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 now have bulk upload available. This enables community admins to bulk add members via CSV file to the community. Community managers can use this to generate their initial community membership, to bring over members from another community or existing list, or to migrate membership from another community platform.
Add up to 20,000 community members
Using bulk uploading, community managers can add up to 20,000 members, and the upload may take up to 24 hours to process. Your network must be in Native Mode to use this functionality. This upload of members complies with existing Microsoft 365 Group Policies that are being enforced within your organization.
Inform your community admins to let them know that they can now access the bulk option through the right member panel of the community. The step-by-step instructions can be found here Add community members with a CSV file
Add B2B guests to your community
Member CSV upload also lets you add Azure AD B2B guests to your community. B2B guests need to have already been added to the network; as Member CSV Upload won’t invite new B2B guests to the network by itself. Always use the Azure Active Directory Principal Name for the email address of a B2B guest. Avoid special characters, such as “#,” which renders the email address invalid.
Receive email notifications after the import is completed
Within 24 hours, you’ll receive an email notification with the status of the import.
• Complete success means all the users in the file were added to the community.
• Partial success means only some users were added.
• Failure means no users were added.
If the import job is only partially successful, the email notification includes a CSV file with the email addresses that weren’t added, along with the reason for the failure. You can use this information to troubleshoot the issue and attempt to add the users.
What’s next?
Stay tuned for these updates and more with the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. Join the conversation and community for Viva Engage Community Managers.