The pool is set up. The rules are picked. The wizard published the page. Now the room has to find its way in. OfficePoolGolf does not push notifications out to your office — there is no employee directory the platform reads. The commissioner sends the invitation, and the platform tracks the rest. This guide walks through how share links work, the practical patterns for filling a pool, and what to do when the chain breaks down.
Every pool generates a share link the moment it publishes. The commissioner forwards that link through whichever channel the group already uses. The link is the invitation.
How share links work
The share link is the canonical invite. Once a pool moves from draft to published, the pool page shows a "Copy share link" affordance at the top. The link points to the pool's public-or-unlisted URL — depending on visibility — and signs a token that confirms the visitor arrived through a deliberate share rather than guessing the URL.
The share link does not expire. As long as the pool is in open status, the link works. Once the pool locks, the link still resolves but new joins are gated by whether late entry is allowed on the tier. Once the pool reaches completed, the link is read-only — entrants can review the final standings but no new joins are possible.
A four-step pattern for sending the invite
Publish the pool with the right visibility
Before sharing anything, confirm the pool's visibility matches the audience. Unlisted is the default for office groups and rarely the wrong call. Public is right when you want the platform's browse page to surface the pool to a wider audience. Password-protected is right when the link will travel through a channel you cannot fully control (a wide-channel Slack room, an all-hands email).
Copy the share link from the pool page
The "Copy share link" button on the pool page puts the URL on your clipboard. The link is intentionally short enough to paste into a text message without wrapping. There is no separate "send invitation" flow built into the platform — the commissioner does the sending through the channel they already use.
Send the link through your group's normal channel
Whatever the group uses for routine communication is the right channel. A Slack DM thread, a group text, an email to the team alias, a Teams chat. The link carries the pool name in the URL slug, but the surrounding message should name the tournament, the entry fee (or "bragging rights only"), and the deadline. A two-line invitation works fine: "Heading up the PGA Championship pool — entry fee twenty dollars, deadline Wednesday at five. Sign up here: [link]."
Confirm the chain reached everyone you intended
A day or two after sending, check the pool's entrant list against the room you meant to invite. Some people miss the message. A direct nudge — "did you see the pool invite?" — usually closes the gap. The commissioner is the only person who knows whether the room is complete, so the chain confirmation is your job.
Eagle and Albatross — the invite-list feature
At Eagle and Albatross, the platform supplements the share-link pattern with a managed invite list. The commissioner can paste in email addresses (Eagle) or curate them with status tracking (Albatross), and the platform tracks who was invited, whether the invitation email landed, and whether the invitee has joined. The invite list does NOT replace the share link; it adds a record-keeping layer on top of it.
The invite list fits two specific shapes:
A corporate pool large enough that the commissioner cannot remember who was invited by Tuesday. The platform's tracking makes the follow-up sweep on Wednesday possible without a separate spreadsheet.
A paid pool with high entry counts where the commissioner is also tracking payment. Tying the invite list to the payment ledger means the commissioner has a single screen for "who is in" and "who has paid."
For pools under twenty-five entries — almost every Birdie pool — the invite list is unnecessary. The share link sent through the group's normal channel covers the same ground with less setup.
Practical patterns for filling the room
A few patterns hold across most office pools:
Send the link by Friday for a Thursday lock. A week of lead time gives the room enough room to forget once, get reminded, and still sign up before the deadline. Tighter than five days and a meaningful share of the audience misses the chain entirely.
Send a single reminder forty-eight hours before lock. The platform sends a pre-lock warning to unpaid entrants automatically (Eagle and above); the commissioner sends the human reminder to people who have not joined yet. The combination of platform automation and a personal nudge closes the long tail.
Pin the link if your channel supports pinning. A Slack channel pin or a Teams announcement keeps the link discoverable for the people who saw the original message and put it off. Replacing "where was that link?" with "look at the pin" cuts repeat-asks materially.
Treat the link as the source of truth. Do not send screenshots of the pool page; do not paste the rules into the chat manually. The pool page is canonical and updates when you change rules; an emailed screenshot is frozen in time and gets stale.
When somebody falls off the chain
A few entrants always slip through. The remedies depend on the failure mode.
The invitation never reached them. Resend the share link. Confirm the channel reached the right address. If you sent to a team alias and the alias was wrong, fix the alias and resend.
The invitation reached them but they have not signed up for OPG. First-time users have to create an account before they can join. The platform supports a sign-up flow that returns them to the pool page after onboarding completes. Send a short note that names the sign-up step explicitly — "you will need to create an account first; the form takes about a minute."
They tried to sign up but stopped at the password gate. Check whether the pool is password-protected and whether they got the password through whatever channel you sent it on. A surprising fraction of "I cannot join" turns out to be a missed second message carrying the password.
They signed up but did not submit a roster. The platform automatically reminds them; you can also send a personal nudge. Birdie and above pools support individual reminders from the commissioner dashboard — a one-click "your entry is started but not submitted" message.
For who else has access to the pool's join screen, read Private vs Public vs Password-Protected Pools. For the host's broader workflow, read The Commissioner Guide. Ready to publish your pool? Sign in and the wizard walks you through every step before the share link.