How to Manually Approve User Sign-ups and Restrict Access to Your School

Signup Approval adds an extra layer of control for managing user signups, allowing you to create schools with restricted access. While visitors can create accounts normally, admins get the option to review and manually approve or reject new signups.

This feature helps admins ensure that only approved users can access the school’s content, adding more flexibility and control over who joins.

Examples/Use Cases

• Approving students who meet specific criteria before granting access.
• Collecting additional information through custom fields to screen users.
• Restricting school access while maintaining an open signup option.
• Creating exclusive schools that require manual approval for membership.
• Filtering out inappropriate or unauthorized users before they join.

How Signup Approval Works

Once Signup Approval is enabled, admins can:

• Review new user details such as name, email, and custom signup fields, provided by the new user and decide whether to approve or reject them.
• Optionally collect additional data using a qualification form to make a better decision on whether to approve or reject a user.

User Experience

• Approved users can freely navigate the school.
• Rejected users are locked on the "Access request rejected" page and cannot access logged-in pages.
• Pending users will see the "Access request under review" page until their signup is reviewed.

Who Can Benefit from Signup Approval?

• Schools that typically disable self-signups but want to allow users to create accounts while controlling access.
• Schools that need to collect extra data, such as qualification details, to decide if a user is a right fit.

Signup Approval also saves time compared to manually adding users, as it automates part of the enrollment process. You can gather essential user information during signup, streamlining the process.

- Signup Approval is on the school level, not the course level. It allows admins to accept or reject new users from accessing their school’s logged-in pages (after login page, course player, etc.). 
- Only administrative roles with the Manage Users permission can approve or reject users. 
- The Signup Approval feature is not supported on Mobile Apps.

Enable the Signup Approval

Navigate to Users → Approvals → Setup and enable the feature.

User's Flow with Signup Approval

1. User signs up.

2. They will be redirected to the Access request under review page.

1. If approved, the user can then navigate the school according to any other restrictions set up (eg, lock non-paying users to a specific page).
2. If rejected, the user will be locked on the Access request rejected page.

User Flow with Qualification Form

1. User signs up.

2. If enabled, user completes (mandatory/optional) Qualification Form

1. If the form is mandatory, they stay on the qualification form until they complete it. 
2. If the form is optional, they can either answer or skip it.

3. User sees Access request under review page.

1. If approved, the user can then navigate the school according to any other restrictions set up (e.g., lock non-paying users to a specific page).
2. If rejected, the user will be locked on the Access request rejected page.

For more information about the Qualification Form, navigate to our relevant article here.

Admin's Actions for Reviewing Signups

Admins via the Approvals page:

1. Review new signups (custom signup fields and qualification form answers if asked).

2. Approve/reject new signups.

3. Modify the statuses from rejected to pending or from approved to rejected, etc.

If a user tries to create an account while this feature is enabled and you choose to deactivate it without first approving or rejecting them, the user will be automatically created. In this case, the user's name will be shown in your users' tab, but they won’t have real access to the school. Those users will keep seeing the pending screen until you approve/reject their request.

Edit Pending/Reject pages

You can customize the Access request under review or the Access request rejected page. Navigate to Users → Approvals → Setup, click on the Access request under review or Access request rejected. Also, from your admin's dashboard, you can go to Website → Design → Edit website, select the system pages category, and click on the Access Request Rejected or Access Request Rejected pages.

Payments before Approval

Payments from users who haven’t been approved are blocked to prevent purchases without access.

If you have enabled the Signup Approval, you are advised to:

a. Lock the payment page. To lock the payment page, you must go from your admin's dashboard to Website → Navigation or Edit website → Site → Site navigation.

b. Not include payment zones on public pages.

c. Not allow signups via payment zones only.

If you are using Shopify as your payment gateway, the above settings won't apply. A logged-out user will be able to purchase a course and will not be locked on the pending pages until manually approved. Of course, you can still follow the steps above to ensure that no payments will occur before a user has been manually approved.