Intelligent Agents - Welcome Letter Instructions

Intended Audience: Collaborative Instructors
This article pertains to courses taught by a local teacher as part of a collaborative partnership.  

Introduction:

To establish an intelligent agent for your course that will greet students when they first access it, adhere to the guidelines outlined below. This page provides information on modifying default settings, generating an intelligent agent, and running it manually if you have students already enrolled in the course.

Change Default Settings

To configure the intelligent agent settings for your Brightspace course, follow these steps:

1. First, open one of your courses in Brightspace.
2. Next, go to Course Admin.
3. Then click Intelligent Agents.
4. Next, click Settings from the top right of the "Agent List". Please note that these settings will require adjustment only once per class.
5. At this point, you may choose to use the system defaults or you may choose to personalize your settings by adding your name and email in the “Name that emails come from” box (recommended).
   

6. Click Save.

Create an Intelligent Agent

1. From the Agent List page, click New Agent.
2. Afterward, specify the agent type and assign a name to the agent. Describe the agent you created, then select the "Agent is enabled" checkbox. Optionally, you may create a category for your agent by selecting Add Category.
   
3. Next, in the Scheduling category, use the dropdown menu to select the frequency that the agent should run. For this agent, we recommend setting the frequency to Daily.
   
4. Now, apply schedule settings as noted in the image below. You can set the scheduled time that you’d like the agent to run each day. Schedule dates will be the start and end dates of your course.
   
5. Now, proceed to establish the criteria for the agent in accordance with the image displayed below. Please disregard the "Login Activity" and "Release Conditions" sections.
   
6. Then, define the actions for this agent by referring to the image provided below. Kindly note that the phrases used in the To: and Cc: fields will extract the student and mentor information. These phrases should be typed exactly as displayed to ensure that the intelligent agent functions correctly. You can utilize the link beneath the address fields to copy and paste them.
   • {InitiatingUser} refers to the student
   • {InitiatingUserAuditors} refers to the teacher/mentor.
     
7. Afterwards, create a welcoming message for students entering the course. Remember that you can use replacement strings in your message to personalize it. To obtain a list of available strings, click the link provided beneath the subject field.
   
8. Next, upload and attach a PDF of your welcome letter. Alternatively, you may add a link in the message area.
   
9. Then ensure HTML is checked.
   
10. Next, in the Scheduling category, choose the checkbox to "Use Schedule". Choose the Update Schedule button to set up the frequency that the agent should run.
    
11. Now, apply schedule settings as noted in the image below. Schedule dates will be the start and end dates of your course. Click Update.
    
12. Next, tap Save and Close. 

Manually Run Intelligent Agent

To initiate the intelligent agent, you may manually execute it if your course already has enrolled students. Click on the dropdown menu adjacent to the agent name and choose Run Now.

Now that you have configured your intelligent agent, it will examine each night to identify which new students have entered the course and transmit them your welcome message. To view the message delivery history, go back to the agent list and select View History for the agent.