Once you have added all your exhibitors in the App Builder > Expo > Exhibitors and your project includes the Exhibitor Portal feature, you can import or manually add the contact details for your exhibitors. 

Note: An invite URL automatically expires after 7 days.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1. Add Contacts
  • How to manually add exhibitor contacts
  • How to import exhibitor contacts from a CSV
• 2. Send Invites 
  • How to invite all contacts
  • How to send reminders
  • How to resend individual invites

1. Add Contacts

How to manually add exhibitor contacts

1. In the App Builder, click on Add Ons > Exhibitor Portal 
2. Select Contacts
3. Click the Add Contact button 
4. Complete the email (only one single email in this field), first name, and last name field
5. In the search field for exhibitors, enter the exhibitor name for which this contact is allowed to edit the profile and add. 
   1. You can add multiple exhibitors if the same person is allowed to edit more than one exhibitor profile. 
   2. You can also add multiple contacts to one exhibitor if needed by repeating the above steps.

Attention: Each contact email address must be unique (this means, you cannot have two different contacts with the same email address).

How to import exhibitor contacts from a CSV

1. Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets (using Google Sheets ensures that your data is UTF-8 encoded - this eliminates any bad character issues)
2. Create the following columns: 
   1. Contact ID 
   2. Email
   3. First Name
   4. Last Name
   5. Exhibitors 
3. Create one row for each contact and fill in the fields:
   1. Contact ID: create an alphanumeric ID for each contact. This could simply be a number. Each number in this table must be unique. For example, if you have a contact John Smith, you could create a contact ID such as exh1234.
   2. Email: add the email address of the contact. Only add one single email address.
   3. First Name: add the first name
   4. Last Name: add the last name
   5. Exhibitors: add the exhibitor ID for which the contact should update the exhibitor profile details. If one contact is supposed to updated multiple exhibitors, you can add multiple exhibitor IDs separated by a comma. For example: 3413,35324,1351 . If you manually added your exhibitors in the App Builder, go to Expo > Exhibitors to find each exhibitor's ID. You can also export your exhibitor list from that page and open the list as a spreadsheet to easily access the exhibitor IDs. 
4. Ensure that all fields are filled - if you keep one of the any of the fields blank in a row, that row will not be imported. 
5. Once you completed your contacts table, go to the App Builder > Add Ons > Exhibitor Portal > Contacts
6. Open the Import Sources card and click the Add Import button. Create an import source that is linked directly to your Google Sheet (this saves you time and eliminates the need to save and upload/replace CSV files each time you want to update the table) - learn how. 
7. To update your contacts list, simply edit in the Google sheet and then click the Import button next to your source.

Sample Mapping

Note: if you manually edit any imported contact, that edited record will not be overwritten with a new data import.

If you delete a contact, it will be reimported on the next import. 

2. Send Invites 

After you have added contacts, you can send an invite email. 

How to invite all contacts

1. In the App Builder, click on Add Ons > Exhibitor Portal 
2. Ensure on the Profile Permissions tab that Portal Access is enabled (toggled ON)
3. Select the Invite tab
4. The Send Invites card displays how many contacts have already been invited, how many have not yet received an invite ("Remaining" in case you added more contacts after you sent the first invite emails), how many of the contacts actually logged in, and how many invite emails bounced or were blocked.
   Download the bounced report to contact those users directly to check their email system and to allow messages from alerts@ativsoftware.com.  
5. Click the Send Invites button
6. Confirm

How to send reminders

You can send a reminder email to any contacts you have already invited but who have not yet logged in. You can only send reminders after you have sent initial invites previously. 

1. In the App Builder, click on Add Ons > Exhibitor Portal 
2. Ensure on the Profile Permissions tab that Portal Access is enabled (toggled ON)
3. Select the Invite tab
4. Double check the Send Invites card in case you have to first send initial invites or remaining initial invites
5. The Send Reminders card displays how many contacts have already been reminded, how many have not yet received a reminder ("Remaining to send" in case you invited more contacts after you sent the first reminder emails), and how many reminder emails bounced or were blocked.
   Download the bounced report to contact those users directly to check their email system and to allow messages from alerts@ativsoftware.com.  
6. Click the Send Reminders button
7. Confirm

How to resend individual invites

If you wish to resend an invite to an individual contact, you can do so manually: 

1. In the App Builder, click on Add Ons > Exhibitor Portal 
2. Select Contacts
3. Find the contact you wish to re-invite
   Note: Each invite contains a personalized URL to access the portal. Any previously emailed invite URLs will no longer work when sending a new invite. 
4. Click the Email button
5. Confirm

You can also copy and paste the contact's personal URL by clicking the copy button and send using your own email. Remember that this URL is for a single user and is not to be shared. A URL expires after 7 days. 

If you need to send a reset password link to a user who had already logged in, resend the invite email or copy and paste the invite URL into an email to that user. Remember that any invite URL expires after 7 days.

If you edited a contact and updated the email address, you must send a new invite to that contact.