Pickaxe not allowing users to sign up

My studio is randomly making people ask to be invited when they try to sign up. It is not set to invite only. It is set to public. It is a recent issue from a couple of weeks ago. I signed up once and didn’t get this message, then signed up again and did get it. I am getting emails from people telling me they get this message when they try to sign up and today received an email from pickaxe to approve someone. I sent an email a few weeks ago but didn’t receive a reply. Here is a screenshot:

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Same thing here

I sent in an email to get support. Anyone else get a resolution yet?

I sent an email 2 weeks ago and another one yesterday and haven’t received a reply to either. I posted here hoping for a response. I was running ads and spent so much money not realising there was an issue until people started contacting me.

Hi @clevra, and others who are replying on this post! I have taken a look at each of your Workspaces and I want to clarify that what you’re seeing is the expected behavior for portals that do not have a public access group attached to them. If you want users to be able to sign up for your member access group without an invite, the best way to set it up is to create a public access group with 0 uses and connect it to your portal - users should them be prompted to sign in, but you should not be required to accept any invite. If any of you are still confused by this, I am happy to speak with you at greater length (or hop on a quick call to walk you through things!). @clevra and @paraphrasecomm, we have received your emails and have been discussing them internally, and you can expect a response from us soon with similar information as what I am describing here. I hope that is clarifying!

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Hi @lindsay_support thank you for explaining. I also received an email from Danny but I am still super confused by these access groups. I don’t understand why some users are able to sign up and others can’t when I’m not making changes and it seems to be random and also happens randomly for me when I test. I would be really grateful if you could hop on a call and help me with both my studios so I’m not losing people through this. Please just let me know how and when to do this with you. Thank you

Hi @clevra! I very much empathize with the confusion, and I’m happy to assist - I will follow up on that email thread with my call link so we can go over it :slight_smile:

Thank you so much @lindsay_support

Hi @clevra, I understand why this feels confusing, especially when it seems like some people can sign up and others cannot. What is happening is not random. It depends entirely on which portal link a new user is entering through and whether that portal has a public access group attached to it.

If a portal does not have a public access group, new users cannot sign up through it and will see the invite only flow. If a portal does have a public access group, new users can sign up normally. This is why it looks inconsistent. Some people are entering through the link to the portal with a public access group, and others are entering through the link to the portal without one. The behavior changes based on which link they use, not based on anything you are doing.

We checked both your workspace and @mghent1’s workspace, and you each already have a portal that does have a public access group attached. That explains why some new users are able to sign up without any issue. The users who cannot sign up were most likely given the link to the other portal, the one that does not have a public access group. Once all new users are directed to the portal that does have a public access group, the sign up flow will be consistent.

To fix this for your workspace, you only need to make sure that all new users are using the link to the portal that has the public access group attached. Once they sign up through that link, they will be routed correctly. If you want help walking through this, you can book a call with us here:

Book a Call with Us

and we will go through everything together.

There are two ways you can structure things moving forward. The first option is to attach a public access group to every portal where you want new users to be able to sign up, and make sure that each of those public access groups has an upgrade path into the member access group that belongs to that same portal. This works great, but if you have many member portals, it means creating and maintaining many different public access groups.

The second option is to use one dedicated public portal for all new users instead of creating a separate public access group for every member portal. This portal becomes the single place where new users sign up. You attach one public access group to this portal and set its upgrade path. When someone signs up through this portal, they will see the upgrade screen where they can choose which member access group they want. After they upgrade, they are redirected to the portal that is connected to the member access group they selected. This setup lets you manage only one public access group, and as long as new users start from the link to this dedicated public portal, the upgrade and redirection flow should always work correctly.

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Thank you for the detailed explanation @danny_support I think that is making more sense to me now. I have already booked an appointment with Lindsay so I will ask her to teach me how to do the second option on the call which seems simpler to me. I will understand it a lot better when I watch her doing it as I am still getting the plans and access groups mixed up from how it used to work. Thanks again

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Hi @clevra,

We took a closer look at your workspace and noticed that your portals all appear to have the same agents and content pages connected to them.

Because the portal content is the same, you may be able to simplify your setup by using one portal instead of multiple separate portals. You can connect all of your member access groups to that one portal, then use one public access group as the sign-up entry point.

I am sharing this here in case it helps other users as well. Multiple portals are usually helpful when different access groups need to show different agents or content pages. But if every group should see the same portal content, using one portal with multiple member access groups is usually the cleaner setup.

Thanks @danny_support. I will ask Lindsay to take me through doing that tomorrow so that I can understand how it all connects into each other. I think it automatically created a heap of portals when the access groups were implemented and I was confused and didn’t know what to do with it all.

@danny_support you are the best! Thank you so much for helping me understand all this and fixing my mess. I am very grateful :heart:

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