App invitations — how members actually get in

This is the step clubs miss, and missing it is why a club sometimes concludes the members’ app “does not work”.

When you import your members from a spreadsheet or from membermojo, Pavilion creates a WordPress account for every one of them. That account has a password — but it is randomly generated and nobody knows it. Not the member. Not the club. Not us. Until somebody tells those members how to get in, none of them can, and the app sits there unused with a hundred and forty accounts behind it.

An invitation fixes that. It is an email with a one-time link. The member taps it, chooses their own password, and lands in the app already signed in. No password is ever put in an email by anybody, including us.

📤 Sending them

Members → App Invitations. The screen tells you where everybody has got to — signed in, invited but not used yet, or never signed in — and lets you send to all of them at once. The usual choice is everybody who has never signed in: it leaves alone anybody already using the app, so nobody gets a confusing email about setting a password they already have.

They go out a few dozen at a time rather than all in one go, because most club hosting throttles a burst of a few hundred emails and would simply drop the rest. Leave the page open while it works. If you close it, come back and run it again — nobody is harmed by a second invitation, they just get a fresh link.

There is also a button on each member’s own profile, under Members’ app, which is the one to use for somebody who joins later or who has lost their email.

⏳ How long a link lasts

Fourteen days, and it works once. That is long enough to survive being sent on a Friday to somebody who only bowls on Tuesdays, and short enough that a forwarded email is not a way into somebody’s account a year later. If it expires, the member sees a page saying so and asking them to request another — and you send one with a single button.

👤 New members joining from now on

You do not need to do anything. Approving an application sends the welcome pack, and that already carries a “set my password” link of exactly the same kind, along with the app install instructions and a QR code.

📣 Telling everybody about the app

An invitation is about getting in. If you also want to announce the app — what it does, why to bother — write an email campaign and use the {app_install} merge tag, which drops in the whole “get the app” block with its QR code and the install steps for iPhone and Android. {app_url} gives you just the address.

Members with no email address

They cannot be invited — there is nowhere to send it — and the screen counts them separately so the number on the button is always the number that will actually go. For those members, print the QR code from Settings → Devices and hand it over at the club, or add an email address to their record.

Common questions

Is it safe to email a link that sets a password?

It is safer than the alternative, which is emailing the password itself. The link works once and expires after fourteen days; what Pavilion stores is only a fingerprint of it, so somebody reading the database cannot build a working link. Using it also cancels it — a forwarded email is a dead link.

What if a member never opens theirs?

Nothing happens and nothing breaks. Their account carries on exactly as it was; they simply have not got into the app yet. The screen shows them as “invited” until the link expires and then as “link expired”, and you can send another whenever you like.

Will this reset the password of somebody who already has one?

Only if they use the link. Sending an invitation changes nothing on its own — the password only changes at the moment the member chooses a new one. That is why sending to “everybody” is harmless but pointless.

It says somebody has never signed in, but I know they use the app.

Pavilion only started recording sign-ins in version 9.99.161, and the screen shows the date it began. Anybody signed in on the day you upgraded was counted; somebody who used the app before that and has not been back since will look like a newcomer until their next sign-in.

Can I change the wording of the invitation?

Yes — Settings → Communications → Reminders, under “App invitation email”. Keep {invite_url} in it, or there is no way in. {app_install} adds the QR code and install steps.

Why is this switched off on the demo?

The public demo signs every visitor in automatically as one shared account. Setting that account’s password would end every live session and throw everybody else out mid-click, so invitations are disabled there. On your own club’s site the screen works normally.