Refined Reminders is a powerful and versatile HTML email notification system that provides a seamless communication between your users, the LMS and Adobe Connect.  Reminders can be sent from many places in the LMS, including Connect Meetings, Bulk User Actions, Course Welcome Messages, Course Invitation Messages and Role Alerts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Connect Meetings

Linking a Connect Meeting to the calendar allows you to designate reminders to be sent to the course participants at designated times.  In the reminders section of the meeting activity settings page, click on Link to Calendar Event:

Once the meeting is linked to the calendar, you can select reminders to be emailed out to all of the participants at specified times Before and After the event or to participants After Attending or After No-show, if they did not attended:

While the default number of reminders is three, more can be added by going to the Site Administration block and clicking on Plugins>>> Activity modules>>> Connect Activity:

Calendar Events

Linking to the calendar creates an "event” in Moodle and the date of the event is indicated by a pink high-light on system the calendar. The user will see the event date highlighted in pink on their profile calendar, if one is added on the site. (See http://moodle.org for more about using the calendar.) 

An enrolled student will also see the event in their list of meetings when using the My Meetings tag by Refined Data.

While authenticated users see only those events associated with courses they’re enrolled in,  Administrators can be given the permission to see all meetings on the site via Site Administration>>> Appearance >>> Calendar:

An administrator can also access the reminders set-up section via the calendar. From the calendar block, mouse over the date and the popup menu provides a link to the event:

Click on the link to access the calendar event, where users can register for the event.  Select the edit event icon:

You will be redirected to the Updating Connect Activity page; scroll down to the Reminderssection.

For Connect Meetings, the description of the event is blank by default.  This results in the summary of the course being used as the description of the event on the registration page or in course listings pages.  Use the HTML editor in the Course Summary section to distinguish your event:

Bulk User Actions

With this feature, you can send customized messages to individuals or groups of users.  From the Site Administration menu select Users >>> Accounts >>> Bulk User Actions. Use the default filter User full name to select known individuals or expand Show Advanced to select from all other User filter criteria.

In the advanced filter options, the Last access and Last modified filters can be specified by a date "is before" timeframe. This works only if date "is after" is also specified. The date "is after" works independently.

If you select Course role, the last blank in the list is where you enter the course shortname.  Click on Add filter. The users who fit the filter criteria will appear in the Available list.  Highlight all of them and click on Add to selection. The users will all be moved to Selected:

Then from the drop-down menu next to With selected users…, select Reminder Message. Then click on Go:

Pay attention to select the Reminder Message and not the standard Send a message option.

On the Bulk Reminders page that appears, select which Reminder you want to send, which Event you want users to know about (if any of those you have Linked to Calendar the event will appear here), and which Course the event or reminder is associated with:

Click on Save changes.  On the Confirmation page that appears, the LMS will show a draft of the reminder and will ask: Do you really want to send the message above to all these users?  Click on Yes to send the message and No to cancel.  In either case, you will be redirected to the first Bulk User Action page.  You can confirm that the emails were sent by going to Site Administration>>> Reports>>> Logs>>> Today’s logs and looking for the action Library Mailer sent to the selected users.

Bulk User actions also allow you to perform other operations, such as removing users, sending them a message or downloading them.

Course Welcome Message

In the Course Settings, you have the option to send a Welcome Message to users once they are enroled in a specific course. This message can be useful for effectively setting up users with information needed prior to the event.   Inside the course, go to Settings>>> Edit settings.  Then scroll down to the Language section.  In this section you can select a reminder to use as a Welcome Message:

You will need to create a Welcome Reminder beforehand as outlined in Creating Custom Reminders.

Course Invitation Message

In the Language section of your Course Settings, is the option to send an Invitation message, which allows registered users to invite colleagues to attend the event.  This option is not automatically added to every LMS but is available if it meets your needs.  To use it, you also need to set up the invitation message; see the Dynamic Field Variables section of the Creating Custom Reminders article.  

Role Alerts

Role alerts uses a Reminder to advise an administrator when a user has been assigned a system role in the LMS. This notification allows the administrator to authenticate the user prior to assigning their role and permissions on the LMS.  To learn more about this feature and how to use Reminders with it, see the Role Verification article.

LMS Welcome message for Self and Token Enrolment

The LMS enrolment methods for Self-enrolment and Token enrolment can send an automatic enrolment message to users when they enrol. This should be turned OFF. The Course Welcome Message described above is all that is needed.  To turn the site-wide welcome message for these two forms of enrolment off or on, go to Site Administration>>> Plugins>>> Enrolments>>> Self enrolment or Token Enrolment:

If you select Self Enrolment, on the page that appears, scroll down to Send course welcome message:

The default  for this setting is Yes, but we recommend you disable it and add a custom Course Welcome message instead, if you need one for a particular course.

Similarly for Token Enrolment, scroll down to the Send course welcome message:

Disable the course welcome message, Save changes and add a Course Welcome message instead.