D2L: Introduction to Intelligent Agents
- Tyler Kron-Piatek
Intelligent Agents can be used to automate certain tasks. In the scenario outlined below, we will take you through making a simple Agent that will email you when a student has not accessed the course for a certain amount of time.
| 1 | To get started, go to the Edit Course tab in the course navbar. |
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| 2 | Find and click on Intelligent Agents in the Communication Section. |
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| 3 | Click on the New Agent button in the upper-right. |
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| 4 | Give the Agent a name. You can also give it a description but it is not needed. Make sure to check that the Agent is enabled. We are going to want to do a practice run when we are done and it is easier to enable it now rather than later. |
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| 5 | The next section is Scheduling. For our purposes, we are going to have the agent check every other day at 8:00 AM and only between the Course Start Date and the Course End Date. This will help prevent overloading students' emails and also prevent D2L from sending an email when students no longer have access to the course. |
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| 6 | After we have told the Agent when and how often to run, we need to tell it on what Condition or Criteria to trigger an action. In this case, we only want students to trigger the Agent. Select Users with specific roles and then check the box to the left of Student. Next, we need to tell the Agent to trigger on Course Activity and then choose "User has not accessed the course in the last blank day(s)". Where the blank is, type in 3. |
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| 7 | We have now told the Agent when to check and what to trigger an action on. Now we need to tell it the action we want it to take. We do want the Agent to repeat. Select "Take action every time the agent is evaluated and the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user". We also want the Agent to send an email to the student that triggers the agent. Select the checkbox to the left of "Send an email when the criteria are satisfied". New options for the email will appear. In the To field type in: {InitiatingUser} This will get the email of the student that triggered the agent and populate the To field accordingly. If you are interested in seeing other Special Email addresses you can use, click the "What special email addresses can I use?" link under the BCC field. In the BCC, type in your email address. While the Agent will send you a notification when it runs, it won't contain a lot of information. Having the Agent send you a copy of the email is great for your personal records and to also notify you when it is triggered and by who. |
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| 8 | Next, we need to add a subject and the email itself. We are going to be using some special strings in both the subject and the message, specifically OrgUnitName, InitiatingUserFirstName, and LastCourseAccessDate. There are plenty of other special strings that you can look into by clicking on "What replace strings can I use in the subject and message?" link. Also, note that there may be some confusion as to why we are using OrgUnitName and not OrgName. D2L considers the OrgName to be "Canisius" and all courses are "units" of the org. Therefore, OrgUnitName is appropriate to automatically add the course name to the Subject and Email. Here is the Subject: {OrgUnitName} 3 Day Absence And here is the Message: Hi {InitiatingUserFirstName}, Just checking in. According to D2L, you have not logged in to the {OrgUnitName} since {LastCourseAccessDate}. To be successful in {OrgUnitName}, you should be checking out the D2L course space frequently. Please let me know if there are any questions or issues. Thanks! Best, Your Name Here |
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| 9 | Click on Save and Close. Make sure to do a Practice Run to test it out before leaving it active. However, if you would prefer to wait until a later time to start using this Agent, you can also Disable the Agent. |
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