External individuals can be added to communities, allowing them to collaborate on projects with platform users. External community members have limited, predefined permissions set by Haiilo that restrict the actions they can take on the platform. 

External members don't need to accept community invites; they're simply added to the community. Similarly, they cannot leave communities, further distinguishing them from regular community members. External members are identified by an "External Member" label in the community's Members list.

Understand the permissions

Externals added to a community always receive the External Community Member system role. This role is very strict to prevent company news and sensitive information from reaching external parties, and it cannot be edited or deleted. 

An external community member can see Communities and Events in the navigation bar. In these, they can:

• See the communities to which they have been added and access all the content within those communities. They cannot be community admins.
• View events hosted by the communities they are members of or to which their communities have been invited.

Invite a new external member

To invite external community members to join a community, you need to be a community admin and have the "Create community", "Edit community", and "Invite external community members" permissions:

1. Go to the Communities overview > select your community.
2. In Options, open the Members list.
3. Select Invite > Invite externals.
4. Enter the email addresses of the users you want to invite.
5. Select Send invite.

Invited members get an email with a registration link that's valid for 24 hours. If they don't use the link within this period, it expires. You can resend the invitation following the steps in Inviting users to join communities: Send invitation reminders.

After the external member registers via the email link, they're automatically added to the community.

While you can create external users in Administration > User Management, you also need to invite them to a community as a member after creating the user. Until they are invited to a community, the external user won't be able to log in.

Add an existing external member

You can add an external user who already exists on your platform to your community. 

1. Go to the Communities overview > select your community.
2. In Options, open the Members list.
3. Select Invite > Invite members.
4. Search for and select the external user from the list.
5. Select Select.

The external user is added directly to the community without having to accept the invitation.