Location Import: FAQ

Terminology: This universal guide uses neutral descriptions. The product renders its configured property and occupant labels; machine-readable CSV values remain unchanged.

Does importing send emails to people? No. Every person in the file who is new to URBI is created quietly as Pending Invite, with a real sign up link that has not been sent. Someone who already has a URBI account is linked to the location immediately with a held notice queued, also not sent. Nobody hears anything from URBI until you separately press Bulk Invite in the Bulk Actions tab. See What Happens When You Import and Bulk Invite and Send Reminder.

How do I actually invite people once I've uploaded them? Go to Settings → Locations → Manage Locations → Bulk Actions and press Bulk Invite. It sends the welcome email to everyone still Pending Invite and delivers the held "added to your location" notice to everyone already registered, in the background. You'll get the result in the notification bell.

Can I import without adding anyone yet? Import location only rows: the location number filled in, name, email and occupant type left blank. That creates the locations and contacts nobody, same as before.

Can I schedule an import for later, or hold the invitations? There's no scheduler, but you don't need one: uploading already holds every invitation back by default. The control you have is when you press Bulk Invite, which can be the same day as upload or weeks later.

Can I undo an import? The locations and people themselves can be removed one at a time afterwards. If you haven't run Bulk Invite yet, nothing has been sent and there is nothing else to undo. If you have, a welcome email or held notice already delivered cannot be recalled.

What happens if I run the same file twice? Nothing bad. Existing locations are left alone, and anyone already added to a location is reported as an existing invite. Since nothing is emailed by the import either way, re running a corrected file is always the normal way to fix a partly failed import.

Can I press Bulk Invite twice? It's safe to try. Only one Bulk Invite run per property can be active at a time; pressing it again while one is running is refused, and the button shows "Sending in the background" until it finishes. Once finished, a second press only reaches anyone newly added since, since everyone already welcomed is skipped.

Will Send Reminder re-email someone I just invited? No. It skips anyone who was emailed, welcome or reminder, in the last 3 days, and reports them as skipped rather than re-sending.

A person says they never got their welcome email. Check whether their welcome shows as failed. If so, run Send Reminder: it detects a welcome that failed and was never reminded, and re-sends the welcome content itself, not reminder wording, so they aren't reminded of something they never received.

Why can't I add a person even though I'm a property staff? Every place a person can be added, including the CSV upload, Bulk Invite, the Community tab, and several others, now checks the Add People permission for that property. If yours is turned off, ask whoever manages your team's permissions to turn it on. Resend Invite on someone already invited still works regardless of this permission.

What is the Pending Invite pill I see in the Community tab? It marks someone who was added but has not yet been sent their welcome email, so there is nothing to resend for them yet, which is why Resend Invite is hidden on their row. Once Bulk Invite runs for them, the pill changes to Invited.

Does each location get its own documents folder now? Yes, automatically. The first time anything is added to a location's Documents tab, whether from this import or later by hand, URBI creates and locks that location's own folder. A location that never receives a document has no folder, and you don't create it yourself.

How many rows can one file have? 2000. Split a bigger building into two files and import them one after the other.

Do I need one row per location or one row per person? One row per person. A location with three people with the relevant role classifications is three rows, all with the same location number. A location with nobody in it is one row with everything but the location number blank.

Can the same email address appear more than once? On different locations, yes, and that is the normal case for someone who owns two locations. On the same location twice, no: the second row is refused as a duplicate invite.

Two people share one email address. What do I do? Only one of them can be invited at that address, because an URBI account is the email address. Import the one who should hold the account, and either get a second address for the other person or leave them out.

What if I do not have somebody's email? Leave the email blank. The location imports correctly and the person is skipped, with a note in the report. Add them later from the location.

Can I import an Excel file? No, the uploader reads CSV only. Use Save As or Export in Excel or Numbers to produce a real CSV. Renaming an XLSX to .csv does not work and gives a parse error.

My export has five title rows above the header. Do I have to remove them? Yes. The importer treats the first line as the header row.

Do my column names have to match URBI exactly? No. URBI matches common names automatically, so Suite, Apt, Surname, Mobile and Role are all recognised. Anything it cannot place you set by hand on the mapping screen, and columns you leave unmapped are ignored, so you do not have to strip extra columns out of an export.

What are the valid occupant types? OWNER, RESIDENT, TENANT, PROPERTY_MANAGER, DEPENDENT and EMERGENCY_CONTACT, written in capitals. Anything else is flagged on the Review step and, if you leave it, the location is treated as occupied.

How do the ownership and occupancy classifications differ? OWNER is a person who lives somewhere else. RESIDENT is a person who lives in the location. Both set the location's status to Occupied, so the difference is about the person's record rather than the location's.

Why did my building come out as Rented when most of it is occupied? TENANT and PROPERTY_MANAGER both set a location to Rented, and on a location with several people a rental-classified row takes precedence. Check the occupant types in your file. Re importing with corrected types does not undo it, because a rental-classified row never pulls a rented location back to Occupied. Fix those locations from the Locations list.

What does an EMERGENCY_CONTACT row actually do? It creates no account and sends no email. It writes an Emergency Contact entry on that location's wiki with the name, email and phone from the row. If a location only has an emergency contact row, add a location only row for it as well, or the location is never created.

Somebody says their invitation link does not work. Use Resend Invite on their member record. It re delivers the same link rather than issuing a new one.

Does the importer check that an email address is real? It checks the address is well formed, not that the mailbox exists. A typo in the domain passes and the eventual welcome email goes nowhere once Bulk Invite runs, so proofread addresses before you import.

Can I import leases, rent or condo fees with this? No. This file creates locations and people. Leases and fees are a separate import.

How long does an import take? Rows are processed one at a time, so a full building takes minutes rather than seconds. You can close the panel and carry on working. The report email arrives when the last row is done.

Who gets the report? Only the person who ran the import.

A person says the person app won't let them add another household member today. That's a separate, intentional limit: an account holder can add up to 5 people per day from the person app, to stop the feature being used to spam invitations. It's not related to your import or to Bulk Invite; they can try again tomorrow.