Translating a plugin, importing .mo/.po

Hello. I have some basic questions about translations please.

I have released a plugin for restricting pages based on user/page permissions:
https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/simple-restrict/

The plugin is translated in French, with the simple-restrict-fr_FR.mo/.po files in the correct /languages/ directory. When installing the plugin on a French site, the strings are translated into French as expected.

However, it seems that translate.wordpress.org is supposed to automatically import translations form existing .mo/.po files, but this hasn’t happened for our plugin. It shows no translations on translate.wordpress.org. We do not have a .pot file, only .mo and .po files. Is there a way to import these ourselves? Or are we supposed to re-enter them on translate.wordpress.org? We have started doing this, but figured we would ask to ensure we have understood the correct procedure.

Also, if people contribute new translations to our plugin on translate.wordpress.org, do we need to download them and add them to our plugin’s /languages/ directory? Or does the system load translations from translate.wordpress.org automatically?

Thanks.