# Inviting people to your organization

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/inviting-people

Everybody who works on your festivals gets there the same way: you invite their
email address, they accept, and from that moment they are on your People list.
This guide covers the invitation dialog, the **Pending invitations** tab, and
what the person on the other end receives.

Only an owner or an org admin can invite anybody. See
[Organization settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md#who-can-open-it).

## Where to start

**+ Invite people** sits in three places, and all three open the same dialog:

- top right of the toolbar on the **People** tab;
- in the empty state, when there is nobody else in the organization yet;
- top right of the **Pending invitations** tab.

## The dialog

Under the heading, one line about what you are about to do:

> They get an email with a link that expires in 14 days. Access starts the
> moment they accept.

### 1. Email addresses

One box. **Separate several addresses with commas** — semicolons and plain
spaces work too, so a list pasted out of another program usually just works.

- Addresses are **lowercased and de-duplicated** before anything is sent, so
  the same address twice, in any capitalisation, is one invitation.
- **Nothing is sent until every address is valid.** A typo in the third address
  does not leave two invitations behind; the dialog stays open and names the
  offender.

### 2. Organization role

Three cards — **Owner**, **Org admin**, **Member** — with a sentence each.
Member is chosen for you.

- **Only an owner sees the Owner card.** An org admin cannot invite somebody as
  an owner.
- **There is no Finance card.** That role is hidden until billing ships.

Everybody in one batch gets the same role. Send two batches if two people need
different ones.

### 3. Festival access

This is where a **Member** is told which festivals they may work on, and at
what [festival role](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md#the-four-festival-roles).

- **Add festival** adds a row: a festival menu and a role menu. New rows start
  at **Viewer**, the safest role, so nobody is granted more than you meant by
  leaving a menu alone. The ✕ removes a row.
- With no rows: "No festival access yet. They will be able to sign in and see
  the organization, nothing more." That is a real option — you can invite
  somebody now and grant access later.
- **Choosing Owner or Org admin replaces this whole section** with a note:
  "This role reaches all 8 festivals automatically. Per-festival rows do not
  apply." There is nothing to fill in, because those roles reach everything
  already.

**Do not name the same festival on two rows.** Each new row starts on a
festival you have not used, but the menus will let you point two rows at the
same one, and an invitation carrying a festival twice fails when the person
tries to accept it — they get "this invitation link is no longer valid" and
cannot get in. If that has happened, invite the same address again from this
dialog: sending replaces the invitation's festival list along with its link.

### 4. Send

The footer counts what you are about to do — "3 invitations, 2 festivals" —
next to **Send invitation**.

On success the dialog closes, **the screen moves to the Pending invitations
tab** (where your new rows now are), and a line at the bottom reports what
happened: "2 invitations sent, 1 resent."

## What the invitee receives

An email from FilmScorecard, with your organization's
[support address](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md#organization-profile) as the
reply-to when you have set one:

> **You are invited to join Northern Lights Festival**
>
> You have been invited to join Northern Lights Festival on FilmScorecard.
>
> Your organization role: Member.
>
> Accept the invitation here:
> *a link*
>
> This invitation expires in 14 days. If you were not expecting it, you can
> ignore this message.

**The emails are sent in the background.** The row appears on Pending
invitations immediately; the message follows a moment later. A message that
fails to leave does not change anything else — the row is marked **Failed** and
**Resend invitation** is the retry.

What the link opens, and what accepting involves, is described in
[Your organization invitation](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-organization-invitation.md) — the guide
to send somebody who asks what the email was.

## When the address is already known

FilmScorecard compares each address against your organization before sending,
ignoring capitalisation:

| Where they stand | What sending does |
| --- | --- |
| **Already in the organization** | **Nothing is sent at all.** The dialog stays open and names them: "ada@example.com is already in this organization." Take that address out and send again. |
| **Already invited, not yet accepted** | Treated as a **resend**: a new link, a fresh 14 days, and the role and festival rows you have just chosen replace the old ones. **The link in the earlier email stops working.** |
| **Not known** | A new invitation. |

## If the dialog refuses

It stays open with the message where it belongs — under the address box, or in
a block at the top of the dialog — so you never lose what you typed.

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| Enter at least one valid email address. | The box is empty, or holds only separators. |
| Enter an address like name@festival.org. "bogus@" is not one. | The first address that is not one is named. **Nothing was sent** — fix it and send again. |
| ada@example.com is already in this organization. | That address belongs to somebody already on your People list. Several are named together. |
| Only an owner can manage another owner. | An org admin tried to send an owner-role invitation. |
| You do not have permission to change this organization. | Your account is not an active owner or org admin here. |
| This invitation could not be sent. Check your connection and try again. | The dialog could not reach FilmScorecard. Nothing was sent. |

## The Pending invitations tab

Every invitation nobody has accepted yet, newest first. The tab's own count
turns amber whenever there is one.

Its header says **"3 open invitations"** and, beside it, "Invitations expire 14
days after they are sent."

| Column | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| **Invitee** | The address, over "Invited by *name*". A resend puts **your** name there, whoever sent the first one. |
| **Org role** | The role they will hold when they accept. |
| **Festival access** | "All festivals" for an owner or org admin; otherwise the festival's name, "3 festivals", or **"None yet"**. |
| **Sent** | The date the invitation was **first** created. **A resend does not move it** — so a row can show an old date and still be Pending, because resending is what moved the expiry. |
| **Status** | **Pending**, **Expired** or **Failed** — plus the resend button. |

The three statuses:

- **Pending** — sent, still inside its 14 days, nothing has gone wrong.
- **Expired** — the 14 days ran out. The link no longer works.
- **Failed** — the email itself could not be sent. **Failed wins over
  Expired**, because it is the one that needs you: nobody ever got a link.

The footer counts them: "3 invitations, 1 expired, sorted by date sent".

Empty, the tab says so: "No open invitations" / "Everyone invited so far has
accepted. Invite someone else when you need to."

### Resending

The button on the row does the same thing wherever it appears — it reads
**Resend** on a pending row and **Resend invitation**, in amber, on an expired
or failed one.

Resending **replaces the invitation**: a brand-new link, a fresh 14 days, and
your name recorded as the sender. **The previous link stops working
immediately**, so anybody holding an older email has to use the newest one. An
expired row goes back to Pending as soon as you press it.

It sends at once, with no confirmation — there is nothing to undo about an
email that has gone — and reports "Invitation sent again."

Resending keeps the invitation's organization role and its festival rows
exactly as they were. To change either, send the invitation again from the
**Invite people** dialog instead.

### What you cannot do to an invitation

- **There is no cancel and no delete.** An invitation you sent by mistake
  cannot be withdrawn from this screen; the practical answer is to let it
  expire, and to be sure it does, do not resend it. Anybody who accepts one can
  be removed from the People tab afterwards.
- **You cannot change its role or festivals in place.** Send a new invitation
  to the same address — that replaces both.
- **Accepted invitations are not listed here.** The row disappears the moment
  it is used, and the person appears on the People tab instead. The record of
  it stays in the [Audit log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md#audit-log).

## What accepting actually does

When somebody uses their link:

- They **join the organization at the role the invitation named** — unless they
  are already in it, in which case **the role they already hold is kept**.
  Accepting never downgrades anybody, and never promotes them either: to change
  an existing member's role, use **Change org role** on their row.
- **The festivals on the invitation are granted**, at the roles you chose,
  skipping any festival they can already reach.
- The invitation is used up, the row leaves Pending invitations, and the Audit
  log records "Invitation accepted for *the invited address*".

## Related guides

- [Organization settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md) — the screen this lives
  on, the People list and the three organization roles.
- [Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md) — granting and changing festivals
  after somebody has joined.
- [Your organization invitation](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-organization-invitation.md) — written
  for the person who received the email.
- [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — inviting a **judge** is a different thing entirely,
  done per season and not from this screen.
