What Happens When ‘Block New Users’ Is Enabled?

This article will help you understand the end user experience and the administrative responsibilities when you choose to have the Block New Users feature enabled on your VisualSP Online Subscription. This is controlled on the Users page in the VisualSP Management screen:

The end user experience when 'Block New Users' is enabled

Blocked users have a different experience than unblocked users. All users will still see the VisualSP Online help tab on the right hand side of the page if the user has the VisualSP Online browser extension installed or visits a web site in which VisualSP Online has been installed.

Blocked users are associated with a "Free Subscription Plan" rather than your organization's subscription plan. When a blocked user activates with an email address that would otherwise be associated with your subscription, that user will instead be associated with a "Free Subscription Plan" instead of your organization's subscription. This is true for both manual activations and automatic activations.

Blocked users will see a message at the top of the VisualSP help panel indicating that they have been blocked. The default message is shown here:

Blocked users will only have access to help items that are part of the "Free subscription plan". All other help items will display with silver or gold locks beside them. When blocked users click on a help item displaying a silver lock, he or she will see a message urging them to activate VisualSP in the browser. If auto-activation is enabled on your subscription, user's should not see items with silver locks. When users click on an item displaying a gold lock, they will see a message encouraging them to purchase a subscription.

The administrator responsibilities when 'Block New Users' is enabled

When you choose  to enable the Block New Users feature, you will be asked to supply a message that blocked users will see. See the above section for a screenshot of the default message that appears to end users. Your custom message can contain rich formatting, including hyperlinks and images. If you choose to display no message, a blank box will be displayed.

 

Unblock users individually after they have been activated

To do so:

1. Visit the Manage My Subscription area.
2. Click the Users tab at the top of the page.
3. Click the Blocked Users tab.
4. Click the Unblock button beside the name of each user you wish to unblock.

   

Instead of individually unblocking users, you may wish to import a list of allowed users. To do so:

1. Create a .CSV file containing the email addresses of the users you wish to allow. Your CSV file must have an Email, FirstName, and LastName header with a value for each field in each column.
2. Visit the Manage My Subscription area.
3. Click the Subscription Users tab in the Manage Users section.
4. Click the Import Users button.

   

5. Select the CSV file you created in step 1.
6. Set the Unblock Blocked Users toggle to Yes.
7. Click Import.

   

Import a list of blocked users

If you have a large number of users that are on the Subscription Users list but you would like to block them, you can import them into the Blocked Users list.

1. Export Active Users from the Subscription Users list.
2. Delete all of the approved users. You want to end up with a list of users you would like to block.
3. Click the Blocked Users tab in the Manage Users section.
4. Click the Import Blocked Users button.
5. Select the CSV file with your list of blocked users and click Import.

These users will be added to the Blocked Users list and will be automatically removed from the Subscription Users list.