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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.