Need to invite 1,000 new users?
If you want to send out individual account invites, Webflow has a CSV import capability. It will send out the email invitation links automatically, and all people need to do is accept and choose a password.
This process saves a few clicks over the self sign-up process.
However direct user invites is most relevant when you want to restrict sign-ups to specific users, and possibly to set custom user info and access groups.
Unfortunately the CSV import method does not support those additional fields.
You may also want to invite users in batches, which can be important in a corporate-site situation where their email gateway will block the invite if they get 1,000 all at once from the same origin.
The Memberships API
Fortunately Webflow's API has a solid set of membership endpoints.
The Invite User API endpoint, sends an email invitation immediately, and allows you to specify access groups and custom user data.
You can build your own loader using this endpoint to;
- Send invites in batches
- Track who you've invited
- Specify access groups
- Specify custom user data
A Custom Loader Design
I've not build this particular setup, but here's an outline of how you could buld a custom loader using Airtable and Make.
Airtable
Load your users into Airtable, with columns for your custom user data, and a column for your Access Groups. It can likely be comma-separated values, or something more complex if you want to build it.
Add a UserID column, which will represent the Webflow UserID, but keep it blank.
Add a kind of “button” or link that triggers inviting a specific user and marking them as invited in Airtable.
Airtable has some scripting capabilities and some URL formation capabilities. You may be able to script all of this internally. But if not, you should be able to achieve it using Make.
Make
Setup a webhook-triggered flow in Make. Its job is to;
- Parse the access groups field into a list of access groups
- Call Webflow's Invite User API
- On success, update the record in Airtable;
- > Use email as the lookup key
- > Update the record status field to "Invited"
- > Store the Webflow UserID for future reference
Most likely, the webhook should be triggered as an HTTP-GET based URL so that you can easily construct that “button” at the Airtable end, e.g.
https://WEBHOOK-URL/?email=EMAIL&access_groups=CSV-CHUNK
This triggers the create flow and allows you to pass the data needed to support that User Invite, including custom data fields you may want to include.
On completion, your Airtable record will be status-updated, so it's easy to filter by views.
References
https://discourse.webflow.com/t/importing-users-with-access-groups/248259
