Managing course notifications

Notifications are automatically generated emails that you can activate and customize. For example, you can activate a notification email containing log-in information to be automatically sent to users when they enroll in a course.

	•	Notifications that are turned on at the session level override notifications at the course level. Notifications that are turned off at the session level are overridden by the course level notifications.
	•	CourseMill's email management service must be enabled for notifications to function. If your system is using an external email service, the notifications will be mailed to the email address specified in the User profile. If your system is using CourseMill's internal email service, the notifications will be accessible from the users' EMAIL tab on the student interface.

These notifications will be sent to the student using the email configuration that is selected for the organization from the system administration email address. For details about selecting the email system for an organization, see Setting up email configurations.

You can customize the sample text of the notification email as necessary.

Notifications can be activated for the following events:

Notification

Description

Contents

Enrolled in the course

Notifies a student of successful enrollment in a course

The course or name

Removed from the course

Notifies a student of successful removal from a course

The course name

Added to the wait list

Notifies a student of being added to the wait list of a course

The course name

Removed from the wait list

Notifies a student of being removed from the wait list of a course

The course name

7, 5, 2 days prior to the start of the course

Notifies a student that the course is about to start

The course name and the start date

Course is completed

Notifies a student of course completion

This notification is what drives a physical paper certificate to be created for a course, if one exists. The course can use the standard certificate, or it can have a course-specific certificate by creating a PDF file named the same as the Course ID. This PDF file must be loaded on your server. (See Creating custom certificates for more information.)

Completion certificate attached

4, 3 days prior to the end of the session reminder

Notifies a student that the session is about to end

The course name and the end date

7 days after the completion of the course

Notifies a student a set number of days after completion of the course

The course name and the end date

Entry made into the Discussion board

Notifies instructors when a post is made on the course discussion board

The content of the post

2 days prior to course due date

Notifies a student that has not completed or passed a course a set number of days prior to the end-of-session date.

The course name

1 days after the course due date

Notifies a student a set number of days after the course due date

The course name

Prior to end of session

Notifies a student that has not completed or passed a course a set number of days prior to the end-of-session date.

The course name

Course approval request denied

Notifies a student that his or her approval has been denied..

The course or session name

The emails use special text-variables that gets replaced with information specific to the user that is receiving the email. The text-variables that you can add to the emails are described in Editing the contents of a notification email.

•

If your typical user does not have an email address, use CourseMill's internal email management service; otherwise, specify the manager's email address in the student’s profile to alert or distribute the messages.

•

If they are enabled, the seven notifications without the number of days setting are sent immediately upon the corresponding action. For example, when a student is enrolled in a course the corresponding notification is sent immediately. This is true if the instructor/administrator performs the enrollment or the user self-enrolls. This is also true if existing users are auto-enrolled as well as future students that will match the auto-enrollment rules. Use the Notification Schedule (Admin Tasks > Manage Scheduled Tasks > Notification Schedule) to set when the notifications are sent during the nightly notification maintenance run. For details, see Managing scheduled tasks.

The notifications with the number of days setting are scheduled for distribution based a managed property. These five are shown below with their corresponding managed property that the administrator will need to set up.

Notification	Managed Property
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to the start of the course	CourseNotificationDays – specifies the nn values
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to end of session reminder	SessionEndWarningDays - specifies the nn values
Nn days after completion of the course	SessionFollowUpDays - specifies the nn values
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to the course due date	DueDateApproachingDays - specifies the nn values
	DueDateWarningThresholdDays – specifies the number of days prior to the due date that the Yellow/Red visuals show up in the My Courses area
Nn,nn,nn,nn after the course due date	DueDatePassedDays - specifies the nn values

View these topics for more information: