How to Invite Students to Your Community

Why invite students?

Inviting students on Packback creates a shell account for them that is pre-registered in your community and sends an email to students right to their school inbox that makes registration as simple as a few "clicks".

This is the single biggest action that you as the instructor can do to reduce the number of Technical Support emails that come to your inbox. Once students are invited, the Packback support team can help your students if they get stuck in registration!

How to invite students to your community

There are two different ways professors or TAs can invite students to their community; either inviting students in bulk via a list (in CSV format), or inviting students individually (by form).

This short video shows the step-by-step process for formatting your course list and uploading it to Packback to invite your students.

Unable to view the video or prefer to read the step-by-step instructions? Here are text-based instructions for adding and removing students from your community. 

Step-by-Step Instructions for adding students in bulk

1. Go to your Instructor Tools (found in the left hand sidebar of your community), and select View Roster.
   
   
2. Click the Add or Update Students button.
   
   
3. To invite many students at once, select the "Add Students by File Upload".
   
   
4. Download the Roster Template to ensure your course list is formatted properly so it can be uploaded into Packback. See the Roster Template example below and download it from the article attachments at the bottom of this page.

1. Customize and save your course list as a CSV file using the downloaded roster template, typically in Excel or other CSV editing program. Make sure it is saved in .csv format!
   
   
2. Back on the Packback site, Select a File to upload, selecting the CSV file you just created. 
   
   
3. Click Continue to Preview to review your uploaded file. If there is anything wrong with the file, you have the option to go back and edit it. 
   
   
4. Select the desired action that should be taken on upload
   • Add students: Add new students and update records
     • This option will not remove any students from the roster, only add
   • Replace roster: Add new students and remove students not included in this file
     
     • Students who have already completed registration (with the role of Student in your Packback roster) will not be removed with this option
   • Remove students: Students in this file will be removed from this community
     • This option will not add any students to the roster, only remove
       
       
5. Click Continue to Confirm to confirm the roster change.
   • This page will show if any records included in your file may be invalid and unable to upload.
   • You can also see all actions that will be taken to the roster when the file is uploaded
     
     
6. Select the date on which the invitation emails should be sent to the added students.
   • Invitations made from this page will also respect the community's "Send Invitations at" date (typically the start date of class).
   • If that date is in the past, invite emails will be sent immediately.
     
     
7. If all information looks correct, click Confirm Upload to complete.

Step-by-Step Instructions for inviting students individually by form

If you have a few students who registered late for class and weren't on your initial course list, it may be easier to add them by form.

1. Go to your Professor Tools and select Manage Roster.
   
   
2. Click the Add or Update Students button.
   
   
3. To invite many students at once, select the "Add Students by form".
   
   
4. You can add up to 10 students at a time using this form. First, using the form, add the student's name, email address, and (optionally) their LMS grading ID (only if your school permits this data to be shared- FERPA policies around directory information can vary by school).
   
   
5. After adding a student, click the grey "Add Student Info" button. You can repeat this process up to 9 more times. You'll see the count of students to be added, shown in the righthand sidebar, increase incrementally.
   
   
6. When ready to add the students, just press the blue "Confirm & Invite Students" button.
   • Invitations made from this page will also respect the community's "Send Invitations at" date (typically the start date of class).
   • If that date is in the past, invite emails will be sent immediately.