This article describes how to create and manage a Request to Join community.

TIP: If you are a community user who wants to learn how to join a community of this type, see How to Join a Request to Join Community.

Your Higher Logic site likely comprises numerous individual communities, each intended for a specific audience, a product offering, or a topic of interest. An important aspect of each community is how membership into it is obtained, which is controlled by its join permission.

To learn about Higher Logic's join permissions for communities, see Understand Community Permissions.

Some communities are more "open," and require only that users to be logged in to join. Others are more "private," and might have additional join requirements in order to limit who can join — and this practice might be for very good reasons, such as security.

NOTE: All communities, irrespective of any unique join requirements, do require users to have created an account and to be logged in to join.

Request to Join: a private community

A Request to Join community is one such "private" community in which membership is obtained as follows:

A community user must manually submit a "join" request.
A Super Admin or Community Admin must approve the request (requests can also be rejected).
Requests are placed in a queue and managed per community by Super Admins and that community's Community Admins.

Due to their nature, Request to Join communities are intended for Higher Logic-managed communities, not AMS-managed communities.

The differences are described in Understand How Communities Are Managed.

Create a Request to Join community

You can create a Request to Join community:

when you create a new community (choose Request to Join from the Join Permissions dropdown; see Create and Manage Your Communities);
by editing an existing community on the Communities > List page and changing it's Join Permissions setting in the Preview Panel); or
by navigating to an existing community's Edit Community Settings page and changing the Who can join? setting to Request to Join (see Manage Community Settings).

CAUTION: If an existing community's join permission is changed to Request to Join, all pending invitations will be permanently lost.

Similarly, if switching a Request to Join community's join permission, all pending join requests will be permanently lost. In this scenario, you should notify impacted users that the process has changed and how they can join the community.

After you have created a Request to Join community or changed the join permissions of an existing community, navigate to the All Communities page and verify that the community has the Request to Join button.

Community Type

If you plan to have multiple Request to Join communities, you may find it helpful to have a Community Type dedicated to this join permission. While not required, it is recommended from an organizational perspective to group specific types of communities by Community Types.

To learn more about Community Types, see Community Types.

Manage join requests

Let's take a look at how to manage the join requests you receive with this type of community.

All join requests are placed in a queue that Community Admins and Super Admins can manage (either approve or reject them). Refer to Manage the requests, below.
Community Admins (only) can be sent a notification email message letting them know about new join requests. Refer to Community Admin notifications, below.

NOTE: It's important that Admins monitor this queue to ensure that join requests are handled as quickly as possible. Especially, consider that a request from a user reflects some interest in your community; return the compliment by not making them wait for your approval — they might lose interest.

Community Admin notifications

In a Request to Join community:

Community Admins can be sent a notification when there is a new join request from a user.
Community Admins can self-manage these notifications in the community's Settings.

NOTE: The notifications and new Settings that are described in this section are unique to Request to Join communities and are applicable only to them. These features are not germane to or available in non-Request to Join communities.

Feature highlights

This join-request notification feature is unique to Community Admins.

The join-request notification feature is enabled by default for all Community Admins, but Community Admins can opt out (described in Manage the feature, below).
The join-request notification is a Real Time email message that gets sent to all Community Admins of the Request to Join community, except those who have opted out.
- The notification message is a preconfigured "system" email message that is not configurable.
Those who are Community Admins for multiple Request to Join communities can manage their own notifications, per community.
The notification message prompts Community Admins to review and act on the join request (in the respective community's Settings > Members page, as described in the Manage the requests section).

Manage the notifications

This feature adds a control to Request to Join communities' Settings:

The default setting for all Community Admins of the community is Real Time; meaning a notification is immediately triggered when a request is submitted.
Community Admins of these communities can click the Real Time dropdown and select No Email if they want to opt out of receiving the join-request notifications.

NOTE: If a community has multiple Community Admins, Higher Logic recommends that the notifications be sent to at least one of them. This feature is designed to assist Community Admins in efficiently managing the join-request review process. The notifications avoid them having to periodically check the queue for new requests.

Manage the join requests

A community's Settings menu displays a number indicating that new requests are in the queue. To access this queue:

Click Settings > Members.

On the resulting page, click the Requests tab to access the list of all pending requests.

Each request has the requestor's name and email address, a message stating why they should be allowed to join, and the submission date.

Click Approve or Reject to grant or deny a user access.

An email message is sent to the requestor, notifying them of the "decision." This is sent to their profile inbox in the community and their personal email account.

Rejected join requests

If you reject a request, you must include an explanation.

By default, your explanation remains "internal."
However, you can check the box shown below to include your explanation in the rejection notification that is sent to the user.

The Rejected queue

Each request that is rejected is moved to the Rejected queue for historical purposes. Super Admins and Community Admins can review details about rejected requests:

the requesting user,
the request date,
the Admin who rejected the request, and
the rejection reason.

Request to Join email templates

As mentioned earlier, email notifications are sent to a user's profile inbox and the personal email address they've set to receive community emails. Users receive these notifications when:

they submit a request to join (their request is pending) and
when their request is approved or rejected.

Each of these events has an associated email template you can update, if the default message is not to your liking or you simply want a more organizationally branded or customized look or tone.

To update these email templates:

In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

Navigate to Email > Email Management > Email Templates.
Click the Category dropdown and select Community Messages. The Request to Join email templates are:

- Request to Join Approved
- Request to Join Pending
- Request to Join Rejected

Click the Edit button to the right of a template to edit it.

Manually add members

By design, users have to express interest in a Request to Join community and voluntarily request membership in that community.

Super Admins and Community Admins cannot invite users to join a Request to Join community.

In the image below, the Add or Invite Others button does not display in the Settings menu for the Request to Join community.

However, Community Admins and Super Admins can add users to Request to Join communities.

Users can be added to a Request to Join community:

via Automation Rules and
manually, as described below.

To manually add a user:

In the Request to Join community, click Settings > Members.
On the Members tab, click the Add Member button in the upper right.

On the dialog, type the name or email address of the user you want to add.

- You must type at least three characters to start displaying matching names/email addresses.
- The more characters you type, the more focused the results.
- Click an X to remove a user from the list.
- You can add a maximum of ten (10) users.

When you've got all the users you want, click Add.

The selected users are immediately added to the Request to Join community as members.

NOTE: New members are not automatically notified that they've been added to the community. Consider sending a message to notify them so they can visit, explore, and start engaging with their new community.

TIP: Review the list on the Members tab and verify the new members.

The links below were referenced in this article and are repeated here for convenience. To learn about:

managing your various communities, see Create and Manage Your Communities.
managing the settings for a community, see Manage Community Settings.
Community Types, see Community Types.

Request to Join Communities