Project members and their roles

A project can succeed or fail depending on the character of the community formed by its members. This is true regardless of the project being private or public. It is the members who contribute their effort and time (for whatever compensation) to realize the project's ideas and goals. Accordingly, because the project members are so important to the eventual success of the project, it is important that the Project owner clearly establish the rules and guidelines determining member participation, including their roles, and articulate what they can expect from the project.

Viewing project members

Project members are often added at the time the project is created. However, you can invite and add new members at any time by going to your Project home page and clicking on the Membership link. The following discussion first goes through the procedure of inviting someone to be a member of your project, then looks at how to add a new member.

Inviting new members

Once in the Membership page, clicking on the Invite new members link allows you to send an invitation to a prospective member. Click on the link, and a new page opens with fields allowing you to specify the e-mail address or addresses of the persons you wish to invite, and an invitation message. There are two parts to this message. The first, which you compose here, should be in plain text only (HTML is not supported), and should be a greeting and welcoming message. You can, depending on your needs, stipulate here what role you would prefer the invitee to take. There is time later, both for the invitee and for you, as Project owner, to change the member's role.

The second part of the invitation message is the project description which you composed at the time the project was created. If you added several e-mail addresses in the People to invite field, each will receive the same message, so the welcoming message should be inclusive enough to accommodate the interests of everyone you have invited.

You can invite anyone with a valid email address to be a member of your project. They need not, at the time of invitation, already be registered users. However, those you invite who are not registered users are prompted to register on the site as part of viewing your project information.

Note:The ability to invite new users is controlled by the Allow User Join option in the Access policy for your domain. Contact your domain administrator if you are unable to invite new users.

Adding new members

Users you have approved for project membership (whether by your invitation or their request), are listed by username on the Membership page along with boxes indicating their role or roles (project members may hold more than one role). As Project owner, you can change those roles by checking the box by the role name and then clicking on Revoke checked roles button.

If you wish to add a registered user without sending an invitation:

1. Click on the Add new member/role link. (This takes you to the Add new member/role page, where all registered user groups and users are listed with empty boxes to the left of their usernames. User groups also include a brief description of the group; individual registered users are listed by both username and full name. Each username links to the user's profile, so you can learn something about that user.)
2. Add the the user by checking the Add box.
3. Select multiple users to grant roles, or use the Mass add text box to enter several usernames at once. When using mass add, you can only grant project roles using user IDs.

To add multiple users through Mass add:

1. Enter the usernames of the of the users you wish to add in the Mass Add field. You should remember that only usernames or IDs that are unique to an individual or user can be used in the Mass Add field. The system will not accept full names or email addresses. This is to avoid confusion in granting roles to a user where multiple users have the same full name.
2. Select the role you wish to grant in the Grant there roles to all designed users box.
3. Click on the Grant roles button.

You can add as many users to your project as you wish. Because every member in a project must have a role, when you add someone to your project you must, at the same time, specify a role. Accordingly, the Grant these roles to all designated users check box lists all available roles. Once you have selected the user(s) you want and the appropriate role(s), click on the Grant roles button. Those users will be added to your project with the roles you have stipulated.

If you wish to return to the Membership page immediately after granting roles, select the Done granting roles check box before clicking the Grant roles button.

Editing member roles

You can change a project member's roles by revoking one or more of them and adding new ones. Roles are revoked directly from the member list on the Membership page.

To revoke an existing role:

1. Check the box adjacent to the role.
2. Then click the Revoke checked roles button.

To grant new roles:

1. Navigate to the Add new member/role page.
2. Select the member you wish to grant the new role by checking the box next to his or her username.
3. Next, select the roles you wish to grant from the Grant these roles to all designated users box.
4. Click the Grant roles button

Member requests

A member might request a new role at any time. If someone has requested membership in your project, or an existing member has requested a new role, the Requests pending approval table will appear on the Membership page. You can approve, defer, or disapprove these requests by selecting the appropriate radio button in the Operations column of this table. If you are disapproving a request, you should enter a comment explaining why in the Reason for role disapproval text box. This comment will be included in an email to the user notifying him or her that the request was denied. When you are finished, click the Submit button. The change is effective immediately.