As a Viva Engage community manager, one of the most important and often time-consuming tasks is managing members, especially in large organizations. Starting this week, networks in native mode will n...
Published May 31, 2023
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Blog Post
The re-introduction of this feature has been a mixed blessing for our tenant. On the one hand, our Viva Engage admins no longer need to facilitate bulk uploads. On the other hand, we've found that community owners are using this feature excessively. For example, a few weeks ago, I was part of a bulk add to a community and found the owners bulk added over 13,000 people. The emails members receive about being bulk/manually added to a community do not include an easy opt-out button. Having to visit the community and select the leave button is more work than should be required, given the barrage of messages, emails, and notifications users receive every day.
I think bulk adds over 500 member should require the owners to provide a justification, which then would have to get approved by network admins. Also, bulk uploads should be restricted to a timeframe, like no more than one bulk upload every 30 days. Otherwise, for adds above 500 or at more frequent intervals, the only option should be to generate an *invitation* to join the community, but not a forced add.
All owners think their communities are important and want "everyone" to participate, but this bulk add feature causing a poor user experience. We've fielded complaints about bulk adds and have had to tell users our hands are tied.
It's the same in our organisation. The ability for anyone to upload up to 20,000 members to a community and then spam them with the announcement feature is such a terrible end user experience.