Create and run Intelligent Agents in myCourses
- Jacqueline Kort Mascort (Deactivated)
You can set up Intelligent Agents to monitor your students' activity and automatically send students e-mail reminders if they haven't logged into myCourses or your course in a certain number of days. This is useful for tracking students and reminding them of important ongoing course events.
You can also create and attach Release Conditions to an agent, to have e-mails sent to students who fulfil more specific criteria. For example, you can create an agent that sends e-mails only to students who visited specific content, achieved a low score on an assignment, and/or enrolled in a group for a project.
You can have a copy of any agent messages sent to your e-mail, to tell you which students receive those messages.
In this article:
Access the Intelligent Agents tool
On your course navigation bar, select Course Admin.
Select Intelligent Agents. The Agents List window will appear.
Create an Intelligent Agent
To create an Intelligent Agent, select New at the top-left corner of the page.
Creating an agent requires three steps:
Step 1: Enter agent details
Enter an Agent Name, a Description, and a Category. Categories can help you keep your intelligent agents organized.
Select the checkbox beside Agent is enabled to allow the agent to run.
An agent will not run automatically or manually unless this checkbox is enabled.
Step 2: Schedule the agent to run
If no schedule is defined, you can still manually run the agent.
Under Criteria, you can choose if an activity (or lack of activity) will activate the agent. Selecting an agent criteria is not mandatory to create an agent.
Login Activity : To send students a message based on when they last logged into the myCourses system, select the checkbox under Login Activity then select one of the following options:
User has not logged in for at least # day(s).
User has logged in during the past # day(s).
Enter a number in the field for the number of days.
Course Activity : To send students a message based on when they logged into the course, click the checkbox under Course Activity and select one of the following options:
User has not logged accessed course for at least # day(s).
User has accessed course during the past # day(s).
Enter a number in the field for the number of days.
Release Conditions: You can also send students a message based on more specific actions, such as whether they have viewed certain content items or enrolled in a group for an assignment. For further information, see the release conditions article.
Under Scheduling define the schedule by which to send the reminder e-mails:
From the Repeats drop-down list, select one of the following options:
No schedule
One-Time Run
Hourly
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Annually
Depending on the option you selected, you will be given options for how often and when the agent's action will repeat.
For example: if you have an agent for reminding students who haven't logged in for a week and you select Weekly repeats, you can choose the day of the week the agent will activate and send a reminder to those students.Select a Start Date and/or End Date for the agent to begin and / or stop sending reminders. If no schedule is defined for the agent, it will not run automatically and you will have to manually run the agent to initiate the e-mails to students who fulfil the agent's criteria.
Under Actions define the agent's Repetition. Select one of the following options:
Take action only the first time the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user: If selected, the agent only sends one e-mail the first time a student satisfies the agent's criteria.
Take action every time the agent is evaluated and the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user: If selected, the agent sends an e-mail every time the agent is evaluated. For example, if an agent is set to activate when students don't log in for 2 days, and a student doesn't log in for two weeks, the user will receive 7 e-mails (one every 2 days).
Step 3: Enter the agent's e-mail recipients and content
Under Actions define the agent's format and content.
Select Send an email when the criteria are satisfied.
Enter {InitiatingUser} in the To: field of the e-mail to send messages to all students of your course who fulfil the agent's criteria, regardless of their role in the course.
(Optional) To receive a copy of all e-mails the agent sends out, enter your address in the To:, Cc: or Bcc: field. This will notify you of which students fulfil your agent's criteria (e.g., not logging into your course regularly).
When entering multiple e-mail addresses in any of these fields, you must separate each address by a semicolon ( ; ).
If you enter the e-mails of all your students in any of these fields, all of your students will be sent an e-mail every time any student meets the agent's criteria.
In the Email Subject field, enter a title for the reminder e-mail.
In the Message field, enter a message that students who meet the agent's criteria will receive. You can include attachments.
Under Email Format, select HTML. Plain text will not properly display your message when it is sent.
When finished, select Save and Close. You and/or your students will receive your scheduled e-mail notification after students fulfil the criteria that you selected.
Manually run an Intelligent Agent
Practice run
If you want to test an agent:
In Intelligent Agents, select the arrow beside the name of the agent you want to run and select Practice Run.
In the pop-up window that appears, select Run to go to a confirmation page.
Select Done. The system will send you a confirmation e-mail.
Run now
If you do not have a Schedule set up for an agent, you must run it manually.
In Intelligent Agents, select the arrow beside the name of the agent you want to run and select Run now.
In the pop-up window that appears, select Run to go to a confirmation page.
Select Done.
The e-mail message is sent to whomever is specified in the To field. Enter the string {InitiatingUser} in the To field to send the notice to all students that meet the criteria you entered when you create the agent.
When you run an agent manually, the system will also send you a confirmation e-mail with the following information:
Org Unit : Course Code and Course Name
Agent : Name of the Agent
Request Submitted : Date and time the request was submitted
Agent Completed : Date and time the request was completed
Action Taken : Whether the agent took action
Any error messages (if applicable)
Edit an Intelligent Agent
On the main Intelligent Agents page, select the name of the agent.
Make your changes.
Select Save.
Enable or disable an Intelligent Agent
On the main Intelligent Agents page, select the checkbox beside each agent you want to enable or disable.
Select Enable or Disable.
Delete an Intelligent Agent
On the main Intelligent Agents page, select the arrow beside the name of the agent you want to delete and select Delete.
In the pop-up window that appears, select Delete.
Bulk edit Intelligent Agents
On the Agent List page click on Bulk Edit at the top of the agent list.
Modify the Titles, Category assigned to each agent, or if an agents are enabled or disabled in the same window.
Click the button Save and Close at the bottom of the page.
Copy Intelligent Agents
On the main Intelligent Agents page, select the arrow beside the name of the agent you want to copy and select Copy. A new agent is created and Copy of is added to the beginning of its name.