Inviting people to your academy

Roles, from least to most powerful

• Member: learns and posts in the community. The default role.
• Moderator: also looks after the community, deletes posts, blocks people.
• Trainer: creates and runs courses, grades work, sees progress.
• Manager: also manages content and members, and can send invitations.
• Admin: full management of the academy, including settings and payments.
• Owner: one per academy, the person who created it.

People with the manager role and above can invite. Trainers can't.

You can't grant a role equal to or higher than your own. A manager can't invite another manager. This is a deliberate safeguard: without it anyone could promote themselves through the back door.

The rule also applies when the invitation is accepted. If the person who sent it has since lost their role or left the academy, the invitation stops working. Send a new one from your own account.

Three ways to invite

On the member list, click "Invite". The window has three tabs.

Single. You enter an address and a role, and the person receives an email with a link. The invitation is tied to that address: nobody else can use it, even with the link.

Bulk (CSV). You upload a file of addresses, up to 200 rows at a time. Each person gets their own invitation by email.

Invite link. You generate one link and share it with a group. It works for the Member and Moderator roles. Until it expires, any number of people can use it. Handy for training a company's staff, risky if the link leaks.

How long an invitation is valid

An email invitation expires after seven days. This is the most common reason for "the link doesn't work". After a week you need to send a new one.

An invite link has an expiry you choose yourself: after 1, 7 or 30 days.

If you invite people by email in advance, for example before a cohort starts, do it no more than a week before, not a month.

The person already has a Cohorta account

No problem. The invitation adds their existing account to your academy; it doesn't create a second one. One account can belong to many academies.

Important: invite the same address the person uses for their account. An invitation to a different address creates a second, separate account, and the person ends up with two, each seeing different things.

Plan limits

The number of members in your academy depends on your plan. Once you reach the limit, new member invitations stop going through, while people who have already joined stay.

Admins and the owner don't count towards the limit. Trainers, managers and moderators take up a place in it just like learners.

What the invited person sees

An email with your academy's name and a button. After clicking it: if they have an account, they log in and go in. If not, they create one and go in.

Withdrawing an invitation

You revoke an invite link with the "Revoke link" button on the "Invite link" tab. It stops working immediately.

An email invitation that has been sent can't be cancelled from the panel. You can see it on the member list under the "Invited" filter, and it expires on its own after seven days.

You can't remove someone who has already joined by withdrawing the invitation. For that, use "Remove from academy" on the member list.

Several people at once

In the member list, tick the box next to a name, or tick the box in the header (on a phone, above the list) to select everyone on the page. A bar appears at the bottom with the number selected and the actions:

• Export to CSV: a file with only the selected people.
• Tags: add a tag (an existing one or a new one) or remove a tag. Tags are managed by the academy administrator.
• Change role: the same rules as for one person, so you cannot give a role equal to or higher than your own.
• Remove from academy: you give one reason for everyone and see how many people you are removing before you confirm.

The academy owner and you are never changed in bulk. They are skipped, and afterwards you see a result such as "Done: 8 of 10" with the reason for each skip. You can change at most 200 people at a time.

Common stumbling blocks

"I didn't get the invitation." Spam, a typo in the address, or the invitation went to a different address from the one the person uses.

The link says it has expired. The expiry date has passed. Send a new invitation or generate a new link.

The invitation says the sender can no longer grant this role. The person who invited them lost their permissions or left the academy. Send a new invitation.

The link says it is for a different address. The person is logged in to a different account from the one the invitation was sent to. Ask them to log out and click again.

When to write to us

• Invitations aren't going out at all, for any address.
• Someone has two accounts by mistake and they need merging.
• You want to invite more than 200 people at once.