It's obviously a better security practice to have users set their own password in a secure session rather than have someone else enter a password for them and then send it (insecurely) to them. It sounds like this might not be the best approach for every scenario though.

Perhaps invite user should be the default but with an additional option (with a warning about security risks) so that an administrator can directly create the user and set a password? (maybe Matomo should suggest a quality password?). This option could then also be disabled by a config setting for sites that need to enforce high security.

@tsteur, @peterhashair Any thoughts?

while I suggest bringing the old way back as well, maybe is too late. but my thoughts are here #19707 (comment)

A user asks

"can we create accounts with password directly in matomo without sending a validation mail?
Thanks in advance"

"peut'on créer des comptes avec mot de passe directement dans matomo sans envoyer de mail de validation ?
Merci d'avance"

A non technical user asks

"I try to create a new user but this person never receives an activation email. I tried to return and even to recreate the user but it does not change anything. I am not a developer and I am not the person who installed Matomo within the company. We don't manage ourself the exchange server of mail but I can tell you that we also use MailInblack as a solution to filter the mails and the account creation mail doesn't even reach them while it did for others.
I know by research that I am not the only one who ever got this problem so I was hoping you could tell me in general what are the issues in those situations."

A user has declined to update to version 4.11 because of the Create New User feature change:

4.10.1 - if we will do update, we cant set password for users - cutrrently working propertly on ver 4.10.1

@jane-twizel this might be something we could work with Product Team on to define and deliver. If it wasn't a bit of a trade off between security and usability we might be treating this as a regression since the feature makes some valid use cases no longer possible.

There is another use-case that doesn't work anymore. If you're using the LoginLDAP plugin, and you e.g. want to create "external" accounts for the web/seo/marketing agency (which are not in your LDAP), then you'd have to enable the Login plugin.

But you can't use both plugins at the same time ("Warning: Both the Login and LoginLdap plugins are enabled! This will cause logins for LDAP users to fail, please disable the Login plugin.").

@peterbo Just FYI, the LoginLdap issue will be resolved with release of Matomo 4.12
Refer - #19717

A user writes:
"If I want to invite a new user the email invitation does not work."

@atom-box we create a copy user link that should be in the next release soon.

Excellent -- I will spread the word. Thank you!

Just in case it is helpful in thinking about the User Experience, here is a sysadmin with their specific details:

PROBLEM;:
I tried to create a new user but Matomo doesn't send any email.
I want to use "local mail function" (see "Email server settings" )
because i already use a specific and working mail accunt to send
mail with my Joomla and it works fine.

Sometimes this command works: "./console core:test-email info@example.com"
But the from the page "Add new user" Matomo always fails.

Note:
I follow also these guides but i didn't resolve.
https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/faq_93/
https://matomo.org/faq/troubleshooting/faq_34856/

@atom-box we now also have this option which may help - https://matomo.org/faq/invite-a-new-user-if-email-hasnt-worked/

Old way is also better for us for the following 2 reasons:

1. Our system is integrated with LoginSAML / LoginOIDC, so that user never needs to enter their password.
2. As of 4.11, I was not able to assign new users to groups immediately after I invite them. There seems to be some wait time between user creation and username being available in the assign user to group dropdown.