We recently launched a new feature for CleanSlate: user invitations. User invitations allow users who don't yet have an account in CleanSlate to gain access to the system.
Building off our experiences from Slate, we learned from its user onboarding experience. We brainstormed and laid out a few goals:
- We needed a robust way for users to request a CleanSlate account and get added to the system.
- Concurrently, we wanted to make sure all users requesting a CleanSlate account were legit (down with spam!).
- We wanted to put the onus of account requests onto site owners.
- We wanted to make sure account requests didn't get "stuck" between the request and approval.
With these goals, we contemplated doing the same thing we implemented for Slate; however, we knew Slate's system had several flaws. One of the most notable was that anyone could request access to a site. While each user still must be manually approved by a site owner, we ended up having lots of "stuck" accounts. People who requested an account but were never confirmed to be legit.
With that information, we followed Gmail and several other products' lead by implementing a user invitation system. User invitations are elegant because:
- Users are automatically verified/legit because the site owner is sending them the invite (no spam or invalid requests!)
- Users who want access to the system can log in and edit their site instantly after receiving their invite.
- Users who get an invite but don't log in to CleanSlate within seven days must re-request an invite from a site owner. This eliminates "stuck" accounts in the invite system.
So there you have it. Try the user invitation feature and let us know if you have any feedback or recommendations for improvement at CleanSlate@mail.wvu.edu. You can also check out the official documentation for this feature on this site.