Summary
As with any organisation, user records can change over time, whilst updates can be made to user profiles on an individual level, it would be a very time intensive task. In this guide we’ll be looking at how to bulk update multiple user records at once using bulk user uploads.
Step 1 - Navigate
You can find the user upload page on your platform by going to the following, whilst logged in as a site administrator:
Site Administration > Users > Upload users
Step 2 - Upload
From within the “User upload” page, you’ll need to add the spreadsheet containing your user data into the file upload area.
We’ll touch more on what data needs to be included below:
Collecting existing user data
Before you begin the bulk upload process you need to ensure that you have the latest version of user data which exists on your platform or a copy of the last user upload/update which was uploaded to the system.
If you wish to collect a copy of existing user records on your site, go to:
Site administration > Users > Bulk User actions
Within this page, scroll down to "Users in list" and click "All users" at the top of the text box and then click "Add to selection". With all of your users selected, using the dropdown box next to "With selected users..." select "download" and begin the download process. This will download a spreadsheet containing all user data currently on the system.
Updating user data
Using the spreadsheet of existing user data you can now make any changes needed in order to update user records. For our example, we’re going to be updating the First Name for our 5 “test” users on the platform from “test” to “updated”.
Once you’ve made the necessary changes to your user records, ensuring that the file is saved in a “.CSV” format, you can now add this file into the file drop area of the user upload page. The remaining dropdown options on the page should be left as the default values, however, the preview rows dropdown can be increased in order to display all of the users you’ll be uploading on the following page. You can then click the “Upload users button” to begin the upload process.
The next page that opens is the “Upload users preview” page, here you can view the status of the users uploaded to check for any errors before completing the upload. If there are no status errors then you’ll be able to scroll to the bottom of the page to view the “Settings” for the upload. If there are status errors present then you’ll need to correct these in the spreadsheet and re-complete the previous step to upload the latest file.
Once the “Settings” section becomes accessible, you’ll need to setup the upload with the following key details:
- Upload type - As we are updating user data for users which already exist on the platform, this should be set to “Update existing users only”.
- Existing user details - This should be set to “Override with file” to ensure that the data is being updated using the latest data included in the file.
- Existing user password - Unless the user passwords are being updated and a “password” column has been included in the user upload spreadsheet then this should be set to “No changes” in order to allow users to keep their existing passwords.
The remaining options within this step of the upload are optional, but please be aware that any “Other fields” or “Hierarchy” information inputted here will apply to all users being updated. For now, once you’ve made the suggested changes above, you can click “Upload users” to complete the upload process.
Finally, you’ll be taken to the “Upload users results” page whereby you can review the changes that have been made following the upload process. In the bottom left of the page, you can see how many users have been updated and any errors which prevented them from being updated.
Step 3 - Verifying changes
After following the steps highlighted above, the updates will have been made to users on your site and can be viewed by going to:
Site administration > Users > Browse list of users
Within this page you can search for example users which have been updated and click on their username to open their user profile and confirm that the changes have been made.