Inviting & Managing Forecasters

The Contributors area of a network has two tabs: Forecasters, the current roster, and Invitations, everyone who has been invited or pre-authorized but has not joined yet.

Inviting People

From the Invitations tab, paste or type email addresses - separated by commas or new lines - and submit. You can invite a batch at a time rather than one address per form.

Expiry

Choose when the invitation stops working. The form pre-fills 30 days, but you can set any date, or choose No expiration for an invitation that stays valid indefinitely. Expired invitations can be re-sent.

Email or Allow List

By default an invitation email goes out with a link that takes the recipient straight into joining. Tick don't send an email and the address is added to the allow list instead: the person is pre-authorized to join, but hears nothing from Hinsley. Use this when you are announcing the network yourself and just need the addresses cleared to register.

Managing Invitations

The Invitations tab lists everyone still outstanding, who invited them, when the invitation expires, and whether it was emailed or is allow-list only. You can re-send an invitation that has not been accepted, or revoke one - revoking immediately withdraws the authorization, so the address can no longer be used to join. Once someone accepts, they move to the Forecasters tab.

The Roster

The Forecasters tab lists everyone holding a seat, when they joined, and whether their seat is active. Search by name or email to find someone on a large network.

Adding Existing Account Members

Add member seats someone who already belongs to your Hinsley account directly, without an invitation round-trip. To seat your whole analyst team automatically as members arrive, use the analyst access switch in General settings instead.

Deactivating and Reactivating

When someone should no longer take part, deactivate their seat rather than removing them. A deactivated forecaster loses access to the network immediately - they stop receiving requests and emails, drop out of @-mention suggestions, and can no longer sign in - but their forecast history is preserved. Reactivate them later and they pick up where they left off.

Deactivated forecasters are listed on their own so the active roster stays a true picture of who is currently participating.

Profile Questions

Under Settings → Profile questions you can ask forecasters extra questions about themselves during onboarding. Answers are used three ways: on the forecaster's profile, for slicing results by participant characteristics, and for routing requests to the right people.

Question Types

• Short text - a free-text answer.
• Single choice (dropdown) and single choice (radios) - pick one from a list you define. Radios suit short lists; a dropdown suits long ones.
• Multiple choice - pick several from a list.
• Country - a country picker.

The answer type is fixed once a question is created. Everything else - the label, help text, whether it is required - can be changed later. Drag to reorder the list; that is the order forecasters see.

Required and Visible

• Required - forecasters must answer before they can finish onboarding.
• Show on profile - when on, other forecasters can see the answer on that person's profile, subject to the network's profile visibility setting. Off by default.

Topic Expertise

Alongside the profile questions, forecasters rate their expertise on each of the network's topics - not a focus, interested, working, or expert. Ratings are shown on the forecaster's profile and are used when routing requests.

Forecasters rate themselves against whichever topics exist when they onboard, so topics added later are not covered by existing ratings until each forecaster revises them. Forecasters can revise their ratings any time from their profile settings.