Feed sharing and access

Custom feeds let you group receipts for a specific purpose, a research project, a themed collection, a team workspace. You can create as many as you need.

Sharing a feed

1. Open the Feed Manager from any video page, or open the feed from the Feeds tab on your dashboard
2. Select the custom feed you want to share
3. Click Manage Members (or the Share button)
4. Add users by their email address - see below for the difference between sharing with existing users and inviting new ones
5. Pick the permission level everyone in this batch gets:
   • Admin: can add, edit, and delete receipts, manage settings, and invite others. Only the feed's owner can hand out this one
   • Contributor: can add and edit their own receipts, comment, and vote
   • Viewer: can view and vote only
6. Click Invite

You can change anyone's level afterwards from the member list, so mixing levels is a matter of sending a second batch or adjusting a row.

Adding people while you create the feed

The create dialog has the same list. Switch on Share this feed with specific people, add an address, pick its level, and add the next one. Up to 20 people can be on the list when the feed is made, which is also the number of invitations a feed can send in an hour: a full list uses that hour's allowance, and anyone you add afterwards goes out in the next one.

Saving does two things in order. The feed is made first, and then each address on the list is invited exactly as it would be from Manage Members: an address already on a confirmed account joins straight away, and any other address gets the emailed link. Each row tells you which it was, in a word: Invited, Added, Already a member, or Not sent.

If any of them did not go out, the dialog stays open, names the ones that failed and why, and offers Try the failed invitations again. The feed is already made by then, so trying again only re-sends the invitations. It never makes a second feed, which is why Save is spent once the invitations have started.

Sharing with existing Vid Receipts users

If the email you enter already belongs to a Vid Receipts account that has confirmed that address, the user is added to the feed immediately and told so. The feed shows up in their Shared With Me list and a notification lands in their bell. There is no email, no link to click, and nothing for them to accept.

An account that has not confirmed the address is treated as a new one: it gets the emailed link below, and joining happens when the person opens it. Being added to a feed is access to other people's work, so the address is proved once, by the person holding it.

Inviting people who don't have an account yet

If the email isn't tied to an account, Vid Receipts sends a branded invitation email with a single-click "Join Feed" link.

• The invitation is valid for 7 days and can only be used once.
• When the invitee clicks the link, they land on a personalized page that shows who invited them and what feed they're joining, and walks them through creating an account (or signing in).
• As soon as they finish signing up, they're automatically added to your feed with the permission level you set, no extra step required.
• You can revoke any pending invitation at any time from the Manage Members dialog.
• Pending invitations that go unused are automatically cleaned up by the system shortly after they expire, so your member list never gets cluttered.

What an invitation asks of the person accepting it

• They have to be signed in as the address the invitation went to, and that address has to be confirmed on their account. Signing in with a different address, or one that has never been confirmed, is refused with a line saying so.
• The link works once per person and can be opened again safely. Opening it a second time takes them to the same feed rather than an error, and it never changes the persona they joined as.
• If the person who sent the invitation is no longer on the feed by the time it is opened, it stops working. Anyone still managing the feed can send a new one.
• Someone already in the feed keeps the level they have. Accepting an invitation to a level below it changes nothing.

Sending the same invitation twice is not an error either. If someone is already a member, or already has an invitation waiting, we tell you that instead of sending a second one.

Inviting several people at once

Need to onboard a whole team?

• In the Manage Members dialog, choose Invite several at once and paste up to 20 email addresses (one per line, or comma-separated).
• Pick a single permission level for the batch and send.
• A per-email result list appears underneath, telling you which addresses were added straight away, which were emailed an invitation, which were already members or already invited, and which failed.
• To prevent abuse, you can send up to 20 invitations per feed per hour. If you need more, wait an hour and continue.

Choosing who can join

The create and edit dialogs carry a Who can access? picker. It sets who may let themselves in, separately from the people you add by email above.

• Everyone. Anyone can find the feed and join it.
• Followers of your persona. Anyone who follows the persona you had active when you saved can join. You do not have to follow them back.
• Friends. Only people you follow who also follow you back.
• A group. Only the people on a group you keep. Picking it brings up your groups so you can say which one. See User groups.
• Feed members. Nobody joins on their own; membership stays with the invites you send. This is the default.
• Only me. Private to you, and discoverability is turned off with it.

Followers and Friends are tied to a single persona, the one that was active at the moment you saved, which is why the row names it. Switch persona and save again to point the feed at that persona's followers instead. Nothing is pooled across your personas, so a feed opened to one persona's followers stays shut to the others'.

Everyone who joins this way arrives as a Viewer. Raise anyone's level afterwards from the member list.

Making a feed discoverable

Want to open your feed up to a wider audience?

• Toggle the Discoverable setting in your feed's settings.
• Your feed appears in the Discover Feeds dialog on the Feeds tab, which any signed-in person can browse and search. It lists the discoverable feeds they are not already in.
• Discoverable makes a feed findable, not open. Nobody gets access by finding it.

Asking for access

Every feed in the Discover Feeds dialog carries a Request Access button, which asks that feed's owner for Contributor. There is no role picker and no message box.

On any feed the dialog shows you, the request comes back reading You must be a member of the feed to request access.

Sharing with groups

A group is a list of people you keep. You share a feed with one by choosing it under Who can access? above, not by adding the group to the member list.

• Everyone on the list can let themselves in, with the same permission level, whenever they open the feed. Nobody is added the moment you pick the group.
• Take someone off the group and they can no longer join through it. What they already joined, they keep, so remove them from the member list too if you want their access gone. Deleting the whole group works the same way.
• Only the feed's owner can point it at a group, and only at a group they own. If you are an admin on somebody else's feed, invite people by email instead.
• A feed points at one audience at a time, so it is one group per feed.
• A group holds personas, not accounts, so a member joins with the persona whose handle was added. See User groups.

Notifications

Vid Receipts tells people the thing they'd otherwise have to be told by hand: someone you add to a feed gets a notification saying they're in, with the role you gave them.

Notification settings are per person and per type, so anyone can turn these off under Settings → Notifications.

Tips

• Start with tighter permissions and loosen them as needed
• Use the Admin role sparingly. Admins can invite others and change settings
• You can update or revoke access at any time from the Manage Members dialog

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