Invite collaborators to your SGEN site
| Field | Value ||---|---|| Audience | sgen-admins || Page type | tutorial || Area | Documentation || Updated | 2026-05-27 |How to send invitations, manage pending members, and revoke or reassign access
Adding a team member to a SGEN site is a two-step process: you send an invitation, and they accept it. Until they accept, they are in a pending state — they cannot access the site, but the invitation slot is held for them. Once they accept, they become an active member with the role you assigned.
This guide covers the full invite lifecycle: sending the invite, what the recipient sees, what pending members can and cannot do, how to move someone from pending to active if the invite expires, how to revoke access, and how to change a member's role without sending a new invitation.
What is this for?
Read this guide when you are adding someone to a site for the first time, following up on a pending invitation that has not been accepted, or removing a member whose access should no longer be active.
This guide covers the invite mechanics. If you need to understand which role to assign each person, read Manage team roles across SGEN sites first. That page covers the seven canonical roles and their permission boundaries.
Good use cases
- Bringing a freelance developer onto a project site for a fixed engagement.
- Onboarding a new content editor to an existing multi-site account.
- Following up with a new team member who has not yet accepted their invitation.
- Revoking access for a contractor who has finished their work.
- Changing a member's role from Content Editor to Marketing Manager after a promotion.
What NOT to use this for
- Do not invite someone to multiple sites by sending one invitation.
Each site invitation is site-specific. If a team member needs access to three sites, send three invitations — one per site — or use the cross-site Members panel in SG-Dashboard to assign them after their first acceptance.
- Do not re-invite someone to change their role.
Roles can be changed in the Members panel without re-inviting. Sending a new invitation when you mean to change a role creates a second pending record and causes confusion. Use the Edit function on the existing member record instead.
- Do not use the invite flow for agency clients who should own their own SGEN account.
If a client needs to be the account owner of their own independent SGEN instance, they need their own SGEN account, not an invitation to yours. Read Agency client routing to understand the distinction.
How this connects to other features
- Team roles guide — choose the right role before sending the invite.
The role is set during the invite and takes effect on acceptance.
- Set up a multi-site deployment — sites must exist before you can invite members to them.
- Agency client routing — if you are running an agency and the person you are inviting is a client, read that guide to confirm they should be a collaborator on your account rather than an owner of their own.
- SG-Dashboard Members panel — the surface where all invite and member management actions live.
Before you start
Confirm you have permission to invite members to the site. Only users with the Owner role or higher, and Platform Admins, can send invitations. If you do not see the Invite Member button in the Members panel, your current role on this site does not include member management.
Confirm the role you are assigning. Refer to Manage team roles across SGEN sites if you are not certain which role fits. The role can be changed after acceptance, but getting it right from the start prevents a permissions gap on day one.
Have the invitee's email address ready. SGEN sends the invitation to that address. If the email address is wrong, the invitee will not receive it.
Where to go
Open SG-Dashboard and click the site you want to add a member to in the left sidebar. Open the Members tab inside that site's panel.
The Members panel shows two sections: Active members (people who have accepted their invitation) and Pending (people who have been invited but not yet accepted).
Click Invite Member at the top right.
Steps — Send and manage invitations
1. Send the invitation
Click Invite Member. The invite form opens.
Enter the invitee's email address. Select the role they will hold on this site. If this is a site in a multi-site account, confirm you have selected the correct site — the invite is site-specific and applies only to the site whose Members panel you are currently viewing.
Click Send invitation. SGEN sends an invitation email immediately. The invitee appears in the Pending tab of the Members list.
2. Understand what the invitee receives
The invitee receives an email from SGEN with a subject line that includes the site name and the name of the account that sent the invite.
The email contains:
- The name of the site they are being invited to.
- The role they are being assigned.
- A link to accept the invitation.
- The expiry date of the invitation link.
Invitation links are valid for 48 hours. If the invitee does not click the link within 48 hours, the link expires. Their record stays in the Pending tab — the record does not disappear — but the link in the email no longer works.
The invitee clicks the link. If they do not have a SGEN account at that email address, SGEN prompts them to create a password. If they already have a SGEN account at that email address, they are taken directly to the site's SG-Admin panel after accepting.
3. Understand what a pending member can do
While an invitation is pending — sent but not yet accepted — the invitee has no access to the site.
A pending member cannot:
- Log in to the site's SG-Admin panel.
- See any content, settings, or analytics on the site.
- Take any action on the site.
The invitation slot in the Members panel is reserved for them, and no other invitation can be sent to the same email address for the same site while a pending record exists.
The only action available to a pending member is to accept the invitation by clicking the link in the email.
4. Resend an expired invitation
If an invitation expires before the invitee accepts it, go to the Pending tab. Find the invitee's record. Click Resend.
SGEN generates a fresh invitation link with a new 48-hour expiry and sends it to the same email address. The invitee's role and site assignment remain the same. You do not need to re-enter any information.
If the invitee tells you they did not receive the original email, ask them to check their spam folder first. Then resend from the Pending tab. A fresh email send helps bypass spam filters that may have blocked the original.
If you resend and the invitee still does not receive the email, confirm the email address in the Pending record matches the address the invitee expects. If the address is wrong, revoke the current pending record and send a new invitation to the correct address.
5. Confirm acceptance and active status
When the invitee accepts the invitation, they move from the Pending tab to the Active tab automatically. Their role is now live.
Open the Active tab and confirm the new member appears with the correct role. If the member reports that they cannot access what their role should allow, refer to the troubleshooting steps at the end of this guide.
The new member can now log in to the site's SG-Admin panel. Their navigation reflects exactly the surfaces their role grants them access to. A Content Editor sees the content creation surfaces. An SEO Specialist sees SEO metadata and analytics. A Support Agent sees orders and form submissions.
6. Reassign a role without re-inviting
Roles can be changed at any time without sending a new invitation.
Open the Active tab. Click the member's name. The member detail panel opens. In the Role dropdown, select the new role. Click Save changes.
The change is immediate. The member does not need to log out — the new permissions apply on their next page load.
Do not send a new invitation when you mean to change a role. A new invitation creates a second pending record for the same email address on the same site, which creates a duplicate and causes confusion when the invitee accepts the second link.
7. Revoke access
To remove a member's access to a site, open the Active or Pending tab. Click the member's name. Click Remove from site. Confirm the removal in the confirmation dialog.
Removal is immediate. The member loses access to the site's SG-Admin panel on their next page load. If they are currently in an active session, their session ends within a few minutes — the next action they take inside SG-Admin returns a permissions error.
Removing a member from one site does not affect their access to other sites. If a team member is assigned to three sites and you remove them from one, they retain access to the other two.
To remove someone from the account entirely — all sites at once — go to the top-level Members panel in SG-Dashboard and use Remove from account from their account-level record.
What success looks like
When the invite flow is working correctly, each of the following is true.
- The Active tab shows every current team member with their correct role.
- The Pending tab shows only invitations that were sent within the last 48 hours.
- No pending record is older than 48 hours without a resend action taken.
- Former members — contractors who finished, staff who departed — do not appear in Active.
- No member holds a role that gives access to more than their job requires.
What to do if it does not work
The invitee says they did not receive the invitation email. Go to the Pending tab and confirm the email address on the pending record matches the address the invitee is checking. If it matches, click Resend. If the resent email does not arrive within five minutes, ask the invitee to check their spam folder. If the email is still not arriving, the invitee's email provider may be blocking SGEN's sending domain. Contact SGEN support with the invitee's email address and the site name.
The invitation link returns an error when the invitee clicks it. The link may have expired. Invitation links are valid for 48 hours. Go to the Pending tab and click Resend to generate a fresh link. If the link has not expired but still returns an error, the invitee's account may have a conflict — contact SGEN support.
The invitee accepted the invitation but the wrong role appears. Open the Active tab, click the member's name, change the role, and save. No re-invite is needed. The corrected role takes effect on the member's next page load.
The invitee accepted but appears in the Pending tab instead of Active. Refresh the Members panel. Acceptance events update the panel in near real-time, but a brief delay is possible. If the member still shows as Pending after two minutes, ask the member to confirm they received a success message after clicking the link. If they did not, the acceptance may not have completed — ask them to click the link again or resend.
The Remove from site action is not available. Confirm your role on this site. Only Owners and Platform Admins can remove members. If you need to remove a member and do not have the required role, contact a Platform Admin on the account.
A removed member can still access the site. Removal takes effect on the member's next page load or within a few minutes of an active session. If they are in an active session, they will lose access shortly. If access persists beyond five minutes, contact SGEN support.
Tips for a clean invite workflow
Send invitations with the correct role from the start. The invite form requires a role selection before sending. Use the Team roles guide to confirm the right role before clicking Send. Correcting a role after the fact takes one minute, but a member who lands with the wrong permissions on day one generates immediate support requests.
Follow up on pending invites within 24 hours. Invitation links expire at 48 hours. Check the Pending tab the day after sending batch invitations and resend any that have not been accepted. This is especially important when onboarding a group of new team members at once.
Revoke access the same day someone leaves. A departed team member with an active account on your site is a security exposure, even if they are unlikely to misuse it. Set a calendar reminder on the departure date and process the removal before the end of that working day.
Use the account-level Members panel for cross-site reviews. The top-level Members panel in SG-Dashboard shows every member across every site on the account in one view. Use it for periodic access reviews — quarterly at minimum — to confirm the access picture matches the current team composition.
## Related reading| Topic |
|---|
| Team roles guide |
| Set up a multi-site deployment |
| Agency client routing |
| SG-Dashboard Members |
| How to add users to a site in SGEN |