Bringing your existing members across
How the Portava team loads your existing member list during onboarding, and what happens next.
This article is for the administrators who run an organisation's Portava portal.
In short
- Send your member list as a CSV to the Portava team; they load it during onboarding.
- Imported members receive nothing until you send welcome invitations.
If you already hold your members in a spreadsheet, you do not need to add them one at a time. The Portava team loads your list for you as part of onboarding.
What to send
A CSV file with one row per person: name, email address, company, the membership plan they are on, and their join and renewal dates if you have them. Any column layout works; the team matches the columns when they load it. CSV only, up to 5,000 rows per file. If your list is in Excel, save it as CSV first.
What the import creates
Each row becomes a member on your register, with their company and their renewal date. Nothing is emailed to anyone during the import, so you can check the register before a single member hears about the portal.
People who are already on the register are skipped and listed, so a second file never creates duplicates. A renewal date left blank means the membership does not expire or send reminders until you set one.
What happens next
Imported members cannot sign in until you invite them. When you are ready, send welcome invitations in waves from Members: each person receives a link to set a password and complete their profile. See "Welcoming imported members in waves".
Doing it yourself
Importing a list from the administrator portal is not available yet, and Excel files are not supported. Until then, send your file to the Portava team from the Support page.