How-to Invite a User to an Organization Without Using Email Notification

Expected Outcome

Users can be invited to a Terraform Enterprise organization and accept the invitation without receiving an email notification.

Prerequisites

• Administrator access to a Terraform Enterprise instance.
• Owner permissions for the target organization within Terraform Enterprise.

Use Case

By default, when you invite a user to an organization in Terraform Enterprise, the system sends an email with a link to accept the invitation. This procedure provides an alternative method to invite a user without relying on an email notification, which is useful in environments where SMTP is disabled or email delivery is unreliable.

Procedure

1. As a Terraform Enterprise administrator, disable email notifications. Navigate to https://<TFE_HOSTNAME>/app/admin/smtp and ensure the Enable email sending with SMTP checkbox is not selected.
2. Instruct the user to create an account by navigating to https://<TFE_HOSTNAME>/signup/account. The user must provide an email address during this process. Note this email address for a later step.

3. Log in to Terraform Enterprise as an owner of the organization where you want to add the user.

   Note: The following steps must be performed within the specific organization's settings, not the site-wide admin settings.

4. Navigate to your organization's settings, select the Users tab, and click the Invite User button.
5. In the invitation dialog, enter the email address you noted from step 2 into the email field. Although email notifications are disabled, Terraform Enterprise still uses the email address as a unique user identifier.
6. Click Invite User to create the pending invitation.
7. The next time the user logs in to Terraform Enterprise, they will see a notification to accept the invitation to the organization directly within the UI.