• About Invite Tool:

Invite is a TvsPlanet Community tool that not only allows you to send invites like you would with a conventional invite function, but also import your friend's emails from your mail accounts (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook or Outlook Express etc) using Address Book Access Widget.

Invite tool also allows you to manage, update, resend, revoke, delete, and view your invites.

What's more, all of the functions are done through a cool interface! You can send and view invites without the need to reload your page. At all!

Invite tool is more than just a gadget. It is truly a feature-packed full invite all by itself, fully integrated with the TVsPlanet registration process.

• Features:

• Invite has the following key features:

1. Allows you to import your email addresses using Address Book Access Widget.
2. Allows you to enter individual emails manually.
3. Allows you to be ranked according to your number of accepted invites.
4. Automatically sets up a Community connection between new invites and inviter based on a default setting.
5. Allows you to overwrite this setting.
6. Shows a "Top Inviters" mini-module as part of the Invite tab in users profiles.
7. Allows you to resend, revoke, and delete invites.
8. Allows you to view different invite types (Accepted, Pending, Pirated)
9. Supports Karma from User Profile Karma.

• Frontend:

Now on to the sweet stuff! Below is a screen-capture of the frontend view:

Green zone:
Invites summary zone. This zone is viewable to all users (registered or public). It shows the number of accepted and pending invites of the member.
The "Invites Ranking" segment is shown.

The "Top Inviters" mini-module is shown only when Number of Top Inviters is not 0. Users can click on the Top Inviters button to reveal the content:

Orange zone:
Invites details zone. This zone is viewable to profile owners and Administrators. Clicking on the Check Invites button will reveal the following:

More details on the Check Invites content later.

Red zone:
Invites sending tool. This tool is viewable only to profile owners. It consists of the Invite Recipients area, the Other Recipients area, and the Custom Message area. Below is screen-capture of the Invites Tool:

Check Invites:

Invite tab comes with a fully functional invites management tool for you:

The Invite Type select dropdown menu lets you select the type of invites to view: Accepted, Pending, Pirated.

Accepted:
This is a list of invites that have accepted your invitation, and has already been activated.
Available action: None

Pending:
This is a list of pending invites. There are 2 types of pending invites: those who have not registered, and those who have registered, but awaiting activation.
Available actions: Resend and Revoke

Pirated:
Invite tool introduces a whole new type of invites. A pirated invite occurs when 2 separate members sent an invitation to the same person (invitee). Since the person can only accept one invitation, the invite from the user which was not selected is considered "pirated". Pirated invitations do not count as an accepted invitation.
Available action: Delete

Check Invites - Available Actions:

As was illustrated above, there are 3 types of actions a member can take with regards to his invites: Resend, Revoke and Delete.

This allows you to resend an individual invitation.

Revoke
Members may wish to revoke a previous unaccepted invitation. This will remove all records of the invite.

Delete
Only pirated invitations can be deleted.

Below is an example of the member interface you can see when you attempt to resend an invite. The interfaces for revoke and delete are similar:

Check Invites - Pagination:

In order to keep the Check Invites content neat and presentable, the Invite tool offers to display the information in "pages". Invite is able to page through different pages of invites without reloading the page at all.

Below is the member interface for paging:

Invite Tool:

This is the most important feature of this tool. First, let us take a look at how the Invite Tool looks like:

Information:
The Information segment displays the Max Emails per Invite and the Delay between Invites.
Karma earned per Successful Invite appear to increase whenever member successfully invited somebody.

Imported Recipients:
This is where you import email addresses from your address books.
Clicking on the "Add From My Address Book" button will popup this window:


From here, you can just follow the simple instructions to import your addresses. Upon completion, you will receive an alert indicating that the import was successful, and the addresses will appear in the textbox. Also, a button to clear the list will also be displayed. Note that the "Clear List" button will disappear once you've cleared the imported emails:

Add more emails manually through the Other Recipients textbox, or include a personal message, the choice is yours! Before sending, you can choose to disable Auto Connect.

• Invite Tool - Sending:

Upon clicking the "Send" button, you can expect to see a few different messages depending on the emails you've entered.

Error Messages:

"No emails entered. Please import emails, enter manually or both"
This error message is displayed when both Imported Recipients and Other Recipients lists are empty when you click the "Send" button.

"You cannot send invites again within the delay limit. Please wait for # seconds"
This error message will be displayed if you attempt to send within the delay limit. The # of seconds will countdown while you attempt to send again, which gives an estimation of how long you will have to wait.

Below is an illutration of Error Messages:

Other Messages:

"# Email Sent!"
This shows the number of emails successfully sent.

"Invalid Emails"
This shows the list and number of invalid emails. Emails are checked with a detailed regex format (regular expression) to ensure validity.

"Duplicate Emails"
This shows the list and number of duplicate emails. Users may have entered the same emails twice, or may have identical emails both in the imported list and the manual list, or may have been a malicious attempt to flood someone. This feature effectively prevents that from happening.

"Exceeds Max"
This shows the list and number of emails that exceeded the max number of emails you are eligible to send.

Below is an illustration of a combination of all the Warning Messages:

• Registration:

Upon receiving the email, the invitee will be given a link to register.


That's all! Like you can see it's very easy to invite your friends to join our online TV community and share with them your informations. They will be (only if you don't disable this function) automatically connected to your profile. Enjoy! [:-)]