The Brightidea 'User Import' feature will make the import process of your users very simple and easy.
Please navigate to Command Center > People Pillar > Add User / Import Users:

Once you have chosen "Import Users", a dialog box will appear prompting you with two options.
Option 1: Download the User Import Template
If needed, you may download our template that is required to properly import your Users. There will also be "example" users to help guide you filling out the Template correctly.
The only required field will be an Email Address. However, importing a User with just an email address is not the best way to create Users. We recommend adding Screen Name, First Name, and Last Name as well.
However, we also recommend to also fill out important areas such the Expertise, External and Certifications fields in order for Users to get the best experience out of your Brightidea.
The other fields are not required, but are highly encouraged to fill out as well. The more information each User has, the better engagement and experience each of your Users will have.
Once you have downloaded the template and filled out with all your Users, save this file to your Desktop for easy access.
Option 2: Select your Completed Template
If you already have a template that is ready for import, or you have completed your recently downloaded template, you can choose this file for your Brightidea.
Also note, you can choose to send an email to all your newly imported Users to inform them of their newly acquired access.
Once the importer has finished running, you will see a new dialog box of your successful import!
Important things to Note:
- Additional Profile Fields can be imported via User Import
- If you prefer to just add one user at a time, check out our functionality for “Create New User” here.
- The groups field does not overwrite with subsequent imports, any new data is appended.
- Administrators can upload profile images within the User Import.
- In the template, there is a column for 'Profile Photo URL'.

- The administrator can enter in a publicly accessible URL that leads to the respective users' photo
- This photo cannot be an internal URL from your organization if it requires authentication to view.
- If the administrator does not want any photos to imported, please leave all cells empty.
- The Import Wizard will prompt the administrator if it finds duplicate emails already in the system or error'ed email addresses.
- Brightidea recommends no more than 500 rows per each import to alleviate any delay into importing.
- No emails or triggers are sent to anyone - once users are imported.
After importing users, is there an email generated to those users to create a password or letting them know they are now in the platform?
Hi Laura - no emails are sent from the import.
Best,
Anthony
Hi, I have a couple of questions I'd appreciate your help with.
1- Can I create a group with all the imported users right after importing them or do they have to log-in first?
2- If the users are not notified when they are imported, what's their log in process going to be like? (i.e., how can they sign in, what's their first password, and will they be prompted to change their password when they're logged in?)
Thank you.
1- Can I create a group with all the imported users right after importing them or do they have to log-in first?
Answer: Yes, you can. You can put users into a group at any time.
2- If the users are not notified when they are imported, what's their log in process going to be like? (i.e., how can they sign in, what's their first password, and will they be prompted to change their password when they're logged in?
Answer: User Import is designed so that if a company has lots of information they want to attach to each of their employees, they can import all that in. What happens though when you conduct a user import is that the email and record exists in the system, but there is no set password. Once the user attempts to register for the first time, they will need to set their password via the login page and email verification.
Customers have gone the route of label changing their "forgot your password?" link on their Enterprise or WebStorm login page to "Click here to generate your password" or "First time users click here" so that when the user comes to the Brightidea for the first time, they select that option, enter in their email, it generates an email to the user, they get another link to set their password, they set that, then they are in. Once they are in, all the information you imported for them shows up in their profile, etc. They only have to set their password once. So rather doing straight self-registration where the system has no record of the user prior to them attempting to register, here you set up all their information first, then they have to do one verification action to set their password and login.
If you have further questions, please feel free to submit a ticket to us - hope this helps you!
Best,
Anthony
Brightidea Support
If you're using SSO, can you still use this feature to bulk load users? Once loaded, will the users be able to login using SSO?
Hi Ganesh,
Yes, you can use this. However, there needs to be some extra caution when using SSO, if you import an account with Email X and UID Y and SSO passes a different Email or UID for that user, it will create a duplicate record.
Typically, we recommend just having SSO create all accounts on user login.
Thanks,
Brightidea Support
We have an additional field, Team Leader, that we need to update; do we just add the Team Leader column to the import template?
@Jenny Jezak - When you download the import template, if the column for Team Leader does not exist, then it cannot be added. You will need to apply the column into the User Profile Fields if you wish for it to display on the import template
Ron, how do we have SSO create all accounts on user login? In our implementation when a user logs on with SSO they get an error if we haven't already created the account on Bright Idea.
Does the User Import work only via portal, or can the user import ingest a file from an SFTP location of BrightIdea ? We are looking for ways so the import does not become an admin activity each day or week.. instead be a night batch kind of process.