INVITE SYSTEM
The Invite system can be used to send out emails to invite people to use your site. This allows them to accept the invite and set up their own password.
Use Case Examples
1. Ecommerce Migrations
Use this when migrating users from another system to REC so that you can set up new, secure passwords as the passwords on the old system can't be imported due to differences in encryption methods which will then ensure passwords are on the latest level of encryption provided in our system.
Handling Guest Checkout Users
When importing users, consider setting the status column to part-approved to allow the user to use the guest checkout system without a password, rather than accept an invite and have to enter a password.
2. Prospecting & Premium Content
You can use this in the CMS version to invite a list of prospects to join the site to see premium content pages hidden behind a login, as set up in Page Manager permissions.
3. Setting Up New Admins
Rather than setting up a new admin's password when you add them and then sharing it via email or Skype (which is less secure), add them without a password and then send them an invite so they can set up their own password instead.
4. Performing User Password Resets.
Send out invites to users who have forgotten their passwords so they can reset them privately.
How It Works
- Invitees need to be manually added or imported into the system as users as follows:
- Add/edit in User Manager on the user record > Status & levels > tick Send Invite Email which will automatically send the invite email on Save
- Import users via the Import system, ensuring the CSV contains a new invited column which is set to 1. No email is sent yet.
- Send invites via the Invitations program
- This sends an invite email to all imported users
- This then sets the invited field to a 2 in the INVITE column, which you can then see if you export the data
- Invitees accept the invite and can then set their own password which takes them to the User Home screen (or the Admin Console for Admin users)
- If invitees fail to accept the invite then when they try to login a message is displayed to say they need to accept the email invite that was sent to them and it automatically re-sends the invite email to them
Setting Up The Invite Email
1. Set up the following site definitions with the email subject and other messages:
| Site Define | Value (visible to the user) | Description |
| EMAIL_USER_INVITE_SUBJECT | You're invited to join our site. | Subject line of email sent when user invited to site |
| USER_INVITE_NOT_YET_ACCEPTED | You have been sent an invite to join our site! Please check your inbox or spam folder. Contact us for further assistance. | Message shown on login page when invite not yet accepted |
| ENTER_NEW_PASSWORD | Before you can continue, please set a new password: | Text for entering a new password after login with forgot password / invite system |
2. Set up your content to go into the body of the email via Page Manager on the system page email_user_invite
Make sure to test everything prior to using the system for sending live invites.
SENDING INVITES TO IMPORTED USERS
If you are importing users to send invites out en masse, then first export a user file via the Export System so you have the column headings.
To open the file correctly, use UTF-8 as the encoding, tick for tab separation and untick any others that are ticked., and set double quotes for text delimiter. When prompted to save the file, click to continue to save in the current format. We normally use Libre Office for this, but this should work with other spreadsheets as long as you use the above settings.
Aside from filling out the normal user details, important columns to fill out are:
- invited = 1 (0=do not send invite, 1=ready to send invite to, 2=invite already sent)
- user_activated = 0 or blank (1=the user has confirmed via email)
- status = part-approved (approved, part-approved and suspended)
Make sure you do a test import prior to go live day and check everything has worked as expected.