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Furbol — How It Works

Inviting Someone to a Game

Inviting Someone to a Game

This page walks through what inviting another Furbol user looks like in the app — where the button is, what the picker shows, and how you send invites. The rules behind it live on Game Invitations.

1. Find the Invites tab

Open the game. On the game detail page, there’s a row of tabs near the top:

  • Log — what’s happened on the game so far.
  • Bookings — who’s in.
  • Roll Call — day-of line-up.
  • Invites — the one you want.

Tap Invites.

If you’re not the host (or a co-host, or otherwise allowed to manage players on this game), the tab shows up read-only — you can see who’s been invited, but the per-user invite/decline buttons aren’t active.

2. Who you see in the picker

The invites tab isn’t a search field — it’s a set of grouped sections with players already pre-filtered for you. Scrolling top to bottom:

  • Followers involved — your followers who aren’t yet in the game. These are the people you’d naturally want to fill with first.
  • Others invited — users you’ve already invited (for this game or earlier). Handy for seeing the running invite list at a glance.
  • Nearby 1 km / 3 km / 5 km — Furbol users close to the venue, sorted by distance. Each distance band is its own section.

No free-text search inside the invites tab. The scope is “who’s naturally connected to this game” (your followers, plus geographic proximity).

3. Inviting

One user at a time

Each row in the sections has an invite button next to the person’s name. Tap it — the button turns blue to show the invite is now pending. A snackbar confirms: “I invited {nickname} in the {venue} at {date}”.

Inviting a whole section

Each section has an “INVITE ALL” link at its top — one-tap bulk invite of everyone in that section who isn’t already invited. While it’s processing, the button shows a spinner; when done, it flips to INVITE ALL COMPLETED in green.

Bulk invites are useful for closing the gap fast when you’ve got a half-empty game close to kick-off, especially with the Nearby sections.

4. What the invitee sees

  • They get a push — “{you} invited {them} to {the game}”.
  • The game appears in their Invites tab on the home screen (the activity-log tab, not the one inside the game).
  • They can Accept — which books them, same as any booking — or Decline, which just ends the invitation.

5. The “not welcome” exclusion

The same invites tab has a second button per person: a red X next to the invite button. Tapping it marks that person as not welcome for the game.

From the excluded person’s side, it looks like a declined invitation they never knew existed. Functionally, they won’t be able to show up on the roster — even if the game is public.

  • Tap the red X once — person excluded.
  • Tap it again — exclusion undone; they’re back to normal.

This is how a host quietly keeps a specific person out of a game they’d otherwise have access to — without having to flip the game’s visibility. There’s no separate “exclude” screen; same tab, same row, one extra button.

6. Visibility and the invite chain

The invite flow is the same UI across public, private, and secret games. What differs is what the invitation does:

  • Public game — the invite is a nudge. The person could have found the game on their own.
  • Private game — the invite grants access. Without one, they can’t see or join.
  • Secret game — same; they wouldn’t even see the game existed until invited.

The invite tab looks the same for all three kinds. What changes is what the invitation gets them, not the picker itself.

Extending the chain as a non-host

In a private or secret game, the invites tab isn’t host-only. The moment you’ve been brought in — either as an invitee (pending or accepted) or as a player the host placed on the roster — you get the same invites tab, the same picker sections, and the same invite buttons. Tapping one sends the invitation from you, not the host. This is how a secret game spreads to people the host doesn’t know directly: each person who invites someone new widens the circle.

The two exceptions at the tab level:

  • The game is cancelled — invite buttons go inactive.
  • The line-up has locked after the feedback window opens — invites are no longer accepted because the roster itself is frozen.

Otherwise, your non-host invite behaves like a host invite from the invitee’s side: they get the push, the game appears in their Invites tab, they can accept or decline.

The red X across chain members

Tapping the red X has two different effects depending on who you are:

  • You’re the host — it marks the person as not welcome for the game. The block persists, and no other invitee in the chain can re-invite them afterwards: any fresh invitation to them bounces with the “blocked by host” reason, whether it comes from the host’s own invite button or from another chain member.
  • You’re a non-host invitee — it just declines the invitation you sent (or would send) to that user. It does not mark them as not welcome for the game as a whole; another invitee, or the host, could still invite them. Use it to withdraw your own invite, not to lock someone out.

Only the host has the global “not welcome” power. That’s deliberate — otherwise any one chain member could kill someone else’s invites.

7. What you won’t see in this flow today

Worth naming:

  • No free-text search on the invites tab. If the person you want isn’t a follower and isn’t geographically near the venue, the invites tab won’t surface them. To reach them, you’d have to share the game link (see Sharing a Game) or place them via the booking flow if they’re a follower of yours.
  • No confirmation dialog on the red X. The decline (or, if you’re the host, the exclusion) happens on the first tap. Undo is “tap again” — but if you double-tap by accident you end up where you started, which is fine; if you single-tap by accident you might not realize for a moment.
  • No send-to-multiple-games in one go. If you want to invite the same person to five games, you’ll be tapping five invite buttons across five invite tabs.
  • No visual distinction between a host exclusion and a non-host decline. Both are a red X with a count. If you want to know whether a user is globally excluded (vs. just declined by you), the way to tell is to try to re-invite them — a host exclusion will bounce with “blocked by host” on send.