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url: https://talkjs.com/docs/Guides/JavaScript/Classic/Add_Users
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# Add users to a group chat

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You can add participants to a group chat, either from your frontend or from your backend using the REST API. You can't directly add *guest* users to a group chat, as guests aren't members of a conversation. You can, however enable or turn off guest access.

Users can join a group chat at any time during the lifetime of a conversation. Joining a chat works differently for participants and guests, in the following way.

## Add a participant

You can programmatically add participants to a group chat either from your frontend or from your backend, as follows.

### Frontend

To add a participant to a conversation from your frontend, use [ParticipantRef](/docs/JavaScript_Data_API/Participants/) from the JavaScript Data API or JavaScript Chat SDK.

### Backend

To add a participant to a conversation from your backend, call the [Join conversation](/docs/REST_API/Participation/#join-conversation) endpoint of our REST API.

## Allow joining as a guest

You can't add guests to a conversation in the same way as you can add participants. Instead, you can set things up so that users who aren't participants in a conversation can access that conversation as a guest.

To allow a user to join a conversation as a guest, [enable guest access](/docs/Guides/JavaScript/Classic/Control_Guest_Access/) and make a chat interface with that conversation available to the user. Any user who knows the conversation's ID and is not already a participant in that conversation, can now access this conversation as a guest.