Four routes get a person into your organisation. If you have one person’s details in front of you and want them in the platform now, that is Register member in the member directory, and it is the right answer most of the time.
The other three are for a reason: you want the person to fill in their own details, you want anyone to be able to sign up, or you have a spreadsheet. Pick by how many people you have and who is doing the typing. Whichever route you use, the person ends up as one record in the same membership CRM software.
Which route to use
| If you want to | Use | Where it starts |
|---|---|---|
| Create the account yourself, for one person whose details you already have | Register member | The member directory |
| Send someone a link and let them fill in their own details | Invite | The Referrals tab on your own profile |
| Let anyone sign themselves up, from your website or a public link | Self-registration | The registration form at /register |
| Load a spreadsheet of people you already have | Import | Customization settings |
One thing this table deliberately leaves out: adding a person to a member company. That attaches an individual to a company record that already holds the membership, so it only applies if you sell corporate or team memberships and only once the company exists. It is covered at the end of this page, and it is not how you add a member in general.
1. Register member
Open the member directory and use Register member, the first button above the filters. On a phone it is the person-plus icon in the header rather than a labelled button. The directory is usually Members in the sidebar, though the sidebar is configured per workspace, so yours may carry a different label or sit in a different place.
Permission. HR_TENANT on the organisation-wide list. HR_LOCAL only on their own chapter’s list, which means a chapter secretary has to pick their chapter in the Chapter filter before the button appears. An administrator without HR_TENANT and without a chapter on their own account is refused on save with “You cannot create user without a local center”. ADMIN_LOCAL on its own is not enough.
What you fill in. First and last name, email, chapter, user type, phone, birthday, gender, town of residence and town born, address and postal code. Two collapsible blocks sit below: Permissions, for HR_LOCAL and above, where you can only grant what you hold yourself, and Roles. If the Companies module is on and you may assign a company, a company and company role appear as well.
The email address decides what you created
This is the single most common surprise on this route. The email field is labelled optional, and it decides whether you made an account or only a record.
The status is a setting, not a choice on the form
Every member you create this way lands in the status configured under Users & Profiles in your settings, at Configuration, in the Default Status for Admin-Created Users selector. That setting always wins, whatever any screen appeared to ask for.
Active is the default. Inactive, Unapproved, Waiting List, Suspended and Excluded all block sign-in, so a member with a welcome email in their inbox who cannot get in usually has one of those. Waiting List is the least obvious trap, because it blocks the account without creating any waitlist entry for staff to approve.
Fields you marked Required on the registration form are not asked for here, because nothing created this way passes through that form. If a field must be present on every profile, mark it required on the profile form instead, which is re-checked on every visit.
From a contact instead. Create user account on a contact record creates a member from that contact’s email through exactly this mechanism, welcome message included. It carries the email and the joined date across but not the name, so open the new profile afterwards and fill in the first and last name.
2. Invite
Invite a friend, next to Register member above the directory, opens the Referrals tab on your own profile. The button is desktop only, so on a phone you open the Referrals tab from your profile directly.
Two mechanisms live on that tab:
- Invite by email. Orgo emails each address a registration link tied to that invitation. The box accepts 20 addresses, sends the first 10 of them, and refuses after 50 invitations from one member in an hour. Work in batches of ten.
- Your personal link, in the form
https://<your app host>/register/<member id>. Orgo sends nothing. You share it yourself, and whoever registers through it is recorded as referred by you.
What the person receives. The registration form with their email already filled in and locked to the invited address.
What state the account lands in. An emailed invitation skips email confirmation entirely. The account is created Active with the address already confirmed, and the person is signed in and taken to the dashboard. If a chapter administrator sent it from their chapter context, the invitation carries that chapter and accepting places them in it.
Turning invitations on
Both controls live under Users & Profiles in settings, at Configuration, and changing them needs ADMIN_TENANT. Enable User Invitations turns the feature on. Who Can Send Invitations sets the minimum permission needed to send, from All Users up to Admin Tenant. Both the interface and the API check that setting, so restricting it actually blocks sending rather than only hiding the button.
Invitation links keep working while the public registration form is switched off. That combination is how you close the door to the public and still admit the people you name.
3. Self-registration
The public form at /register, plus one form per user type at /join/<slug>. Both embed in your own site as an iframe. The form is live while Enable Registration Form is on, and you decide what it asks in the registration form builder under Users & Profiles in settings.
What the person receives. No password is asked for. Orgo generates one, emails a six digit code valid for five minutes, and requires them to set their own password at first login.
What state the account lands in. Unconfirmed email until they enter the code. On verification the status resolves in a fixed order, and the first match wins.
4. Import
The import page lives under Customization in settings and every import endpoint requires ADMIN_TENANT. The Users step is the one that creates members. Upload a CSV of up to 50 MB, watch the per-row progress, read the per-row errors, and undo the whole thing once with Rollback.
Only user_legacy_id is required, and every unrecognised column becomes a profile custom field. The create step skips people who already exist rather than updating them, so to change existing members you use the separate Modify Users step.
What the person receives. Nothing. Import sends no email at all, so tell people yourself that their account exists.
What state the account lands in. Active, unless your file carries a status column. The password the import writes is a placeholder nobody knows, so an imported member signs in with the email one-time code from the login page, or through a password reset. Two kinds of row cannot sign in at all: rows whose email already belongs to somebody else, and rows with no email, both of which get a generated placeholder address that cannot receive mail.
The full job, including the column list and what to do about rows that fail, is in how to import your member list.
At a glance
| Route | Who can use it | What the person receives | Status it starts in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register member | HR_TENANT, or HR_LOCAL on their own chapter | Account created by admin email with a login link, if you gave an email address | Whatever Default Status for Admin-Created Users says |
| Invite | Whoever Who Can Send Invitations names | An invitation email with a registration link, or a link you share yourself | Active, email already confirmed |
| Self-registration | Anybody, while the form is on | A six digit confirmation code | Unconfirmed email, then whatever your gates resolve to |
| Import | ADMIN_TENANT | Nothing | Active, unless the file says otherwise |
Three modules that change what happens next
None of these is a way of adding somebody. They change what happens to a person who arrives through the invite or self-registration routes.
| Module | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Manual Approval | New registrations land as Unapproved and wait for an admin |
| Waitlist | Registrations naming a chapter are queued with a position instead of admitted |
| Adhesion | A formal application, with an ID check and a signature, after the account exists |
Register member and Import set the status directly and never enter the waitlist queue or the Manual Approval review. Mandatory Adhesion is the exception: it opens an application on every new account however it was created.
Adding a person to a member company
This is the job Orgo is most often asked about by mistake, so it is worth being clear about what it is. It attaches an individual to a company that already holds the membership. It applies only to organisations that sell corporate or team memberships, and only once the company record exists. If the person is not joining through a member company, use Register member above.
On the company page, the Team Members panel offers two buttons:
- Invite emails a company invitation naming the company and the role offered. It expires after 30 days, and accepting creates the person’s account if they do not have one and emails them a one-time login code.
- Add Member, which needs
ADMIN_TENANT, attaches somebody who is already in your database, whether a member or a contact.
Both consume one of the company’s seats, and a person can belong to only one company. Members added this way inherit the company’s membership validity instead of paying an individual fee.
If something did not work
I cannot see the Register member button. Two gates. The organisation-wide list needs HR_TENANT. A chapter’s list needs HR_TENANT, or HR_LOCAL on that exact chapter, which means a chapter secretary has to select their own chapter in the Chapter filter first. They never see the button on the organisation-wide list.
They have a welcome email but cannot sign in. Their status is not Active. Check Default Status for Admin-Created Users, because everyone you create by hand or by import gets the status you configured there, not the one the screen implied.
Fields I marked required came through empty. Only self-registration and invitation links go through the registration form, so only those collect its required fields. Register member, Import and a parent registering a child all bypass it. Put anything genuinely mandatory on the profile form instead.
I want to add several people at once but not from a spreadsheet. Invite by email is the only bulk route that does not involve a CSV, and it sends ten addresses per batch. For anything larger, build the CSV.
Related
- How to import your member list
- How to find and filter members
- Adding members
- Member invitations
- Registration form
- User statuses
Frequently asked questions
I added a member but they never received anything. What happened?
Check whether you filled in an email address. It is optional on the create form, and without one Orgo sends nothing and there is nothing for the person to sign in with. If the address is there, check that the User Created by Admin system email is still switched on, then open the member's profile and look at the Logs tab, which has an Email Logs sub-tab showing exactly what was sent to them.
Can I add members without opening registration to the public?
Yes. Register member, Import and invitations all work while Enable Registration Form is off. A valid invitation link opens the registration form even when the public form is closed, which is the supported way to run an invitation-only organisation.
What is the fastest way to add 200 members at once?
Import. It is the only route built for bulk, it validates your headers before writing anything, and it can be rolled back once. Invite by email is the only other bulk route and it processes ten addresses per send, so 200 people means 20 batches and 200 emails.