How can we programmatically invite people to our closed Facebook group that was created by our app?
We've recently switched from the 1.0 to the 2.2 API version with our Facebook app. In this new version of the Facebook graph api, the option to add users to a (closed) Facebook group (that was created by the app) is not possible anymore. Only admins, developers or testers of the app can be added using the API.
Because of this, we thought we just temporarily invite people by hand. This is possible with a manually created Facebook group, you are able to invite people using an invite field. However, when a Facebook group is created by an app, this invite field is nowhere to be found, so manually inviting people seems to be impossible.
So, no adding via the API and no manual adding... What remains?
We've seen the FB.ui Javascript dialog function that a user can use to request access to the group, but this isn't what we want, we want to invite people...
It almost seems like our closed group has become useless because we can't invite anyone anymore...
Is there a solution for our problem?
Thanks in advance,
Erik.
Related
Please could you help. I have created a website that allows people to upload listings of items they are selling. I want to know how to add the feature where when someone creates a listing, it automatically posts on the user's FB page, with a link to the listing on our website. Is this possible? Would the user have to log into our website using their FB account for this to happen? Thanks everyone for your help.
Martin
You need to create a Facebook App and use Facebook Graph API with publish_actions permissions to do that. Note that the facebook rules prohibit sending fully automated messages that the user has no control, your user must have the ability to edit the message before sending
My latest project has (had) a requirement for the user to invite their friends to their online service. I discovered that, apparently, as of April 2015 with the new v2.0+ Facebook Graph API, you cannot actually get a list of friends for the user, unless those friends are already subscribed members of your app.
The scenario:
My app is a web service that lets the user collaborate on research work in a private group online. The user needs to
look up their list of friends,
set permissions their friend will have in the group, and
send them an invitation both join the service, and the specific group. (using a unique, one-time use link tied to each recipient)
The user would (ideally) receive an invitation with a specific link for them to not just become a subscriber of said online app, but specifically to join the group they were invited to (i.e. not just a generic "hey, check out this app" type of invitation).
The expectation:
The user doesn't care whether their friend is already a member of "MyApp.com". They expect to simply look up their friends just like they do today from their phone when they connect it to Facebook (makes all contacts available, regardless of whether those friends connected their Facebook to their phone, respectively). Likewise, compare inviting members to your Google docs, for example: look up your contact, set permission, send invite - so easy. Users demand this UX simplicity today and do not distinguish or care whether they are dealing with email, Facebook, Twitter contacts, whatever.
The problem:
The entire point of a social network is to be, well, social. If the Graph API only lets my app access friends that are ALREADY users of my app, it completely defeats the entire purpose - it cuts my user off at the knees, kills UX, no more ability to actually contact their own friends. My understanding is Facebook made this change to prevent developers from spamming users, and I get that, I completely support that. HOWEVER, my company and my app are not the ones that are trying to invite friends for it's own purposes, it is the USER and THEIR OWN friends that THEY have the right to access and converse with for their purposes (or so you'd think). Beyond just friends list, even if I had that, I think there are additional hurdles and limitations with posting messages to friends, even private (not wall) messages, which again would be anti-social.
The Question:
Am I understanding Facebook limitations properly, and if so, what is the work-around? I'd be ok with such an API being locked down until you pass a review that proves you aren't spamming users, but I did not see such an option.
Facebook supposedly prioritizes users over developers, and these changes were made because if the user is not comfortable with privacy (don't spam my friends), then they wont be users any longer, and that obviously affects developers and Facebook. OK, but did they not realize that by locking it down this extreme just killed UX for the user in legitimate scenarios? And to my original point, not just a little, but paramount - the result quite literally is that on April 30, 2015, Facebook became anti-social. Surely this is not inline with their mission. Surely there is a better approach.
If your app is not a game (which I assume), the only viable option would be the Message Dialog as desribed at
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/faq#friend_invite
If your app is not a game and has a mobile or web presence:
You can also use the Message Dialog on iOS and Android, or the Send Dialog on Web. These products let a person send a message directly to their friends containing a link to your app. This type of message is a great channel for communicating with a smaller number of people in a direct way. The Message Dialog and the Send Dialog both include a typeahead which lets the person easily select a number of friends to receive the invite.
You might also find App Invites useful but I beleive it's only for iOS and Android apps and might not exactly fit your use case:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-invites
App Invites are a content-rich, personal way for people to invite
their Facebook friends to a mobile app.
in the Facebook API documentation for requests it says that you can send app requests to friends but it's in the game section! now my question is whether it is allowed for non-game apps to use the send request dialog or not?
There is in fact a current hole in the Facebook API regarding web invites to non-game canvas apps. The Facebook API changelog from v 2.2 to v 2.3 states that the apprequests function that opens the Request Dialog is now only limited to games, and that non-game apps should use App Invites. However, App Invites work only in iOS and Android.
So currently, there is no way for users to invite friends to a non-game canvas app via the web, except by using the Send Dialog which is a lousy user experience and really shouldn't be used for that.
I have filed a bug report with Facebook and they have acknowledged it is a valid bug. Let's hope they fix it soon.
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/895531977178531
No, it's not possible (or at least legally) to use the app request feature for non-canvas apps that are outside the Facebook domain. For example, https://apps.facebook.com/angrybirds is a canvas app which is inside the Facebook domain and can use this feature as well as send notifications to other people on Facebook.
Even though, you can still send invitations to friends and they will see them on https://www.facebook.com/games/activity on the tab ìnvites, but they will not receive any notification.
There's still possible to make a canvas app that only redirects to the page you want, but that's against Facebook policies.
This is an extract from the latter:
Don’t build an app whose primary purpose is to redirect people off of Facebook.
The closest solution is to send email through the Send dialog feature but that's not intended to invite friends in the way you want.
You can find more references on this other thread.
As per the Facebook documentation:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/faq#invite_to_app
"If your app has a Canvas presence but is not a game, you should just render the Requests Dialog. Access to the Invitable Friends API is not required in order to let people invite their friends to use your app."
This is pretty hard to find since most of the documentation pertains to games or mobile apps. This is the only reference to Inviting friends to non-game canvas app I could find.
Since the Invitable Friends API is only available for games, what this tells you is to just use the generic Requests Dialog WITHOUT using the Invitable Friends API.
How do you allow your Facebook Connected users to invite their Facebook friends to your website?
All previous answers on SO are outdated referencing that it was previously possible with fb:multi-friend-selector, but since FBML will soon be deprecated, its not an option worth entertaining.
The only option I see now is to create a canvas app that redirects to my website but I would assume this is not permissible since only Canvas or Mobile apps can use the Requests dialog. I could build my own modal by getting the users friends and then sending them a message directly--also probably not permissible.
Nikolay did a fair assessment here, but was not provided a solid answer. Is Facebook locking down multiple friend invites and leaving only newsfeed posts and likes to webpages?
I use Social button like recommend and implement it with my site. ref to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
So, we looked and it appears you cannot use the Invite Friends modal unless you are a mobile or Facebook canvas app.
We did, however, come up with a solution. Using the Open Graph API (see Publishing) and the publish_stream extended permission, you can post directly to a user's friend's wall. It cannot be a private message (publish_stream does not allow you to change the privacy of the message) but it does allow user's friend to get a notification of the post.
You can see it working in some of our developer's games on www.pokki.com that are supporting our Pokki Games API. We came up with a nice modal that shows the user what the message they'll be posting looks like. This puts the user in control so they can click on their friend in a list of all their FB friends and makes the message more genuine (rather than automatically spamming all their friends with disingenuous messages).
We have created an invite function at our site in JavaScript using the Graph API where users can invite their Facebook friends to our site. The users invited then get an invite post at their wall on Facebook.
This has been workling fine until suddenly one day the messages did not show up on the invited users wall. We even still get post sucess messages from Facebook and a Post ID.
Also, we nocticed that old invite posts were removed as well from the Faceook walls. However, other functions with the same app ID still work.
When we created a new Facebook app with a new Facebook app ID the invite functions work like normal again.
As far as we know we arent breaching any rules or regulations, and we havent been notified by Facebook (although we are quite active with FB ads).
Is there some risk Facebook have blocked our app without telling us? Can they block our domain if we continue? Are there any general rules when it comes to invite? Any tips?
Facebook has many anti-spam policies and procedures in place. If a high enough percentage of users delete the post that gets added to their wall or mark it as spam or choose to hide all posts from your application, the application will get removed and the posts removed as you have experienced. They may or may not email you to warn you.
Facebook has a high level guide to follow:
Create a great user experience
Build social and engaging applications
Give users choice and control
Help users share expressive and relevant content
Be trustworthy
Respect privacy
Don't mislead, confuse, defraud, or
surprise users
Don't spam - encourage authentic
communications
I am guessing they are flagging your account for not helping users share expressive and relevant content (I am guessing they don't get to type the message that gets shared on friends wall), as well as obviously for spam.
If you want to invite users, I would suggest using the supported method for this, the Facebook requests dialog, and move away from posting (spamming) other friends walls, as they most likely can ban your whole website or account if you keep doing what you are doing.