Use Intelligent Agents in D2L to send automated Email to students

The Intelligent Agents tool allows Instructors to send automated email messages to students when specified course performance criteria are met. They can be used to both recognize student achievement (e.g., a high score on a quiz) and warn of potential problems (e.g. lack of online activity or poor performance on an exam). 

Update Intelligent Agent Settings

Note: Please update your Intelligent Agent settings in every course each semester so that students can reply directly to you. The settings will not copy forward to another shell so you must follow these steps each semester.

  1. Select the Course Tools menu on the Navbar, and select Intelligent Agents
  2. Select Settings in the upper right
  3. Select the radio button for Set custom values for this course
  4. Enter your name in the “Name that emails come from” box. (i.e. Dr. John Smith, or Professor Smith)
  5. Enter your BSU email address in the “Reply-To address for responses” box
  6. Select Save

Create an Intelligent Agent

You can set up an Agent to look for three different things: Login Activity, Course Activity and/or Release Conditions. You can set up agents based on one single criteria, or you can combine multiple criteria. Determine what you want the Agent to monitor and make your selections.

  1. Select the Course Tools menu on the Navbar and select Intelligent Agents
  2. Select the New Agent button
  3. Enter an Agent Name, such as No Activity
  4. Select the box in front of Agent is enabled to make the agent active

Scheduling

Use scheduling if you would like the agent to run on a regular basis or on a specific date.  If no schedule is defined, you must manually run the agent to initiate action.

  1. To begin, select the Frequency
  2. Scheduling options will differ depending on your frequency selection. For instance, weekly scheduling options allow you to select a number of weeks, day of the week, time of day and start and end dates.

Agent Criteria

Under the Criteria section, select who should be evaluated by the Agent. In most cases, you will want to select the button for “Users with specific roles” and then select “student.” Otherwise, all users in the course will be evaluated by the Agent.

Login Activity

If you want to send an email to students based on D2L Login Activity, follow the instructions below.

  1. For Take Action on Activity, check the box for Login Activity
  2. Select the radio button for the type of activity you want monitored, such as “User has not logged in during the last “x” days.” 
  3. Enter the number of days, such as 7
  4. You can stop here and scroll down to the Actions section, or you can set additional criteria

Course Activity

If you want to send an email to students based on Course Activity, follow the instructions below.

  1. Under Take Action on Activity, check the box for Course Activity
  2. Select the radio button for the type of activity you want monitored, such as “User has not accessed course in the last “x” days.”
  3. Enter the number of days, such as 3
  4. You can stop here and move on to the Actions section, or you can set additional criteria

Release Conditions

If you want to send an email to students based on specific course activity (release conditions), follow the instructions below.

  1. Under Release Conditions, select Create
  2. Select the Condition Type, such as “Grade value on a Grade Item” or “Score on a Quiz”
  3. Based on the condition type selected, select the Condition Details of the item you wish to evaluate (select the item, set additional criteria, etc.)
  4. Select Create

Select the Agent Actions

Repetition: This setting determines how often action should be taken when a student satisfies the criterion.

Select the radio button in front of the Action Repetition you desire.

  • Take action only the first time the agent’s criteria are satisfied for a user: An email will only be sent the first time a student meets the agent criteria regardless of how many times the criteria is evaluated. (Used most often when release conditions are set, i.e., “receives greater than 85% on a quiz”).
  • Take action every time the agent is evaluated and the agent’s criteria are satisfied for a user: An email will be sent every time the criteria is met. (This one is used most often when login or course activity criterion are set).

Email: Select the box for Send an email when the criteria are satisfied. Then, compose your email message

  1. Important: In the To: field, enter {InitiatingUser}. Using {InitiatingUser} in the address field of the Intelligent Agent email, will send a message to each of the students who meet the criteria. When the student receives the message, they will only see their own name.
  2. Enter the Email Subject
  3. Enter the Message you would like the Agent to send when the criteria selected above been met. You can use replace strings to personalize your subject and message.
  4. Select Save and Close to complete the Agent

Additional Notes:

  • When copying components from one course to another, the Intelligent Agent will be copied over, but the settings need to be updated.

  • When exporting a course, Intelligent Agents will not be included as part of the export.
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