Invite Enforcement for Team Account Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Online service providers face challenges in controlling how email addresses belonging to their domain are used by users, particularly in ensuring that users create team accounts under the management of the domain owner for enhanced access control and service benefits.
Innovation Solution
Implementing 'invite enforcement' and 'domain capture' techniques, where owners can invite users to join a team account and require them to migrate their individual accounts to team accounts, ensuring all usage is under the owner's management, and automatically creating invisible team accounts for domain capture to motivate users to join.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If users are allowed to create individual accounts with email addresses from any domain, then user freedom and ease of account creation are improved, but domain owners lose control over how their email addresses are used
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an invitation system as an intermediary mechanism between domain owners and users. Domain owners send invitations to users with their domain email addresses, and the system mediates the account creation process by requiring invitation acceptance. This intermediary layer preserves user freedom to create accounts while giving domain owners control through the invitation mechanism.
2Reliability
If domain owners implement strict control over email address usage, then control and security are improved, but user freedom and ease of service access deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by requiring domain owners to pre-send invitations to users before account creation is permitted. The invitation contains a unique identifier that must be accepted before the user can create an individual account or join a team account. This preliminary invitation step ensures domain owner control is established before any account creation occurs, while still allowing users the freedom to accept or decline.
3Adaptability or versatility
If users can use individual accounts with domain email addresses, then user autonomy is improved, but domain owners cannot ensure team account adoption for enhanced service benefits
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional account creation flow by requiring domain owners to initiate the process through invitations rather than users independently creating accounts. Users must accept invitations to create individual accounts, and the system simultaneously offers team account options. This inversion allows the system to guide users toward team accounts while preserving user autonomy through the acceptance/decline mechanism.
4Reliability
If the system requires invitation acceptance for account creation, then domain owner control is improved, but account creation time and process complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service by allowing users to automatically complete account creation by simply accepting the invitation through a automated process. The system sends the invitation with a unique identifier, and upon acceptance, automatically creates the individual account or facilitates team account joining without requiring manual verification or additional steps. This self-service approach minimizes account creation time while maintaining domain owner control through the invitation acceptance requirement.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for invite enforcement. In one embodiment, for example, a method comprises: receiving an acceptance of an invitation to join a team of one or more team user accounts held with the online service; based on receiving the acceptance and based on determining that an owned domain name service domain of an owned electronic mail address is associated with the team, offering a personal user account an option between at least: (a) converting the personal user account to a team user account that is a member of the team, and (b) changing an electronic mail address associated with the personal user account from the owned electronic mail address to one that has a different domain name service domain than the owned domain name service domain associated with the team.