Importing users - Best practices

Importing users - Best practices

As we discussed in our earlier forum announcement, the easiest way to onboard a large number of users to Zoho One is by importing them from a user data file. Zoho One allows you to import users from all the common types of user data files—XLS, XLSX, CSV, and VCF. It also supports ten different encodings, allowing you to import data in almost any language.

To learn more about importing users from the Users tab, go through this step-by-step guide to importing users from our Knowledge Base. Meanwhile, here are some best practices to keep in mind when importing users:

  • If your user data file is in an unsupported format such as TSV (Tab Separated Values) or SXC (OpenOffice Spreadsheet), import the file to Zoho Sheet, then download it in a supported format.
  • Download and use the sample file in the Import Users page of the admin panel as a template. The sample file is designed specifically for you and will include all the custom fields you created, helping you ensure that you didn't miss any important fields when creating the user data file.
  • Purchase the required licenses before importing users as you will not be able to import more users than your available license limit. For example, if you have 50 available licenses and try to import 70 users, only the first 50 users in the file will be added to Zoho One.
  • Map as many fields as possible, even though they are not mandatory. This will allow you to use advanced filters and set up Conditional Assignment in the future.
  • Set a custom one-time password rather than mapping a Password field. This will make it easier for you to give users their credentials and allow users to set their own passwords during their first sign-in.
  • Remove all outdated entries from your user data file. If an outdated entry in the user data file has the same email address as an existing user, that user's information will be replaced with the outdated information present in the file.


We hope this was useful. Our next announcement will be about automatically syncing user information from LDAP servers such as Active Directory, OpenLDAP, and ApacheDS. Meanwhile, share your feedback in the comments, and let us know what else you'd like to learn from us!


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