Managing Pending Requests

Managing Pending Requests

Understand what Pending Requests is used for

Use Pending Requests to review and act on join requests submitted by people who want to become part of your community.


This is especially useful in communities where access is controlled and new sign-ups should not enter immediately. It gives hosts a chance to review the requester’s submitted details first and then decide whether they should be allowed into the community.

For a host, this acts as the approval stage before an invite is sent.

Know when Pending Requests appear

Pending Requests is relevant to Closed Public communities, where people can sign up and request access, but cannot join immediately.

This option appears under the gear icon at top right only when at least one user has submitted a request to join the community. 


If there are no join requests waiting for review, the Pending Requests option is not shown there.


Once a request is approved, the requester receives an invite, which they can accept to create their password and join the community.

Open Pending Requests

When one or more join requests are waiting for review:
  1. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner. 
  2. Click Pending Requests. 
The page lists all users who have requested to join the community.

For each requester, you can see:
  1. Their name 
  2. Their email address 
  3. A View profile option 
  4. An Action dropdown 

This helps hosts review incoming requests quickly and act on them from one place.

Review a requester’s profile before approving

Use View profile when you want to review all the details submitted by the requester before making a decision.

The profile view can show the information the requester has provided, such as:
  1. Display Name
  2. Email address 
  3. About
  4. Time Zone 
  5. Other custom fields collected during signup 
This is useful when approval should depend on whether the requester matches the intended audience of the community.

From the profile view itself, you can also:
  1. Approve
  2. Reject

This gives hosts a more informed way to decide on requests instead of approving them directly from the list.

Approve or reject a join request

There are two ways to act on a request.

Option 1: Approve or reject directly from the list

Use the Action dropdown next to the requester, then choose:
  1. Approve
  2. Reject

This is useful when the host already knows the requester should be accepted or declined and does not need to review more details first.

Option 2: Review first, then approve or reject

Click View profile to open the requester’s submitted details, then choose:
  1. Approve
  2. Reject
This is useful when the host wants to validate the requester’s information before deciding.

Once approved, the requester receives an invite to join the community.

Understand how Pending Requests connects to Pending Invites

Pending Requests and Pending Invites are two connected stages of the same flow.

  1. Pending Requests shows users who have asked to join the community and are waiting for host approval 
  2. Pending Invites shows users who were already approved and sent an invite, but have not accepted it yet 
In other words:
  1. The user signs up and submits a request. 
  2. The request appears in Pending Requests.
  3. A host reviews and approves it. 
  4. The user receives an invite. 
  5. Until the user accepts that invite, they appear under Pending Invites.
This makes Pending Requests the approval stage, and Pending Invites the acceptance-tracking stage.

Idea
Next: After reviewing and approving join requests from Pending Requests, continue with Pending Invites to track which approved users are yet to accept their invite and complete joining the community.