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Group invite links

An invite link is a shareable URL that lets someone add themselves to a group, instead of an administrator adding them one by one. Every group can have one active link at a time.

Access

Invite links are available to group administrators only. If you are not an admin of the group, the Invite via Link entry is not shown to you.

  1. Select the group's name or photo at the top of the conversation to open its info.
  2. Select Invite via Link.

The Group Link screen opens. It names the group, then shows the link itself in a box — briefly reading Loading link... while it is fetched.

You do not have to generate anything: opening this screen returns the group's current link, and creates one if the group does not have an active link yet. If the box reads No link available, close and reopen the screen to try again.

Under the link are three actions.

ActionWhat it does
Copy LinkCopies the URL to your clipboard, confirming with an "Invite link copied" notice
Share LinkOpens your device's share sheet with the link and a short "Join our group!" message
Reset LinkReplaces the link with a new one — see below

Copy Link is the one to use when you want to paste the link into another HushChat conversation, a calendar invite or a document. Share Link is quicker on a phone, where the share sheet hands the link straight to another app.

If copying or sharing fails you get a Couldn't copy link or Couldn't share link notice, and the link itself is unchanged — you can read it off the screen and copy it by hand.

Reset when a link has been forwarded somewhere you did not intend, or has simply been around too long.

  1. Select Reset Link.
  2. Confirm at the Reset Invite Link prompt, which warns "Are you sure you want to reset the group invite link? This will invalidate the current link and generate a new one."
  3. Select Reset.

You get an "Invite link has been reset" notice and the screen shows the new link. The old link stops working immediately, so anyone still holding it can no longer join. Nobody who already joined is affected — resetting does not remove anyone from the group.

caution

Treat an invite link like a key to the group. Anyone in your workspace who has the link can add themselves without an admin approving it, and links are easy to forward. Reset it if you are not sure where it has ended up.

A link expires on its own, and it also has a cap on how many people may use it. In a standard HushChat deployment a link is good for 5 days and up to 150 uses, whichever runs out first.

note

Those two limits are set by whoever runs your HushChat server, so a self-hosted workspace may use different values. Ask your workspace administrator if you need to know the exact figures for your deployment.

What the person receiving it sees​

Opening the link lands them on a Join Conversation screen telling them "You've been invited to join a conversation", with two choices:

  1. Join Now adds them to the group.
  2. Cancel takes them to their conversations without joining.

After Join Now the screen shows Processing Invite while the request runs, then Success! naming the group they joined, and opens the conversation a moment later.

If the link cannot be used, the screen shows Unable to Join with the reason — an expired or already-reset link reports "Invalid or expired invite code." — and returns them to their conversations. Someone who is already in the group is told so rather than being added twice.

Joining is not silent: it adds a system message to the group naming the person who joined, so existing members can see how the group grew.

The link points at app.gethush.chat/invite/ followed by a one-off code. HushChat registers that address with iOS and Android, so on a phone with the app installed the link opens the app directly on the join screen rather than a browser page. On a computer it opens in the browser, in HushChat for web.

Platform

Universal and app links are handled by the operating system. If a phone opens the link in a browser instead of the app, it usually means the app is not installed on that device, or the link was opened from somewhere that strips app links — sending it through a normal message rather than pasting it into a note usually fixes it.

An invite link only adds someone to a group. The person following it has to be signed in to the same workspace already — it is not a way to bring a colleague into the workspace from outside. To do that, use the workspace Invite flow instead, and then add them to the group or send them the group link once they are in.