How to add users to your community

This article contains the following sections:

• Invitations
• Inviting users via a room
• Campaigns
• Bulk CSV upload
• Creating users’ profiles for them

Invitations

The easiest way to add users to your community is to invite them. Go to the Users pages under the cog icon on the main navbar and you’ll see an area at the top of the page dedicated to inviting users.

Enter the full name and email address of the person you want to invite and select from the Group menu the group into which they should be added when they complete registration.

Click the ‘Send Invitation’ button and an email will be sent to the invitee that looks a bit like this:

If you need to resend a user’s invitation at any time, find their name in the list of users then use the menu at the end of their table row to ask them to confirm their email address. Choose the ‘Resend confirmation’ option and an email will be sent.

Inviting users via a room

You can also invite users to your site by inviting them to join a closed (or ‘private’) room. When they join the closed room, they will register for the site at the same time.

Go to ‘Rooms’ under the cog icon on the main navbar and identify the closed room to which you want to invite users. Click ‘Edit’.

You can invite users as a contributor (which means they can publish posts, videos and documents to the specific room) or a member. Both members and contributors can take part in room conversations and will be listed in the room user directories.

Click on the ‘Contributor’ or ‘Member’ tab as required.

You will then see a list of all invited contributors or members and see a field into which to enter the invitee’s email address.

If you are inviting to the room someone who doesn’t already belong you your community, you will see the message ‘No users matching…. Invite them to join’. Click this message then click the ‘Invite’ button and the user will be invited to join the room and the community.

Campaigns

Users can be invited to register to your Zapnito site generally and to rooms specifically using the Campaigns tool. 

This tool allows you to create a bespoke URL allowing people who click on it to register to your site. When users register via the URL, they will be added to the group you specified when creating the campaign. What’s more, the Campaigns tool tells you how many users have registered using the URL in question. 

To access campaigns, go to the cog icon on the top-right corner of the screen, click on ‘Settings’ and navigate to ‘Campaigns’. Once you are in the Campaigns settings page, click the ‘New Campaign’ button to begin. This opens the campaign creation screen.

Give your campaign a name and specify to which group users should be added when they register via the URL. Once you have selected a group, you will be able to click on the green button 'Create Campaign'.

Optionally, you also have the option of specifying the final landing page where users will be taken to once they click on the campaign. This is the Redirect URL. If you do not add a redirect URL, new registered users will land on the homepage of the community when they finish registering.

Once the campaign has been created, you will be able to find it in the Campaigns settings page, from where you can copy the campaign's URL and distribute it as you wish.

Bulk CSV upload

If you wish to create users’ profiles for them, rather than invite them to register, you can use our bulk CSV upload tool.

Go to ‘Users’ and there you will see a button that reads ‘Bulk user CSV upload’. Once clicked, you will see a popover with instructions on how to upload your users.

This contains clear instructions on how to format your CSV file for uploading, as well as a downloadable CSV template. There is a field in the template 'registration number', please don't worry if you don't have this for your users - you can leave this column blank.

The main thing to note about adding users to your community in this way is that they will be considered fully registered to your site and to have accepted your site terms & conditions, privacy notice and community policy. Therefore, you should only use this feature to invite users who have already accepted these terms or who have otherwise agreed that they are happy to be added to the community in this way.

Once you have uploaded your file, follow the steps on the screen to process your file. You will receive email confirmation of whether your file has been processed correctly.

The users on your CSV file will each receive an email telling them they have been registered to your site and asking them to reset their password.

The email sent to users when they are registered using the bulk user CSV upload feature

Creating users’ profiles for them

Occasionally, you may want to create profiles for users before making them aware that they are registered on your site. This is often the case when preparing a site for launch. For example, you may want to create profiles for your colleagues or a selection of your experts to make it clear that your community is growing and is home to the ‘right’ people.

The best way to do this is to create the user with an email address that is not their own, edit their profile and then, once you have set-up the user, change the email address on the account to their actual email.

The steps to follow are: 

1. Identify a ‘dummy’ email address you can use to create the user. You may need to ask your IT team to create some ‘alias’ accounts for you. If you can’t find a way to create these email accounts, we can do this for you. Email us at support@zapnito.com.
2. You can also set up a 'dummy' email address at many of the disposable email services online such as 10 Minute Mail on behalf of the user. This creates a private email address that anyone can send mail to, the email and the address are automatically deleted in 10 minutes.
3. If your email provider allows plus addressing like Google Mail, you can differentiate the different email addresses by using the '+' sign and a number after the name. This way, the email still gets sent to that account. For example if you had the email johnsmith@gmail.com, you could use this email address multiple times on the community with johnsmith+1@gmail.com or johnsmith+2@gmail.com. The site would recognise this as 2 separate users, but send all emails to the same email account. 
4. Either invite the user at the dummy address using the Users page invitation page or the bulk user CSV upload.
5. On the Users page, search for the user in question and log in as them by clicking on the three dots at the very right of their name.
6. Once you are signed in as the user in question, go to their ‘Edit profile’ page under their avatar on the top navbar and populate their profile as required. Adding an avatar is the most important thing!
7. You may also want to publish content as the user. Do whatever you need to do!
8. When you are ready to transfer ownership of the account to the user themselves, you need to change the email address on their account. Before you do this, we recommend dropping them an email to tell them:
   • • About the community and why you have created a profile for them
     • To take a look at your site terms & conditions, privacy notice and community policy to check they are happy with them
     • To look out for an email asking them to confirm their email address for use in managing their profile
9. Log in as the user and go to their Account Settings page and click the ‘Change Email Address’ button
10. Enter the real email address of the user and the password you created for them and click ‘Save changes’ to trigger an email to the user’s new email address
11. The user will receive an email asking them to confirm their email address. The email address won’t be changed until they click the link in that email to confirm the change

So, you now have a number of ways to add people to your community. Why wait? Start growing your community today!

If you have any questions, please contact us at support@zapnito.com or add a comment below this article.