Every document has an Invite Page:

There are two easy ways to get to this page:

1. if you're reading the document, click the “Invite” link in the top left corner of the blue navigation strip
2. from My Library, click the “Options” drop down menu for an “Invite” option.

Only the Document Owner (the document's uploader) can:

• invite people (and Groups) to a Private Document (anyone can invite others to a Public Document).
• remove document access by people or Groups by clicking the gray “minus sign” icon next to the name.

Inviting Groups and People to your Document

If there's a group of people (“invitees”) you'll be inviting to documents together multiple times (e.g. a class, members of your staff), you'll save a lot of time by first putting them into a Group; once this is done you can invite all the Group members with just a single invitation to the Group name (type a few letters and then autocomplete, or select the Group from your Address Book).

If you're inviting individuals rather than a Group:

1. For invitees already in your Address Book, either click their names in the Address Book tab or type the first few letters of either their name or email address and then autocomplete it by clicking on one of the matches:
   
   
   
   
2. For invitees not in your Address Book (i.e. you haven't previously shared a document with them and they haven't shared one with you), copy-and-paste their email addresses, separating each with a comma, into the top data entry box. If they don't yet have a NowComment account they'll create a new account (once we get their name at that time we'll connect it to that email address and then you can also invite them by name).

Once you're done with the invitation list we recommend adding a short (optional) message explaining why you're are asking for their comments.

Then click the orange “Invite” button to share the document with all your invitees:

• Invitees that already have NowComment accounts will receive a special (encrypted token) link that, only for the first time it's used, automatically logs them in and takes them right to the document (the link will only do the automatic log-in one time, after that a regular login is required).
• Invitees that don't have an account are also taken right to the document (no obstacles to reading the document and seeing existing comments), but to make a comment they will need to create a new account (quick and easy, just follow the onscreen prompts).

Bulk Invitations by Importing a File

To invite a class or other group by importing a roster/contact list, click on the “Import Contacts from file” tab, described in detail here.

Inviting to Multiple Documents at One Time

There are two ways to do this:

1. Built into NowComment— On your MyLibrary page, select the checkboxes at the left margin for each document you want to share, then click the “Invite” link at the bottom of the page.
   
   
   
   Using this method, your invitees will received a separate email for each document you invite them to.



2. Manual Method— This minimizes the number of emails your invitees receive; whether there are 10 or 1000 documents, each person will only receive 2 total emails. This method also lets you give custom instructions and suggestions for each document (e.g. due dates and/or what to look for in that document) more efficiently:
   
   1. create a Group but don't invite anyone to it yet
   2. as you upload each document, copy each document URL and paste it into an email (which will get longer as you keep adding documents, so it's good to save this email periodically as you grow it)
   3. once all the documents are uploaded, use method #1 above to share the documents to your new (memberless still) Group
   4. now invite people (and/or existing other Groups) to your new Group
   5. now send your manual email with all the document URLs to everyone.

Invitations Not Received

NowComment's invitation process is very reliable. In the rare cases where there's a problem, these are the most common causes:

1. The invitee and/or the invitee' school/organization are running a spam filter that is blocking our email. Check all possible spam filters. Note that some organizations' spam filters will accept a certain number of emails from an unfamiliar domain (“rate limits”) but start blocking emails exceeding that number. Schools occasionally run into this when a teacher who has been testing NowComment starts using it with all their students.
2. The email address you entered has a typo (easy to check if you still have that browser window open).
3. You invited the invitee at one email address but they are checking for new email for some other account. If this is the case the invitee can change their email address to their preferred address once they have activated their account using the address on the invitation (or you as the inviter can delete the non-preferred email address from your invitation list and issue a new invitation to the preferred address).
4. There's a problem with our site and it's temporarily down. To see if that's the case, try reloading our homepage.
5. If none of the above identifies the problem, contact our Tech Support Desk via the Help menu at the top of each page and we'll look into it.

A (Tangential) Note about our “Managed Users” Feature

If you'll be sharing documents with people who:

• are extremely busy and may not get around to taking the 60 seconds required to create and validate their account, or
• are intimidated by unfamiliar technology

you can shield some or all of your invitees from the registration/account set-up step by doing that work for them (a procedure we set up so teachers could create accounts for elementary school children without email!). Take a look at our “Managed Users” documentation if this approach might be helpful for your situation.

That's all there is to it; click an "Invite" link, share some documents, and start the conversations!

[last updated March 9, 2022]