Managing external users

What are external users?

Invotra extranet portal lets organisations open their content up to users who are involved in, but are not employees of, the organisation. This guidance outlines the roles and permissions external users can have, how these are enabled and how external users or teams are added to sections.

External user role and permissions

By default, external users can only access the following pages:

External homepage
Their own user profile
Their edit profile page
Their own account settings page
Feed page
My content page

However, it is possible to grant additional access to other chosen sections, apps and entities (user profiles, teams, and locations).

Additional access for external users

To give additional access to external users you need to:

As a webmaster…

Go to ‘Administration’ from the workbar
Locate ‘People and Teams’, ‘User settings’, and select ‘External user access’
Use the checkboxes to enable the apps and entities external users can access

Apps

Groups
Ideas
Message Wall
Queries

Entities

Users
Teams
Locations

This provides external users the same access as an organisational user, with the exception that an external user cannot create groups.

It can mean external users have the following permissions:

Vote on polls, both within and outside of groups
View, post and edit their own comments
Upload files to the system via profile image
Use the WYSIWYG authorised user and organisational user text formats
Report comments
Favourite, rate or follow content
Edit their own profile
@mention others

Giving external users access to a section

As a section manager…

Go to your section
Select ‘Options’ and ‘Manage’ from the top right of the screen
Select ‘+ Add Member’
Search username and select external user
You can select multiple external users, their chip will appear below the search and select field when they have been selected
Select ‘Next’
The next screen will ask: ‘You are adding external users. Please be aware, you are giving the selected user access to view this section and its content.’
Select ‘Confirm

The external user now has access to the section and all related sections.

Giving external users a role within a section

As a section manager…

Go to your section
Select ‘Options’ and ‘Manage’ from the top right of the screen
Select the checkbox to the left of the external user’s name
In the ‘Action’ dropdown, select ‘Add Role(s)’
Select ‘Next’
Check the box to choose the role you want to give the external user, it can be more than one
Select ‘Next’
In the next screen, check the details and select ‘Confirm’

The external user now has the same permissions an employee (organisational user) would have, and they will also receive email notifications should anything change to content, for example.

Adding external users to your site

The external user role can be added or removed in a profile’s account settings by a webmaster. When the ‘External user’ role is selected all other roles will be deselected to stop global permissions going to external users.