OS EDU - Dear CSM: I use Active Directory syncing. Can I import additional users into my portal in bulk?

Question: I use Active Directory syncing. Can you help me import additional users into my portal in mass or does each user have to log in to create the account initially?

Answer: If you take advantage of Active Directory syncing, your new Active Directory users simply need to login to the portal for the first time and their user will be created in the portal. However, if you would like to add a new batch of users in bulk, you can export the users from Active Directory into an appropriately formatted .csv file. You should be able to do an export from Active Directory with the following key fields (username, first name, last name and email).  We just need the import in the format and order as shown:

Important notes for the csv import:

• Please be sure the Active Directory Login / Novell Login (column A of the csv) matches the AD username exactly.
• Additional fields, or re-ordering the fields, will result in a failure to import. 
• Format the Birth Day and Birth Month fields as 2 digits.
• Do NOT add commas or special characters in the fields. This is a CSV file and will cause the import to not work correctly.
• You do not have to include data for each field.  Blank fields will just not be populated at the time of import. 
• If users are already in the portal and you reimport them, it will simply ignore the user.

Once you have exported your users into the properly formatted .csv file, you can request that tech support assist in a mass user import for you. For more information on how to bulk import users to the portal, please see this article. 

Moving forward, when new users are added to AD, they will need to login to the portal for their user to show up.