Importing users

Two jobs share one menu. Import users creates people who are not in Learnient yet. Update users changes people who already are. Neither does the other’s job, and the wizards say so at the top.

Set up your companies, departments, locations and job titles first if you want people placed as they arrive, although the import can create most of them for you.

Importing new people

1. Choose Admin at the top of the page, then People in the left-hand menu and Users.
2. Choose Import or update users at the top of the list, then Import users.
3. Choose Download template for a spreadsheet with the right columns, or bring your own.
4. Choose View column guide and validation rules to see every column and what it accepts.
5. Drop your file on the upload step.
6. Check the column mapping Learnient has detected, and correct anything it has matched to the wrong column.
7. Decide whether to switch on Send invite to users after import. It is off unless you turn it on.
8. Start the import and leave the window open while it runs.

Only three columns are required: first name, last name and email address. Everything else is optional.

Updating people who are already here is the other half of this menu, and is covered in Updating users from a spreadsheet.

Screenshot missinguser-import-mapping

The Import new users wizard on its column mapping step, with a detected mapping shown for first name, last name and email address, one column deliberately mapped to the wrong field so the correction control is visible, and the "Send invite to users after import" toggle visible in its off position.

Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/import-and-update-users/user-import-mapping.png

What the import creates for you

A department, job title, company, location or user group named in your file is created if it does not exist yet, along with skills.

Two things are never created. A role must already exist, and a row naming one that does not is rejected; leave the column blank and the person becomes a learner.

A manager must already exist too, and is matched on their full name. They can appear lower down the same file than the people reporting to them, because managers are matched after the whole file has been read. If your account uses positions, managers work differently: see below.

Importing people when your account uses positions

If your account uses positions, every new person has to start in one. Each row needs either a position column naming one of your positions, or a job title, department, location or company. A row with neither is refused, and its Remark says why.

A row that names a position puts the person in it as their primary, and that row’s job title, department, location and company columns are not used.

Otherwise the job title, department, location and company together describe a job. If one of your positions has exactly that combination, the person is put in it. If none does, Learnient creates a position for it, named after the job and where it is done, such as Chef · Riverside, and marks it for review. Later rows with the same combination join the same new position. See Reviewing positions an import created.

The manager column does not set anybody’s manager, because a person’s manager is whoever holds the position their own position reports to. It is used for one thing only: when more than half of the people the import put in a new position name managers who hold the same position, the new position reports to that one. Otherwise the new position is left without a line for you to set.

When the import finishes, it tells you how many positions it created and in how many rows the manager was not used.

Note: If you are bringing a whole organisation in, import it before you switch positions on. The setup then works out who reports to whom from the managers in your file. See Moving your account onto positions.

Who can do this

Importing is its own permission, separate from creating users one at a time, and updating from a spreadsheet needs the permission to update users. An administrator who holds one and not the other sees only the menu item they can use.

What happens after you start it

The file is queued rather than processed while you wait, and the wizard shows its progress as it goes.

Nothing emails you when it finishes and there is no notification afterwards, so the result is what is on screen in front of you.

A bad row never stops the run. Every row is written into one report with a Remark column saying what happened to it, which is where to look for the rows that did not arrive. Download it before you close the window: the link is only good for an hour.

Rows that name somebody already in your account are counted as duplicates rather than errors, so a file you have imported before does not fill the report with failures.

People created with the invite switched on are sent their invitation straight away. With it off they exist but have been told nothing, which is what the Imported status means. See Invitations and sign-in access.