import

Users

Users are your audience of parents, staff, students, community members and other stakeholders.   Before you can send any communications to them they must be registered with EZCommunicator.   EZCommunicator is unique in that you can choose to synchronize your user list with your internal databases, such parents from your student information system (using our EZLink module); load users from a disk file or allow users to subscribe from your website – or any combination of those three.

Users can login to the My Account area of EZCommunicator and update their profile, which is composed of their contact details, their school relationships and their information preferences.

 Users – Add

Adding users manually should be a last resort.  For the most part after the initial system load, users should be encouraged to self register through the online contact center website to choose the appropriate school relationships and notification groups, etc.  But there are certainly times when you will want to add a user manually.

 Enter Account information.

Each user account must have a unique email address and may register a secondary email address on their profile.  However, they will not be able to access the system with the secondary email address. 

Enter telephone numbers and choose where to send phone notices.

Enter a mobile phone or PDA number to be used for text message notification.

You can also select any schools or categories to which you want to subscribe this user.

You can also select any categories, groups or event types to which you want to subscribe this user, before saving their record. 

You also have the option of selecting Calendar Event dates and adding Comments/Notes about this user.

Once you have completed all the required fields click Add at the bottom of the page. 

Users – List

 Shows an alphabetical list of all users in the EZCommunicator database. 

There are several options for filtering the available list: view Inactive users and/or filter list of users by the interface they are registered on.  You can then select specific users by selecting the appropriate check boxes and perform the following actions:

• Inactivate Users – prevent the selected user(s) from getting any further correspondence from the system;

• Activate Users – repeal the Inactive status that was previously applied to the user(s);

• Delete Users – a permanent removal of the user(s) from the system along with all of their historical data;

• Add to Group – assign the selected user(s) to a specific Notification Group;

• Assign to Interface – change the registered interface of the selected user(s);

• Assign Relationship – assign a specific relationship to the selected user(s).

 Note: You can also filter your user list to identify whether any duplicate users exist.

Users – Search

Search for a user by choosing the Users -> Search.  You can search for users by their first name, last name, email address, etc. 

 Enter Contact Details, Date Registered, and/or Last Login Date – note that EZCommunicator does not support wildcard characters (e.g. *) when searching the user database.  However, you can include a sub-string like relatrix.com in the email address which will select all users with an email address that contains relatrix.com.

Enter School Relationship and/or Other.

Click Search.

Users – Import

 Users can be imported into EZCommunicator in an ASCII file in comma separated value (.CSV) format.  The fields that can be imported include -

Username*, First Name*, Middle Name, Last Name*, Primary Email, Second Email, Address, City, State/Province*, ZIP/Postal Code, Home Phone, Work Phone, Mobile Phone, Smart Phone/PDA, School/Location Name, User Defined Field_1, User Defined Field_2, User Defined Field_3

Note: If the user record does not have a value for a data field, put a place holder “”, so EZCommunicator will load the data correctly.

Step 1- Choose the interface you want to register the imported users.  If you are importing users for a school you can register them as users at that school.

Step 2 – Choose the Relationship to assign all of the imported users.  For example, if you are importing volunteers you choose the Volunteer relationship so that when you want to send a message to your volunteers you can easily identify them.

Step 3 – Choose how to deal with any duplicate users from your import.  If the user already exists in EZCommunicator you can decide whether to merge, replace, create an exception (don’t import), cycle through the list, or delete the user in EZCommunicator.

Note: These options are available only from the district (app=0) interface.  School interfaces cannot MERGE or REPLACE user records, as these records may not be part of their school user list.

Step 4 – Click Browse and choose the .CSV file to import.

Step 5 – Click Import.

Users – Import Groups

Note:  The Import Groups function is located in the Users area, not in the Groups area.

You can import group assignments for your existing users with this import operation. The users must already have accounts in your database. This operation will not create new user records. You must include a header record in your import file and the file must be in comma separated (.CSV) ASCII format.

The file must contain one field that will be used to uniquely match the record to a user record in your database, and a second field that is the option you want to assign the user to. The option must exist in your Groups Module or this import operation will generate an exception.

 Note: If the record does not have a value for a data field, put a place holder “”, so EZCommunicator will load the data correctly.

 Step 1 - Browse and select your group import file (.CSV). The first record of the file must be a header record and will not be used as real data.  After your filename appears in the box to the left of Browse, then click Load Data.

Step 2 – Select the field to use for matching to your existing users, and the field in the user record in your database that this field should match. This must be a field that will uniquely identify the user record in your database. If an import record cannot be matched to a user record it will be output to the exceptions file.

Step 3 – Select the field to use to assign matched users to a subscription option in your group module. The options must already exist and have a unique name in your database. If the import operation cannot match the selected field to a database option it will put the record in the exceptions file.

Step 4 – Decide whether to Append option subscriptions to existing user record or Replace all option subscriptions in the database record with options in the import file. For Replace to work you must select the Group that all options are members of.

Step 5 – Choose the method for dealing with duplicate user records in the import file. The system considers a record to be a duplicate if it encounters the matching field in more than one record in your import file.

Step 6 – Click Import.

import

How To Subscribe Users To A News Group

While users will generally subscribe to a news group through your EZCommunicator site, you can also assign them to a news group via the administration console.  You may want to do this if your user cannot access their account online, or if you have a list of users and want to subscribe them all to the same group. There are several different options you can use to subscribe users to a group -

Edit Individual User Records

This option works best if you have one or a few users to assign to a group.

Step 1: Search for the user by name or email

Go to Users > Search and type the name, email, username or other identifying value on the user’s record and click SEARCH.  Edit the individual user’s record by click on their last name.

Step 2: Choose the group/option(s) and Add to the user’s profile

Scroll down the user’s profile page until you get to the Groups section.  The available groups/options are displayed on the left and the currently subscribed options are displayed on the right.  Highlight the option(s) in the available list and click ADD to add them to the user’s profile.

Step 3:Update the user record

Click the Update link to save your news group assignments.  Then repeat these steps for any additional users.

Assign Users From The List Or Search Page

This option works best if you do not want to edit the individual record of a user, and can easily browse and select your users.

Step 1: Search for the user by name or email

Go to Users > Search and type the name, email, username or other identifying value on the user’s record and click SEARCH.

Step 2: Select the user(s) you want to assign to the news group

Using the checkbox on a user’s record, select each user that you want to subscribe to a news group.  You can select users across multiple list pages before you assign them to a group.

Step 3:Choose the Action ‘Assign To Group’

After selecting your users, use the dropdown menu in the top right of your list page and select Assign To Group.  This will display a second dropdown list of the News Groups in your interface.  Choose the group you want to assign the selected users and click the GO button next to the group name.  This will assign all selected users to that group.

Import Groups

This option works best if you have a long list of users to add to a group.

Step 1: Create a CSV file

Use Excel or any desktop text editor to create a file that contains all the users who will be subscribed to your news group option.

Step 2: Users > Import Groups

In your admin console go to the Users Module and then the Import Groups function.  This function will only subscribe a user to a news group if the user already exists in your database and if they can be matched to a record.

Step 3: Choose the CSV file from your computer hard drive

Once you select the file click the LOAD link.  This will scan your file and load the header row of your file so you can choose the data columns used in the next few steps.

Step 4:  Choose the field used to match users

You must choose the field/column in your file and the field in your user database that will be used to match a user and subscribe them to your news group.  If two users have the same value for the selected match field (e.g. – two users have the same email address and you choose to match by email), only the first user will be subscribed to the news group.

Step 5: Choose the field containing the news group option

This news group option must already exist in your groups list and must be ‘unique’.  The option name must match exactly with the selected field in your file.  For example, if you want to import subscribers to Newsletters [School News], then you would select the field in your file that contains the text string ‘School News’ as the group to assign users.

Note:  You can combine multiple news group subscriptions in your import file.  For example, if you were importing parents into grade level news groups and had created options for Grade_1 to Grade_5 you can include all the grade levels for parents in one file and EZCommunicator would assign each user to the appropriate grade level.

Step 6: Select a method for handling duplicates

You should choose MERGE if you want to add the group to the user’s record, but do not want to remove any subscriptions.  You would choose REPLACE if you were going to replace all existing subscriptions on a user’s record with the new ones you are importing.

Step 7: Click the IMPORT button

The import function will process your entire file and generate an exception for each user record it cannot match to an existing user or any group name it cannot match to an existing group name in your database.