Bulk importing users with the data importer

Loading many users at once. The preparation is the job and the import itself takes minutes. One file holds at most 500,000 rows and 200 columns.

Loading many users at once. The preparation is the job and the import itself takes minutes. One file holds at most 500,000 rows and 200 columns.

Import them

1. Prepare the file. New users need name and emails; to update people who already exist, one unique identifier is enough, an email, a name or an external ID.
2. Clean it: duplicates, formatting, missing addresses. The same person twice in one file is not allowed.
3. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules and select Tools > Data importer.
4. Click Import, set the target to Users and choose Create only, Update only or Create and update.
5. Upload the file, check the field mapping, and import a handful of rows first.
6. Check the result in the interface, then Start import for the rest.

One file holds at most 500,000 rows and 200 columns, within 1 GB. More than that is several files.

Test with ten rows

Always. A column mapped wrongly across ten records is a minute to fix; across ten thousand it is a cleanup project, and the records are now live.

Clean the data first

• Duplicate addresses, which will either fail or merge unpredictably.
• Malformed addresses, which create records nobody can contact.
• Inconsistent organisation names, which create near-duplicate organisations.
• Names in mixed formats, which show up in every future email.

Fixing this in a spreadsheet beforehand is far easier than afterwards.

Decide about organisations first

Importing users without linking them to organisations means doing it again later, or losing the grouping your reporting depends on. Get that column right before you start.

And where you are importing both, the order is fixed rather than advisable: organisations first, then users. People cannot be attached to companies that do not exist yet.

Watch what notifications it sends

With Guide switched on, every new user in the file receives the welcome email asking them to verify their address and set a password. That is the whole file, on a day nobody was expecting to hear from you.

Turn it off first if you do not want it: in Admin Center, click People, then Configuration > End users, and clear Also send a verification email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator. Put it back afterwards, or new customers stop getting their verification mail.

Import users, not agents

Agents take seats. Confirm the file contains only end users, or check the seat implications first.

Ask us for a large migration

Moving from another system involves more than users. Contact pluscloud support and we will plan the sequence with you.

See also

• Merging duplicate users
• Creating and managing organisations
• Importing your existing users and organisations