How to set-up trials to your Zapnito site

Are you one of our many customers that give people trial access to their Zapnito site, so that they can access features and / or content normally reserved for paying customers? If so, you may enjoy this useful guide...

Step 1: Create a trial group

1. As an admin, go to the cog icon and select Groups to create a new group.
2. Call it either 'Trialist', if you want all your trialists in one group (for ease of admin), or use the name of the company taking the trial (if you want to be able to understand exactly how a specific customer is using your site when on their trial), e.g. 'Walmart Trialist'.
3. Email support@zapnito.com to get us to add the appropriate abilities to your group, e.g. 'Create comment' or 'Access course'. If in doubt over what abilities you need, just tell us to give the same abilities to the group that 'full' customers have on your site.

Step 2: Invite trialists to access the site

Once we have confirmed that your group is set up, you can invite trialists in one of three ways:

1. By adding them to the trialist group. If the user is already registered to your site (you can search for them in Users, under the cog icon, to check), simply return to the Groups page and click in to your trialist group. Use the Add User tool to search for and then add the user to the trialist group. Click Save and your user now has trial access.
2. For people not already registered to your site, you can give them trial access by inviting them to the site. When they accept the invitation, they will become a trialist. To do this, go to the cog icon then Users and use the invitation form at the top of the page to enter the trialist's name and email. Select from the Group drop-down list the trialist group to which the user should be added when they complete registration.
3. By uploading them using CSV upload. This route means that any user set up in this way is fully registered and does not need to accept an invitation to get access to your site. But it also means that you need to ensure they are happy with the site terms and conditions. (Users uploaded by CSV are considered by the system to have accepted the T&Cs.) This approach tends to work best when you have a lot of trialists at one organisation and a single point of contact can confirm that the T&Cs are acceptable to all. To do this, go to the cog icon then Users and click the Bulk User CSV Upload button and follow the instructions to upload users.

Once you have uploaded your data, and received email confirmation that the data has been successfully added to the site, all the people in the CSV file will be able to sign in to the site. They will receive an email notifying them of their access and will be asked to reset their password.

What to do when the trial is over

1. If the trial has ended for an entire group (e.g. the 'Walmart Trialist' group), simply email support@zapnito.com and tell us to remove the access abilities given only to customers and trialists. The people in the group will still be able to sign in to the site but they won't be able to do any of the things that only trialists and customers can do.
2. If the trial has ended for an individual in a generic 'trialists' group, head to the Groups page and click into the trialists group. Search for the users whose trial has ended and click the dustbin icon next to their name to delete them from the group. When you click Save, they will no longer be a trialist. You may wish to add the users to another group to keep track of them and/or give them different abilities. A 'Past Trialist' group can be a good way to keep track of such users.

Don't forget! By setting up a GoSquared Smart Group that shows only people in the trialist group (filter on 'Groups') you can understand how trialists have been using your site while on their trial. 

Any questions regarding setting up trialists to your Zapnito site? Contact us at support@zapnito.com.