# Members & join requests

> Find members, approve or decline people waiting to join the community or a channel, give someone a role, and remove a member.

Source: https://support.estage.com/community-members
Part of the ESTAGE Support help center (https://support.estage.com). Full knowledge base: https://support.estage.com/llms-full.txt

---

The **Members** page is the list of everyone in your community and the queue of people waiting to
get in. As an admin you see more on it than members do: the pending queue, phone numbers, join
answers, roles, and the actions on each card.

Open it from **Settings → People → Members**, or from **Members** in the community menu.

## Before you start

- What you see depends on your [role](https://support.estage.com/community-roles): **View the member list** shows roles,
  join answers, phone numbers and the role filter; **Approve & decline requests** shows the **Pending** tab;
  **Remove members** adds **Remove member** to the cards. The community owner has them all.
- Giving someone a role needs **Assign roles**, which stays with the owner.

## Finding someone

At the top you see **Online Now**, **Pending Approval** and **Total Members**.

- **Search members** finds a person in the list.
- The filter menu has:
  - **Sort** — **Newest first** or **Oldest first**.
  - **Role** — **All members**, **Any role**, **No role**, or one particular role.
  - **Channel** — everyone, or the members of one channel.
- The tabs switch between **Members** and **Pending**.

Each card shows the person's name, **Last Active**, **Joined**, whether they're online, a **Chat**
button and — for admins — their role badge and their phone number if you collect one.

## Approving people who want to join

Who has to wait depends on your community's **Visibility** and auto-approve settings in
[General Settings](https://support.estage.com/community-general-settings). People who need approval appear on the
**Pending** tab, with the answers they gave to your join questions.

1. Open **Members → Pending**.
2. On a card, click **Approve** or **Decline**.
3. When declining, you can add a **Reason (optional)** — it goes into the email they receive —
   then select **Decline** again to confirm.

> **Note**
>
> With nobody waiting, the tab says *"You don't have any members awaiting approval at this time."*
> Join answers are shown on wider screens only — on a phone-sized screen the cards leave them out.

What happens next:

| You click | The person |
| --- | --- |
| **Approve** | Gets an approval email signed by your community and can take part straight away. They're added to your autoresponder list if you set one up, and the "joined community" automation runs. |
| **Decline** | Gets a "not approved" email that includes your reason, if you gave one. They can ask to join again. |

When a new request arrives, the community owner gets a push notification — *"Approve request"* —
if they have notifications turned on.

### Channel join requests

Channels can require approval too (see [Channels](https://support.estage.com/community-channels)). **Settings → People →
Join Requests** lists every channel with requests waiting — the number on the menu item is the
total. **Open in Members** takes you to that channel's pending people, where a card says **Wants to
join # channel**. Approve or decline them there; declining a channel request doesn't ask for a
reason.

## Giving someone a role

1. On the member's card, open the **…** menu and choose **Assign role** (or **Change role**).
2. Pick a role. Each one shows how many permissions it carries; the one they hold now is marked
   **Current**.
3. Save.

**No role** takes their authority away: they read and post like any other member. Roles and what
each permission opens are on [Community roles & permissions](https://support.estage.com/community-roles).

Once someone holds a role, the owner can also choose **Invite to video workspace** from the same
menu, so they can upload into the community's video library. When the owner gives someone the
Admin or Moderator role, that invite is sent automatically.

## Removing a member

1. Open the **…** menu on their card and choose **Remove member**.
2. Confirm.

They lose access to the community, but their posts and comments stay. To come back they join
again — straight away if your community auto-approves members, otherwise through approval. Delete
individual posts from the feed if you need them gone — see
[Moderating posts and members](https://support.estage.com/community-moderation).

## Things worth knowing

- **Someone signed up but isn't on Pending?** They may already be in — look them up on the
  **Members** tab. People skip the queue in a Public community, when **Auto-approve member
  requests** is on, when they hold one of the auto-approve tags, and in a Paid community once
  they've paid.

- **You can't remove yourself or change your own role** from the Members page.
- **Removing a member lifts any active ban** on them and cancels their pending requests.
- **Removing isn't banning.** A removed member can join again. To keep someone out, ban them
  instead — see [Moderating posts and members](https://support.estage.com/community-moderation).
- **There's no export or invite link** on this page. People join by signing up at your community's
  address.
- The total member count is hidden from members when **Hide member count** is on; admins always
  see it.