Bulk Invite & Bulk Operations

When your unit grows, doing things one member at a time gets slow. MySummitKeep gives you two tools for working in bulk: the Bulk Invite wizard for inviting a whole list of people from a spreadsheet, and Bulk Operations for acting on many existing members at once — assigning a patrol, sending a message, exporting a CSV, updating rank or role, or archiving people who have aged out.

Both tools live under Members. You will need leader-level access: Bulk Invite requires permission to create members, and Bulk Operations requires permission to update them.

Tip

If you are migrating a roster from another system or your council’s reports, start with Member Import — it is built for larger, structured data files. Bulk Invite is best when you simply want to email invitations to a list of parents and leaders.

Bulk Invite: the 5-step CSV wizard

Open People → Members and click Bulk Invite. The wizard walks you through five steps shown along the top: Upload, Map Columns, Validate, Preview & Send, and Results. You can go back to any earlier step until you actually send, so it is safe to experiment.

On the Upload step you can drag and drop a file, click to browse (CSV or XLSX accepted), or paste CSV text directly into the box below the dropzone.

Preparing your CSV and the template

The simplest way to get the format right is to click Download Template on the Upload step. It gives you a bulk_invite_template.csv with these columns:

• email — required. Each person needs a valid, unique email address.
• firstName — optional but recommended.
• lastName — optional but recommended.
• role — optional. Use Parent, Leader, Admin, or Assistant. Friendly variations are accepted and normalized (for example Guardian becomes Parent, and Scoutmaster becomes Leader). If you leave it blank, the row defaults to Parent. Only a leader who manages roles (a unit administrator) can invite someone as Admin or as a treasurer, quartermaster or historian. For anyone else, those rows come back as not sent on the Results step, with the reason.
• phone — optional.

Note

Email is the only truly required field. Every other column is optional — fill in what you have and leave the rest blank.

Scouts are not invited by email

A row whose role is Scout is flagged as an error and is not sent. Scouts are added by their own parent or guardian from the parent’s account — invite the parent, and once they have signed in they link their Scout from My Family. This keeps every message that reaches a youth in front of that youth’s own parent, and it is the order COPPA requires (consent first, then the Scout’s record).

Mapping columns and validating rows

After your file loads, the wizard moves to Map Columns. It auto-detects column headers and matches them to the invitation fields; you adjust any that are wrong using the dropdowns. The header shows your file name and row count for a quick sanity check.

You must map at least the Email column — the wizard will not advance without it. Click Validate to check every row. The Validate step flags problems so you can fix them before anyone is contacted:

• Errors (red): missing email, invalid email format, a duplicate email inside your file, or the role Scout (the row says to invite the parent instead). These rows are blocked from sending. In a Venturing Crew or Sea Scout Ship, a member who is 18 to 20 takes the role Adult Venturer or Adult Sea Scout instead and is sent an 18–20 invitation; in any other unit that role is an error too.
• Warnings (amber): a phone number that looks malformed, or a role that was normalized to a standard value. Warnings do not block sending.

You can change a row’s role inline or remove a row entirely right from the validation table.

A Scout row is an error: Scouts are added by their parent, so invite the parent instead.

Previewing and sending invitations

The Preview & Send step shows the final list of invitations that will go out — error rows are automatically excluded, so you only see what will actually be sent.

You can add an optional Personal Message that is included with every invitation, then click Send to send them all. Invitations are set to expire 30 days after sending.

Reading the results

The Results step gives you three summary tiles — Sent Successfully, Skipped, and Failed — followed by a per-row table showing the outcome for each email address.

A “skipped” result usually means that person was already invited or already a member, so no duplicate invitation was created. From here you can Import More to run another batch or go Back to Members.

Bulk Operations: selecting members

Open Settings → Bulk Operations. The page loads your current members in a checklist (up to 100 at a time). Tick the people you want to act on, or use Select All / Deselect All. The selection count is shown so you always know how many members an action will affect.

Choose what to do from the Select Action dropdown. Each action reveals its own short form, and the Execute button changes its label and icon to match. The available actions are below.

Assign to or remove from a patrol

• Assign to Patrol — pick a patrol from the dropdown (your unit’s patrols are listed), then execute. The selected members are added to that patrol.
• Remove from Patrol — unassigns the selected members from their current patrol. They stay active members of the unit; only the patrol assignment is cleared.

Sending a bulk message

Choose Send Message, fill in a Subject and Message body, and execute. The message goes to each selected member’s in-app Inbox. Both the subject and body are required.

If any selected member is a Scout, Youth Protection rules apply:

• You need your own current Safeguarding Youth Training, or nothing is sent.
• Each Scout’s own parent or guardian in the unit gets a copy that starts with a line naming their Scout, unless they’re selected too or you are that Scout’s parent.
• A Scout under 13 is reached through their parent only.
• A Scout with no parent or guardian who can be put on the message is skipped, and the operation’s status list shows why.

See How We Keep a Parent on Messages to Scouts.

Exporting selected members to CSV

Choose Export to CSV and execute. This downloads a file with each selected member’s name, email, phone, role, and status. The export is generated instantly in your browser — no server request, no waiting.

Tip

Export is a fast way to grab a quick contact sheet for a campout, a phone tree, or a council report.

Updating rank, member type, or role in bulk

• Update Rank — choose a rank (Scout through Eagle, plus Cub ranks like Lion, Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos, and Arrow of Light) to apply to everyone selected. This updates their advancement record.
• Update Member Type — switch the selected members between Youth and Adult. Switching someone to Youth who is in a household with a parent or guardian makes them that household’s Scout, so it’s checked like adding a Scout: if you’re an adult in that household, nothing is changed for anyone selected and the reason is shown; otherwise the household’s parents and the unit’s leaders are told. See When a member becomes a Scout.
• Update Role — set the unit role to Scout, Member, Parent, Leader, or Admin.

Caution

These actions apply the same value to every selected member. Double-check your selection before executing — for example, do not accidentally include adult leaders in a rank update meant for Scouts.

Archiving members and tracking background jobs

Choose Archive Members to mark the selected people inactive and remove them from active rosters. You can add an optional reason (for example “aged out” or “transferred”). Archived members are not deleted — their records are preserved, and each archived member appears in the Recycle Bin, where a unit Key-3 leader, or any leader who can archive members, can restore their place in the unit. The Recycle Bin lists the 500 most recent deletions in the unit, as many members as one archive can hold. Archiving ends any positions they held in the unit, and restoring does not bring those back (see Restoring a removed member). Archiving runs immediately and confirms with a toast.

Archiving counts as removing records. If one leader archives 15 or more members within 10 minutes, the unit’s other Key-3 leaders get an Unusual deletion activity alert, the same alert a burst of deletions sends. This is expected after a large year-end archive, and it makes sure that a mass removal never goes unnoticed.

Two actions — Assign to Patrol and Send Message — run as a background job. An Operation Status card appears with a progress bar and live Successful / Failed / Skipped / Pending counts that refresh every couple of seconds until the job completes. For Send Message, a Recipient details list below the counts gives the outcome for each person who has one: a Scout skipped because no parent or guardian can be put on the message, a parent copied for their Scout, or a Scout under 13 reached through their parent. When it finishes, click Start New Operation to run another batch. Every other action — Remove from Patrol, Update Rank, Update Member Type, Update Role, Export to CSV, and Archive Members — completes immediately and simply shows a confirmation toast.