A guide on how to use spreadsheets to upload users in bulk.
This article assumes you already know about users and how to configure them, if not see Understanding The User and/or How do I configure a user?
Most likely when configuring domains you will need to create more than a single user, and whilst adding 1 or 2 users in the portal is fine, creating any more than that at once will quickly become cumbersome, slow, and extremely repetitive.
Instead the portal gives us a few different tools that will help us modify/create more than 1 user at once much easier.
Importing
The easiest way to create more than 1 user at once is to import them via a CSV file.
First you will need to download the template, to do this navigate to the "Users" tab under the domain view and click "Import" then "Download Template"
This will download a template .csv file, open this file in a spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
When you open the file the layout looks like the above, the first column consists of the field headers that you can upload.
IMPORTANT: The field titled "911 callerid" is the back end name for the field "Emergency Caller ID"
Below that is 5 example records that you can just delete.
Not every one of these columns is required, only the columns with a * in the field name are required fields. Deleting the column for fields you don't need to configure will just cause the upload to use the default value for that field instead (set by the site/domain of the user).
WARNING: The default value for "add phone extension" is no, unless you don't intend to have these users ever make phone calls, leave the column in and set it to yes. It's not a huge issue if you forget to do this, however if you have a lot of users you will end up spending a lot of your time configuring the phone extensions for these users manually.
Note that the default value for "vmail enabled" is also "no", so make sure you leave that in as yes too if you intend to use voicemail on these users.
Default Values For Each Field
| Field | Default Value |
| domain | It will fill with the domain you're currently viewing when uploading. |
| login | <extension>@<domain_name> |
| portal password |
It will leave the user in a "reset" state, requiring a welcome email be sent |
| email address | Blank Value |
| voicemail pin | 1234 |
| department | blank value |
| site | blank value |
| vmail enabled | no |
| answer timeout | 25 seconds |
| timezone | pulls from domain/site defaults |
| area code | pulls from domain/site defaults |
| callerid number | pulls from domain/site defaults |
| 911 callerid | pulls from domain/site defaults for the callerid number |
| dial plan | sets it the domain dial translation of the domain |
| dial permission | pulls from domain/site defaults |
| audio directory | yes |
| visual directory | yes |
| vmail_transcribe | no |
| email_vmail | attnew |
| email_vmail_enable | yes |
| add phone extension | no |
| scope | Basic User |
Importing The File
Once your file is formatted the way you want it and with the users you want, it's ready for uploading.
As you can see I've removed quite a few of the columns from the above example.
To begin the upload save the file then navigate back to the portal, click the "Import" button in the Users tab under the domain view, then click "Browse" to select the file you just saved.
From here click the "Upload" button and you will be taken to the bulk import preview page.
1 - User Updates: As you can see here I've imported a user that already existed previously, as such the important has opted to update said user with the values I specified in the import file.
IMPORTANT: Any fields you deleted from the file will instead use their default values as listed in the table further up in this article, however when updating a user that already exists, the default values for any deleted columns will remain as the values they were before the import, and will not be overwritten by the default values listed in the table.
2 - New Users: Here you can see a preview and even change some of the values for any of the users you are uploading. Note that not every field can be viewed/changed here so you should still make sure the file is correct before you upload it.
3 - Details/Delete: Click the magnifying glass to see some more values not listed in the preview, however these cannot be edited, if anything is wrong you will need to cancel the import and reupload. Click the red "x" to delete the user from the upload entirely.
If you're ready, click "Import" to begin the import process.
IMPORTANT: Imports can take a long time, I've seen imports of 100+ users take 5-10+ minutes, so make sure you're ready.
Bulk Edit/Action
Whilst you can make bulk modify changes by exporting the existing user list, modifying the file it gives you, then reuploading. If you're only making 1 or a few bulk edits there are faster methods.
First, select the users you want to edit by ticking the box next to each user on the left hand side.
As you can see, selecting some users has caused a few extra buttons to appear, Bulk Action, Bulk Edit, and Delete.
The delete button is fairly self explanatory, and clicking this will just delete all the users you've selected from the portal.
Bulk Edit
This lets you change any of the fields within the users you've selected. In this scenario, I've decided that the users I've created as "Basic Users" are actually never going to use the portal, so I'm going to change all of their scopes to "No Portal".
First I click the "Bulk Edit" button to bring up the Bulk Edit configuration panel.
You will be given a list of fields to change, to change a field, select the tick box next to the one you want, then change the value to the desired value that will be set for all users you've selected.
Once you've made the changes you want, click "Save".
The scope of all my selected users has now changed.
Bulk Action
This lets you do any actions that you can normally do via the advanced tab within a user, but to multiple users at once.
For this example I have 2 users that are of Office Manager and Site Manager scope that I want to send a welcome email to.
Like with bulk edit, first select the users you want to perform actions on, then click "Bulk Action" to bring up the Bulk Action configuration panel.
From here simply select the action you want to perform, then click "Complete Action".