[S.G.]

<p data-pm-slice=”1 1 []”>Hi all,</p>
<p data-pm-slice=”1 1 []”>We tried to invite a user to a group via email, but get error “member already in OL” (see screenshot). This means faculty can’t invite existing OL members to courses via email.

The only alternative is to add them one by one by searching for their username.

Is this expected? I tested this on City Tech’s OL by inviting Bree to a group by email, and did not get the error (see screenshot).</p>
<p data-pm-slice=”1 1 []”>Knowing that the BMCC OL uses an SSO, unlike CT, is this functionality possible? We’re concerned about the experience for faculty inviting dozens of students to join courses, once a large percentage of our student body has already joined the OL, along with large campus groups and clubs who may even need to invite hundreds of users.

Thank you!</p>

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[Bree]

Hi Syelle,

The email address you used to test invites on the City Tech OpenLab is not the one associated with my account, so what you did there was send an invite to join the OpenLab with that email. If you go to ‘Invite new members by email’ and use the email associated with my account, you will get the same error.

However, you should still be able to invite existing members, but search by email instead of username.  So, you’d go to the group > Membership > Invite New Members, and in the first section on that page, ‘Search for community members to invite to your group’, you can enter an existing member’s email address and you’ll see their display name appear.

See, for example, in the attached screenshot. (This is a test account on our dev site, associated with the email address I’ve begun typing.)

We do also have some new functionality on the City Tech OpenLab where faculty can add a list of students via email (we have a post about it, if you’re interested.) This is the first semester we’re really testing in out on the OpenLab, but if it’s working well we could look into adding it to CBOX OpenLab in the future.

I hope this helps!

Bree

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[S.G.]

Thanks, Bree–see below:

The email address you used to test invites on the City Tech OpenLab is not the one associated with my account, so what you did there was send an invite to join the OpenLab with that email. If you go to ‘Invite new members by email’ and use the email associated with my account, you will get the same error.

Okay, sorry about that.

However, you should still be able to invite existing members, but search by email instead of username.  So, you’d go to the group > Membership > Invite New Members, and in the first section on that page, ‘Search for community members to invite to your group’, you can enter an existing member’s email address and you’ll see their display name appear…

I’m sorry I didn’t clarify that we do know that we can search for existing users to invite, by email address, but it wouldn’t solve the issue, because it is still looking up users one at a time. The need is for bulk-inviting existing users, not inviting by email per se.

We do also have some new functionality on the City Tech OpenLab where faculty can add a list of students via email (we have a post about it, if you’re interested.) This is the first semester we’re really testing in out on the OpenLab, but if it’s working well we could look into adding it to CBOX OpenLab in the future.

This does looks like a great solution, thanks for lettings us know. I’ll run the idea by the team. Hope it goes well!

[Ed Beck]

Hi Bree!

Just wanted to chime in and say that looks like a really nice feature in development.

I like that it makes sure that the instructor doesn’t need to know who has an account or not, they can just bulk add a list of students, and then CBOX separates them into the two groups. “These users already have an account and are all set” “these users need to setup their openlab accounts still, do you want to add anything custom to the email message” and they can send it right off.

Ed

[Ryan Seslow]

Super helpful thread here! Thank you!

[Bree]

Hi Syelle and Ed,

Thanks for the additional feedback, and good to know that the bulk adding feature would be helpful!

I’ll be sure to keep you updated as we look towards bringing this functionality to CBOX OpenLab.

Bree 🙂

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