception that we do not have to worry about them.

[5]	In the corner-case of someone being added to a public group and needing Web only or Digest then the administrator can change the email settings of the new member after adding them.