8 - Adding app users to the workspace

The participants of your event, or app users, are referred to as "users" in the workspace.

It's important that you distinguish app users (or event partipants) from Backstage users. The actual app users (or event audience) will not have access to Backstage.

The first app user added to a workspace is automatically the Backstage user who created the workspace. This is necessary so that the Backstage user can access the app to see and test the workspace they are working on.

Additional Backstage team members (people who use Backstage) can also be added as app users in the workspace to allow them to work on the workspace.

All the other app users need to be added in Backstage to the workspace, via the Users module.

There are three ways of adding app users to a workspace:

• Adding app users manually.
• Exporting/importing app users via a spreadsheet.
• Integrations from third party systems.

This article will take you through the steps needed to add app users manually and via imports.

To access the Users module, go to the Content category in the main menu to the left of the screen, then select Users.

Bulk importing your app users

To add larger numbers of app users, we recommend that you upload all of the app users in a bulk operation, using an Excel spreadsheet.

This is typically done by:

1. Downloading the existing list of app users from the workspace via Backstage, as a spreadsheet.
2. Adding all the necessary app users to the spreadsheet.
3. Re-uploading the spreadsheet to Backstage to import the app users.

Follow the below steps to perform a bulk upload of app users into the workspace via Backstage.

1. Downloading the existing app user spreadsheet

1. In the Users tab, select Export XLS.
2. Click on Download export.
3. Save the spreadsheet locally, and open it in order to edit it.
4. The spreadsheet contains a list of the current app users. In the below example there are two users, Sabrina (the workspace creator/admin) and Bryan (the user added manually earlier in the article):

2. Adding the app users to the spreadsheet

The exported users spreadsheet is composed of multiple columns of data. Each column corresponds to a user metadata, including any custom user metadata that is created in the workspace. The columns present can therefore vary depending on the workspace metadata:

• fp_ext_id: This is the app user's identifier in the workspace in Backstage.
  In the screenshot above, Backstage has automatically assigned this ID to the users when they were created manually. As you add more app users to the spreadsheet, you can enter the IDs for the app users that can be based on records from your own (or a third party) system.
• fname: User's first name.
• lname: User's last name.
• email: User's email address. The email address is always the unique identifier for an attendee in the workspace. It is use to detect duplicates when you import users.
• phone: User's phone number.
• mobile: User's mobile phone number
• address: User's address.
• company: User's company.
• position: User's title in the company.
• do_not_track: Will the user will be tracked by analytics? ("true" = yes / "false" = no).
• fp_status: Will the user be "visible" or "hidden" to other participants.
• actcode: This is the activation code for the user (generated by the system).
• webappUrl: This is the URL the user can use to access the workspace via web app.
  This is visible in exports performed by Backstage users with "Manager" roles.
• is_invited: Has the use been invited to join the workspace? ("true" = yes / "false" = no).
• is_activated: Has the user activated the app? ("true" = yes / "false" = no).

Using the above information, you can directly add all the users that you need into this spreadsheet:

Note: Here, like when adding a user manually in Backstage, there are four mandatory columns that need to be filled in: fp_ext_id, fname, lname, and email. The rest are optional.

3. Importing the app users spreadsheet

Once you have added all the necessary information to the spreadsheet for all the app users you wish to add to the workspace, you can save the spreadsheet locally and then upload it to Backstage to perform the import:

1. In the Users tab, select Import XLS.
2. Click on Choose file, and select the updated user list spreadsheet.
3. Select Begin upload.
4. Verify that the system has selected the correct column headers in the spreadsheet, if necessary select the line with the correct headers:
   
5. Click on Next.
6. The system will now give you the option to confirm or modify the field mapping for the import. The field mapping is automatically assigned based on the previouss tep when you selected the column headers. Here, if needed you can select a Label (column header in the spreadsheet) and associate it to a specific metadata (field) in the user profile in he workspace:
   
   You also have the option of selecting "Import empty cells", which will delete any existing data in a user's profile in Backstage if the spreadsheet contains corresponding empty fields for that user.
7. Click on Next.
8. Now, the system will verify that all data in the import matches the necessary requirements. One important verification that is performed at this stage is to check whether the import contains any duplicate users (either duplicate users within the spreadsheet, or duplicate users between those present in the spreadsheet and those present in the workspace). Duplicates are essentially detected by comparing the email addresses.
   If a duplicate is detected, the system will display an error:
   
   In this example, to fix the duplicate, in the spreadsheet we deleted the user that was already present in the workspace:
   
   And then clicked on Re-upload spreadsheet.
   If no errors are detected during the import, the following message is displayed:
   
   
   
9. Click on Next.
10. The system will provide a summary of the updates that will be made to the user list in Backstage.
    
    Clicking on Complete the import will finalize the import and the system will notify you when the import was successful:
    

The app users added to the spreadsheet have now been added to the workspace, as seen below in Backstage:

Note: In addition to importing users as exlained above, you can also use the bulk edit functionality directly in Backstage to make bulk changes.

How to avoid the "duplicate app users" error during imports?

While importing new users to your workspace or updating the information for existing users, you may come across a "Duplicate" error, like in our example above.

This occurs when a user with a unique email address already exists in the workspace, and you have the same user with the same unique email address in the list of users that you are trying to import.

To update the information for existing users, you should always: Export the XLS > Update the data for the existing users > Import the same XLS, with no new users added.

To add new users to the workspace, to be safe, simply make sure that you are importing a list of new users only, without duplicates.

Tip: Use VLOOKUP or Duplicate detection rules to compare the Backstage user list to the new user list you want to import, to see if any of the users in Backstage exist in your new list.

Adding an app user manually

In the Users module, click on the New user button, and add the necessary information for the app user.

Tip: There are three mandatory fields here that need to be filled in order to add a user:
First name, Last name, and Email address. The other fields are all optional.

There are also two additional settings here that are important to note:

Disable analytics
Analytics allows app user activity to be captured in the workspace. This option is therefore left unchecked by default for app users in the workspace, but is selected for Backstage users who are app users in order to not capture their activity (as they are hidden in the workspace).

Status
Here there are three options possible for app user.

• Active means that the app user will be active and visible in the workspace to other app users, this is the standard option that should be used for your workspace app users.
• Hidden means that the this user will not be visible to other app users.
  This option is selected by default for the workspace creator (or Backstage user) to make them invisible to other app users in the workspace.
• Cancelled means that the app user no longer has access to the workspace. This can be used to remove an app user from the workspace. Cancelled users will not receive any emails from the event.
• Pending means that the user has registered to the event via a registration page, but still needs to be approved in Backstage (a manual approval step is enabled on the Registration page). "Pending" users do not have access to the app until their registration is approved. The list of "pending" users in a workspace can be found in Content > Users > Pending registration requests tab.

Click on Save to finish adding the app user.

The Users tab will now open and you will see the app user added there:

Note: Here the workspace admin (Sabrina, who created the workspace) is greyed out, because her status is set to hidden, and Brian (the first actual app user that was just added) is visible.

So how does this actually look in the app?

Here we'll take a look at how users are visible in the app, with the list of users and a user's profile.

This will allow you to better visualize how the information added to Backstage is seen in the app.

Participant list in the app

Below is an example of how a list of users can look in the app:

Here you can see:

• The list of users, sorted alphabetically.
• For each user we can see their photo, name, position and office location.
• The app user can tap any user in the list to see their full profile and send a contact request.
• A search bar, as well as a buttons for filtering can also be addd to these lists.

Participant profile in the app

Below is an example of a how a user profile can look:

 Here you can see:

• The user's full profile, including their photo, department and /or job title.
• Buttons used to connect, message, or bookmark the user, take notes, or save the user profile.
• User's contact information and location.
• Any other associated information for the user will be visible by scrolling down on the profile.

 

NEXT STEP
Continue to the Adding sessions to the workspace agenda.