In this article
A group can have many invite links at once, and each one can carry its own expiry date, its own limit on how many people it admits, and its own name. Creating a second link costs nothing and revoking it affects nobody who already joined.
Once you know that, the single permanent link most groups use starts to look like what it is: a key that has been copied an unknown number of times.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Create a link that expires, or that stops after a set number of people.
- check_circle Require your approval before anybody actually gets in.
- check_circle Tell which route somebody used to join.
- check_circle Close a leak without disturbing the existing members.
Expiry, member limit and a name are all set on the same screen, before the link is created.
link A link per purpose
The useful shift is to stop thinking of the invite link as a property of the group and start thinking of it as something you make for an occasion. A link for the people at a conference, a link for the newsletter, a link for one person who asked.
Each link keeps a count of who arrived through it, which turns the member list into something you can reason about. When a group fills with people nobody invited, the counts tell you which door was left open, and revoking that one link closes it without touching any of the others.
Revoking is the important guarantee: it stops future joins and never removes anybody who is already in. A revoked link is finished permanently — there is no reactivating it — so treat revocation as a decision and generating a fresh link as the cheap part.
Four ways people get in
Each needs a different link. Using one link for all four is the usual mistake.
person_add Inviting a single person
schedule A group of people, for a while
public Printed, posted or broadcast
link_off Strangers are arriving
One permanent link tells you nothing and can only be closed all at once. Several narrow links tell you everything and close one at a time.
settings Making one
- Open the group, edit it, then invite links The primary link and any others you have made are listed together.
- Create a new link Rather than sharing the primary one.
- Name it After the person, the event or the place you are about to put it.
- Set an expiry, a member limit, or both Either one makes the link finite; both make it precise.
- Turn on approval for anything public A limit and an expiry cannot tell a real person from a bot; you can.
- Check the counts occasionally They are the only honest record of how people found you.
This page is the controls on one link. The curriculum step is running a set of them: naming schemes, attribution across campaigns, what the join counts can and cannot prove, and the lifecycle of a link from creation to revocation.
At a glance
- 1Several links
Make links that expire or stop after a number of joins.
- 2Approval
Require approval so a leaked link cannot let anyone in.
- 3See the route
Each link shows how many people joined through it.
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