Overview
A person currently cannot be added as a participant in a Review until they have a Collaborator user account. It is created the first time they sign in (even with LDAP integration enabled). The "Invite a colleague" feature makes it possible to invite someone to a Review even if they do not currently have a Collaborator user account, though they will have to create one.
Admin Setting
A setting under Admin > General > Access Restrictions allows administrators to specify a regular expression that must match against email addresses being invited to Review. The regular expression must match the entire email address, by default it is ".*" which should match all email addresses entered. The administrator can narrow the available addresses down by modifying the regular expression.
For example: ".*@mycompany.com" or ".*@mycompany.com|.*@contractor.com". If an administrator want to disable this feature entirely, they can simply enter "This feature is disabled", which will not match any email address.
Using the Feature
When the feature is enabled, each comment added in the Web UI (in any phase other than the Planning phase) will be evaluated to see if it includes email addresses that matches the regular expression. If so, the user is presented with a dialog stating:
"Your comment mentioned an email address. Would you like to invite [list of email addresses in comment] to this Review?"
If the user selects Yes, their default email client will be opened with a standard invitation that they can edit and send.
If the user selects No, the email address is ignored.
| Note: | In addition to the regular expression mechanism for configuring and disabling this feature, the user may be presented with different dialogues depending on other access control specifications. For example, if participant-based access restrictions are in place, the user will be notified that the invited users will not be able to access this review. If group-based access restrictions are in place, the system cannot know whether the invited individual will be able to access the review, or not. In this case, the user is notified that the invited person may not be able to access the review. |