How can I automate adding new users to the board?

[VONCAN]

Hello to all Trello users.

The goal is to be able to automatically add a user as an observer.

• adding through a link is perfect, but I can' t set up the link to add users not as a regular member but as an observer, and guests that are already on another Workspace board can't be added via link (only by mail address).

• Adding by mail address allows to add a user as an observer, but you have to do it by hand, but I want to automate this point.

What solutions can you offer me?

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Thanks for the help in advance

[Alex W]

@VONCAN - I recommend waiting a couple of weeks, you may see a new feature in Trello that'll help you out here... (I'll let you know when it's out)

[Basat Tayfun]

Dear Alex;

Has the new feature you allude to in your response been released?  Please advise.  We are also looking for a way to automate/facilitate adding new users to a bunch of boards with as little human intervention as possible.  For example, a new hire may be a developer for project X.  We want to be able to tell this hire, just log on to Trello (give them the URL) and let them find all the boards they are supposed to be on when the do.  At this time, we still have proj/team leads having to invite people to boards one by one.  Thanks!

[Alex W]

Hi @Basat Tayfun - the feature @VONCAN was asking for, which is a sharable link to invite users to boards as Observers, has been out for a while now: https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/inviting-people-by-using-a-shareable-link/

What you're asking for is not available and is a lot more complicated. It sounds like you want to have a link which invites all users to boards they need to be a member of at once, which doesn't sound feasible. I'd recommend sharing individual links to boards and workspaces your collaborators need to be a member of.

Better yet, with your example of the new hire for Project X, I would:

• Invite them to a workspace for Project X / that has Project X boards in it
• Make all the boards they need to join Workspace visible and has the permission on to allow workspace members to join
• Then, your new hire could go through and add themselves to applicable boards

Or, you can do what we do internally, and have a list of boards new hires need to join in Confluence, and have them join them via links in Confluence. 

[Basat Tayfun]

Tx for the detailed recommendations @Alex W 

I particularly like the Confluence idea.

What would you say to using the API to interrogate Trello to see if a person (new hire or not) is on the boards she needs to be?  Obviously, the organization would have to define board/workplace list(s) per role/project, then check to see if a person is on the workspaces/boards the person's role/project/etc call for.  This idea seems to pop up whenever the idea of using SSO for Trello comes up. If there is a central directory (e.g., AD), theoretically we can leverage a user account's existing DS info (group memberships, permissions, other attributes) to drive such a mechanism (the addition of or changes to a user account could be scripted or provide the trigger to run some code... including code that changes user's Trello setup using the Trello API).

Any ideas/thoughts on using the API with or without SSO? Thanks