--- title: "Invite people and manage membership" canonical_url: https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/engagement-members markdown_url: https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/engagement-members.md category: "Product guides" learning_track: "administration" last_reviewed: 2026-11-04 --- # Invite people and manage membership Review who you are inviting, which groups they can access, and how their participation is recorded. ## Before you start You need a current administration grant covering the intended community audience. A Person needs an email address and the community must be enabled. A group administrator can work only within their authorized scope. Prepare the welcome and participation wording in **Community settings** before issuing invitations. The recipient must authenticate as the invited identity and explicitly accept the participation terms. ## Choose or import People Start in portal administration’s **Members** area to find a Person or create/import People. Alternatively, open a Person’s inspector in Zentrik and choose **Invite to engagement**, then select an available community. The Person action opens invitation review. It does not send email or create membership. If they are already enrolled, manage their existing member record instead. A Zentrik workspace user or portal administrator can also participate. Find or create their Person using the email their member sign-in will provide, select their groups, and invite that Person through the same process. They can then choose **Sign in with Zentrik** on the member page and accept their own invitation, without customer SSO. Matching an email does not enroll them or accept consent. Grant [administrator access](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/engagement-administrators) separately if they also need to operate the community. For CSV imports, review the columns, invalid rows, duplicate emails and existing-Person matches before committing. Use an existing Person when the email already identifies them. Resolve ambiguous matches in [People](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/people-and-accounts) rather than creating another record to bypass the problem. An import is not an invitation. ## Review and send the invitation 1. Select the intended Person and groups in the invitation controls. 2. Inspect the welcome and current consent wording. Check that the audience matches your grant. 3. Choose **Preview invitation email** if sending an enrollment email. Review eligible and excluded recipients and the message before **Queue invitation emails**. 4. If using an invitation link, use the provided invitation-link action and share it with its intended recipient. It is personal, not a public join URL. 5. Inspect the member’s invitation and delivery history. A queued email is not proof that the recipient received it. The recipient signs in, reviews consent and chooses research invitations, announcements and digest independently. Active human members of this Zentrik workspace can choose **Sign in with Zentrik**, even when Customer SSO is the only configured customer method. Other participants need an enabled customer sign-in. A personal invitation does not authenticate the recipient. All optional email choices start unchecked. Invitation acceptance establishes enrollment; merely opening an email does not. **View community** authenticates an administrator as themselves on the member side; it cannot impersonate another invitee or accept their consent. ![A personal enrollment invitation preview for Ada, with Scheduling Council selected, one eligible recipient and a separate Queue invitation emails action.](https://zentrik.ai/images/product/engagement/invitation-review-light.jpg) Review the intended Person, groups and message before queueing the invitation. Acceptance and optional email choices happen later. ## Manage participation and check the result Open the current member to inspect their participation and history. **Settings** owns group membership and participation controls. Whole-portal administrators can pause or resume email and remove a member; group administrators manage group assignments within their scope. Pausing email retains voluntary portal participation. Removing someone from the portal ends private access and requires a new invitation to rejoin. Use the status filter to distinguish Invited, Active, Paused, Left and Removed. A member who belongs to several groups is still one community member. Changes to a Person’s profile and existing contributions have different histories; do not expect removal to erase everything they previously contributed. Check that one accepted invitation maps to the intended Person, current groups and consent. Follow [Join a community](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/engagement-join) with a participant session when verifying onboarding. For an applicant, [approval](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/engagement-applications) comes before this separate invitation flow. ## Troubleshooting ### The person says they already signed in Ask them to open their personal invitation and review consent with the invited identity. An active member of this workspace can choose Sign in with Zentrik; having a staff grant or a signed-in account alone does not establish enrollment. ### A link is expired or belongs to another account Use the invitation controls to review its state and issue a new valid invitation when appropriate. Do not forward another person’s link or enroll them through a staff session. ### The member cannot find a private Study Check active enrollment, the current group audience, Study publication/open state and their actual participant identity. Sending an email alone does not grant access. ## Related guides - [Administer a Zentrik workspace safely](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/workspace-administration) - [Set up the Ideas Portal](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/ideas-portal) - [Invite people and manage access](https://zentrik.ai/docs/product/workspace-access)