In this article, we will walk you through the process of populating organizations into your community. This article is primarily for campuses going through a first-time implementation of Engage. You might also use this article if you recently added an Administrative Branch to your community and need to populate it with organizations.
Before you can add organizations to your community, you must set up the basic configuration for how organizations will operate in your community. Before you populate your organizations, make sure you have completed the first three steps in the life cycle of managing organizations walkthrough. It is crucial to configure certain organization settings before adding organizations into your site! It is also ideal to have your account import(s) complete by this point so that you can more effectively assign Primary Contacts to organizations and complete roster records. If your account imports are not yet complete, this article also suggests a few workarounds.
Creating Organizations in Engage
There are 3 basic methods to consider for populating organizations into the site. We have broken down each option for below so you can review them and select the one(s) that make the most sense for your process.
- Manually Creating Organizations. In this scenario, an administrator will complete the basic profile details of each organization by individually creating them in the branch’s Organization List. If you have completed the account import process, you can assign the appropriate Primary Contact as you create the organization. If not, you can assign yourself and transition ownership of the organization at a later date.
- Organization Import. If you have all of your organization information ready, you can also import your organizations into Engage through a spreadsheet. This method is preferred to option one if you have a large number of organizations to populate. Again, if you have finished the account import process, you can assign the Primary Contact as you import the organization. If not, you can assign yourself and transition ownership of the organization at a later date.
- New Organization Registration Process. Some campuses choose to start from scratch when they purchase Engage and have all organizations on their campus register as if they were new organizations. Upon your approval of registration submissions, students will have created their organization pages on their own. Return to the life cycle of managing organizations walkthrough for next steps if you select this option.
Updating Organization Rosters
If you select option three above and have students complete a registration process, you can include requesting Roster information as a step in that process to ensure rosters are accurate from the start. If you are selecting option one or two above, you have a few options for ensuring roster information for the organization is up-to-date.
- Updating Rosters Manually. Your first option is to update rosters manually to ensure each organization has its appropriate Primary Contact and/or membership list. You can update Primary Contacts manually through the roster tool of the organization if you did not establish them when creating the organization.
- Involvement Import. You can also upload roster data into engage using an involvement import. The involvement import allows you to bulk update roster and position information for your organizations. You can also encourage your student leaders or staff to manually update rosters through the Roster tool of the organization.
- Creating a Re-Registration Process. Your other option for roster management is to set up an Organization Re-Registration process for students to complete right after their pages are created. This option allows students the opportunity to re-register, take ownership of their organizations, and complete their organization pages. It also allows the transition of ownership of the organization, because the user who completes the re-registration process will be automatically assigned the Primary Contact role. Start by building a re-registration process. A few considerations here:
- The re-registration does not need to be an open registration. We recommend giving users a specific time-frame within which to complete this process.
- Don't forget to include the Roster step! This is crucial if you want users to update their organization Rosters in the process.
- If you have not yet assigned Primary Contacts, make sure you do not limit the re-registration process to be completed by certain position template holders. The students who will be completing the registration will not yet be listed as members. If you assigned Primary Contacts when you created the organizations, you can restrict the registration to only those users to ensure the primary officer from each organization completes this process.
- Be sure to assign this re-registration to the correct organization types, excluding the “New Organizations” organizations type. Assigning the registration to the appropriate type ensures the correct position and roster requirements are requested.