Managing Members

This page explains functions available to community leaders. To have access to these functions, you have to be a leader of at least one community.

Member List

A community leader has full control over community membership.

To list and manage all community members click on settings and then on members. Members are listed alphabetically, and one can select specific letter on the top of the member list to select only members whose last names start with the selected letter. Hover the mouse over the letter to see the number of members.

Removing a Member

To remove a member from a community, find the member in the member list and click on remove under member’s name. This action requires confirmation before it is carried out. If a member is also present in sub-communities of the current community, the membership in all sub-communities will be terminated as well. The confirmation page will notify you if that is the case.

Promoting or Demoting a Member

To promote a member to a leader role, locate the member in the member list and click on promote under member’s name. The member will instantly become a community leader. To demote a leader to member role, click on demote under member’s name.

A leader can demote all other leaders in a community except oneself.

Changing Member’s Profile

Some members prefer that community leader changes their profile instead of logging on themselves and updating their own profile. A leader can change all aspects of member’s profile except set member’s password.

To update a member’s profile, click on the member’s name in member list, and then click on edit link on top of the profile page. One can also update member’s public profile.

Resetting Passwords

Often times members forget passwords, and require help with resetting it due to various reasons – either they are not computer savvy and prefer leader’s help, or somehow miss the reset password link under the login box.

A leader can click on the member’s name and then click on reset password – this will send a password reset email to the user to the email address set in member’s profile. The email will look the same as if the member clicked on forgot password link and entered a correct email address.

Inviting New Members

To invite one or more members to a community, click on invite member link in the lower left column and then enter one or more email addresses into the Email field on the invitation page. Each email should go into a separate line.

Enter the message a member should receive, and then click Next to preview the invitation.

The preview page will show a list of members to be invited. If a member’s name is underlined, it means that ECS recognizes the email and owner of that email address already has a profile on ECS. Non-underlined email addresses mean that invitations will be sent to people who are not ECS users. The invitation page will also filter out any duplicates and users who are already members of the community.

Click on Invite to send out invitation emails. Every user will get a separate email with your name in the From: field. Other invitees will not be CCd on the message, and will not know who else is invited.

Pending Invitations

A leader can see all invitations pending for a specific community in settings–>invitations page. Each invitation indicates how many days ago it was sent, and to whom.

To repeat any of the invitations, select the check box next to it, and click on re-send selected. The invitations will repeat as if sent the first time, with the same message and coming from the same person who originally sent them. If you want to change the invitation message, cancel the current invitation and invite the user again. To cancel, select and click on cancel selected.

NOTE: It takes 40 days on average for users to respond to invitations – even though people receive invitations, many do not accept them immediately, and some never do.

Approving Membership Requests

If a user submits an unsolicited membership request, either via request membership link within ECS, or via registration page accessible via community directory, it is up to community leader to approve the request.

If there are any requests to approve, a summary notification on my home and on the community page will say You have new membership requests to approve (n). Every community leader will also receive an email with subject Action Required. Click on the web notification or on the link in the email to review the request and either approve or reject it. If you approve the request, the person will immediately become a community member.

If the approved user is a new ECS user, an email will be sent instructing the new user how to set the password. This step is needed to ensure user’s opt-in – the act of setting up the password is an implicit acceptance of ECS policies and opt-in to receiving email from the platform.

Existing users whose request is approved to not have to do anything – as soon as request is accepted, the community will appear on their my home and they can enter it and start contributing.

Creating New Member Profile

In rare situations, it is desirable to create a member’s profile for a person, as if the person did it via the registration page.

To create a new member profile, go to the member list and choose add member link. Then fill out all mandatory fields and click on submit. A new member profile will be created, and a member will receive a welcome message with a link to set the password. The act of setting the password is the explicit voluntary opt-in. Defining the password means the user accepts ECS policies and code of conduct, and opts in into receiving email from a community.

NOTE: If a member with the newly defined email exists, ECS will return an error message member with specified email already exists. This is an unfortunate bug and will be improved upon in the near future by allowing you to first check whether a member exists or not. To circumvent this problem first try inviting the person via invite member link – if a member has profile on ECS, the name will be blue and underlined.

Deleting a Member

Only coordinator can completely delete a user profile of another member. Deleting a profile removes the user completely from ECS. To again access ECS, the person will need to pass the registration process and join at least one community.

To delete a member, click on member’s name – member can be located via search, by clicking on member’s name in any contribution the member made, or by listing all members of ECS from Coordinator Tools box in the lower left column – and then click delete, and confirm deletion on the confirmation page.

The only other way to delete member profile is if member deletes own profile by clicking on Terminate Membership on my account page. When a member deletes own profile, an email is sent to all ECS coordinators – it is not possible tu turn off this feature – it’s goal is to allow coordinators to ‘feel the pulse’ of the site.

Exporting Member Data

Click on export to download a comma separated values (.csv) file with complete profile data for all members. Each row of this file contains profile data for one member, separated by a comma. The data corresponds to the registration page profile – in other words, everything a member can enter.

You can open this file in a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, or Apple Numbers.