Making it possible to invite friends & family (but not the whole world) to create an account

[glotzbach]

I know that in the admin panel I can create a new user account with a login and password and optionally an email address.

I’d like to request a new ‘feature’ where you, in the admin panel, have a way to invite users to create an account at your instance. I imagine that you fill in their full name, email address (in future this could even be linked to the contacts app) and the groups they should belong to, and that Nextcloud send them an email invite with a personal URL where users can choose their username + password.

That way they can pick their own username and password, hopefully increasing the chance they’ll remember it (in other words: more admin-friendly).

This would be a great benefit compared to the unofficial ‘Registration’ app since it would comply with password policy, enables me to select groups in advance, and - most importantly - doesn’t open registrations to the whole world (as does the Registration app). I just want to invite my family & friends; the whole world doesn’t fit on my Raspberry Pi

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On GitHub, @LukasReschke said this should not be part of core but rather a separate app. Personally I don’t see why such a basic admin functionality should have a separate app. But here’s my dire request in any case !

[mfx]

Hmm… has anything happened? Such a basic function…

[swindhab]

If you add a new user without password he is called to set his own one. This is half of the trick isn’t it? Maybe ask the people before what username they would like? Don’t know how big your family is…

[blausand]

If you add a new user without a password, they are not requested to set a new one.
Instead, the welcome email directs them to the URL of the instance without even their username filled in. There they cannot login, since the form doesn’t accept the password field to be empty. Setting up a new password always requires typing it in a second time and brings the usual password format test script, which is obviously not the case on the login page. As expected, creating a new password here won’t work at all.
I am surprised that this is not part of the standard installation bundle, while the fncking weather widget is. Sorry.
Seems a small step to modify the welcome eMail to contain a link to the password generation page, with a valid token.

(But i don’t care much. I’m currently giving Nextcloud another shot, after been fncked up big time by the completely wrecked migration processes. As far as i can see by now, it’s an even greater bunch of pain in PHP than it was 10ys ago)

[devnull]

@blausand
I tested it for you in Nextcloud 25.0.1 .
I created a user without password but with email.
The user gets an email with the link to set the password.

[blausand]

Nope, just created a new user without password. Welcome eMail contains generic link to instance over here. Can you post the Source of your Mail Template, please?
Her is the mail i get (anonymized):

Welcome aboard ####

Welcome to your Nextcloud account, you can add, protect, and share your data.

Your username is: ####

Go to Nextcloud: https://###.######.net/
Install Client: ht’tps://nextcloud.com/install/#install-clients

–
Nextcloud - a safe home for all your data
This is an automatically sent email, please do not reply.

[devnull]

I get this in the email after add user blausand this link.

Set your password: https://cloud.server.tld/lostpassword/reset/form/r55uf6G1ah6TWN=bcQnJBo/blausand

https://i.imgur.com/To42y8l.png

But I also don’t understand why Nextcloud’s HTML emails are so visually poor. Perhaps one could also revise.

[blausand]

Ok mine has proper CSS but the wrong link

But i like your version better, since the formatted version is bloated 23462B of ugly 7bit-escaped HTML.

Seems promising to have a dev looking into these two issues, though.

PS.: Loading external content (SHAME ON NEXTCLOUD FOR PHISHING ON USERS USING THEIR LOGO HERE!) will replace Nextcloud typo by logo, but won’t alter the unspecific link on the left button.

[devnull]

I wrote an issue.

[DanChristos]

Hi, I followed 2 threads and arrived at this one, I see the marked solution is to create a new user without a password. But this doesn’t really provide the functionality requested. I have been managing a personal nextcloud instance for a while now, and I have found adding users quite problematic in that I don’t want to be responsible for choosing their username for them. I also don’t want to use the user registration app because I don’t want to open registration to the public. Surely it’s not hard to implement a simple invite link that can take a new user to the form to create their own account. I mean it’s a pretty standard feature across the web. I’d like my users to also be able to send out invitations to join.

Can anyone point me towards any active threads or feature requests regarding this? I’d like to add my vote to such a feature.

Thanks in advance.