Adding someone by hand suits the cases that never come through a checkout: a colleague you want inside, a customer who paid you offline, a test account, the first few people in a new platform.
For more than a handful, use the import instead.
The form opens from the member list. Click Add above the list.
The three steps
The form runs in three steps, and you can move back and forth between them before anything is saved.
- Member data takes first name, last name and email. Only these three are required.
- Access decides what they can reach the moment they arrive.
- Review shows what is about to be created.
Nothing exists until you finish the last step.
Member data
First name, last name and email address. The email is the login, so it must be right and it must be unique in your platform.
Set the E-Mail Language column too. It covers more than the emails: it also decides which language the person sees in the member area. Every row starts on English, so change it when that is wrong.
You can add several people in this step, one row each, and they all get the same access in the next step. That makes a small group easy: three colleagues, same courses, one pass through the form.
Someone who already exists in your platform cannot be added twice. The email address is what identifies a person.
Access
Everything you assign here applies to everybody in this batch.
- Courses and hubs they should reach.
- Community forums and badges.
- Calendars and events.
- Groups, which carry their own access with them.
- Tags, for your own organisation.
Assigning a group is usually the better move. Give them the group and they get everything the group can reach, now and whenever you add something to it later.
Assigning courses one by one is fine for an exception, but it does not keep up as your platform grows.
Review and create
The last step lists what will be created and what each person will hold. Read it, go back if something is off, then create.
Members are active straight away. Whether they get an email at that moment is decided on this step: the Send credentials by email switch sits next to the create button and is on by default. Leave it on and everyone in the batch gets an email with a link to set their own password. Turn it off and nothing is sent.
Not sure whether they got their credentials? Open the member and use the password reset from their profile. It is quicker than debugging your email setup for one person.
After creating
The member appears in your list. From their profile you can add more access, tags and fields, look at what they do, and sign in as them to check what they actually see.