Board members invited receive "whoops" message
Asked by Gayle Westfahl:

For work, I have invited a number of our stakeholders to a Trello Board to assist with organization. When I send them an invitation link, some are receiving a message that says, "Whoops, you can't join this board because you are not a member of the board's workspace". No, of course they aren't; they are intended to only be a member of that particular board. It would be great if someone could please share with me how to fix/prevent this issue so everyone can literally get on the same page using Trello. Thank you!


Answers:
author: G subramanyam
body: Hi [@Gayle Westfahl](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4620711) welcome to the Atlassian community.

May I request you to check these docs that address your query on invites to the workspace:

[Adding people to a board](https://help.trello.com/article/717-adding-people-to-a-board)

[Invite people by using shareable link](https://help.trello.com/article/1024-invite-people-by-using-a-shareable-link)

comments: author: Gayle Westfahl
body: Thanks - I have looked at those documents multiple times. I have invited people to boards before and most of the time it has worked fine but once in awhile it doesn't. I don't know if something changed when Trello became Atlassian, or if Trello is unreliable, but in any case, whatever we choose to use needs to work. Thanks!


author: G subramanyam
body: Thank you for the reply and sharing those details. It seems, we need to wait for a response from users who might have surpassed this issue.


author: Michael Pryor
body: I believe there is a Workspace setting that doesn't allow guests to join boards in that workspace and I think that's why you are getting this error. You'd have to change that setting in the Workspace settings page (by default it does allow Guests).

comments: author: Gayle Westfahl
body: Thank you, but I don't want these board guests to have access to the whole Workspace, only the board. That's why I have guests allowed/invited to the Board. If I had wanted them to have access to the whole Workspace of multiple Boards, then I could have changed the setting you mention (which I did see) which allows guests to join the whole Workspace. Do you happen to know how I can invite them to a single Board? It does seem to be possible, at least even according to Trello documentation or other discussion.


author: Michael Pryor
body: A "guest" of a workspace is a person who is not a member of a workspace but has joined a single board in the workspace.   

If someone is added as a member of the workspace then they are a member of the workspace.   

Ie if you added someone to the workspace - they would be a full member. The only way to be a guest is to be added directly to a board so I think you do want this setting.


author: Gayle Westfahl
body: Thanks for your replies! This is what I see:

Guests (33) {#toc-hId--1211353364}
----------------------------------

Guests can only view and edit the boards to which they've been added.

So I have 33 guests who should be able to view and edit the boards to which I have added them. They appear in the list of 33 people below as having been added to the board.

I think this is the setting to which you are referring:  

### Workspace visibility {#toc-hId--520791890}

**Private** - This Workspace is private. It's not indexed or visible to those outside the Workspace.

My options are to have it remain private, which I prefer as we have a list of contact information on the board, or public, viewable as it says by Google or anyone who comes across the link.

Back under the "Members" tab in the Workspace, there is a field in which to type in emails to invite people to be members of the Workspace. But therein lies the problem. There are boards in this workspace this group of people doesn't need to have access to or editing potential. I only want them to be members of this particular board, which Trello currently designates them as and says they can be, not the entire workspace, in which I assume they could see a number of different boards which might confuse them and be able to edit all of them. How can I get their designation as being board members to be active without making them members of the workspace also? Trello says users can be either members of a board or members of a workspace or both. Unless I am still misunderstanding something?

Thanks,

-------------

Gayle


author: Mike
body: Hi Gayle,

It looks to me like you probably had Guests allowed in the past (which is how you have 33 of them already), but this setting got changed at some point, making it now prohibited to add more.

You're absolutely right that adding them from the Members tab would give them access to the entire workspace, and not something you want to do. Instead, look under the Settings tab, and you'll find a particular setting labeled "Inviting guests to boards":

![CleanShot 2021-11-03 at 16.24.13.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/167879i3B53B8028908DC59/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "CleanShot 2021-11-03 at 16.24.13.png")

I imagine yours is also set to "Only Workspace members", and you'll want to **Change** that to "Anybody". Doing this has no impact on any Guest's ability to see other boards, all it does is allow you to add non-Workspace members to boards, which is what you were initially trying to do. Once that's changed, you'll be able to invite those people!