The Intelligent Agents tool monitors a course and sees if anything happens that meets the rules you set to then perform an action. Those rules can be about login, activity in the course or conditions you set in Brightspace.
Examples of using intelligent agents include:
- Emailing users with grades below a certain level
- Checking for users who have not logged in within a certain number of days
We recommend leaving the settings as they are, but they can be adjusted if required. See the information below.
Intelligent Agent Settings
Before creating the Intelligent Agent, you can determine the settings of the Intelligent Agent.
- Go to the course where you want to set the Intelligent Agent.
- Click on Course Tools and select Intelligent Agents.
- On the top right corner select Settings
- Set custom values for this course allows you to change the default settings into more personal sender information. Note: the receiver of the Intelligent Agent will see this sender information.
- Change Name that emails come from into your own name (optional). The receiver will see this name as the sender of the automated message.
- Ready-To address for response should be set on [email protected]. Don't enter your personal email address in this box, this has to do with the spam filter settings of the receiver. Entering your personal email address might lead to the email being sent to the receivers spam box.
- Click Save to save your settings.
To create an Intelligent Agent:
- Go to the course where you want to set the Intelligent Agent.
- Click on Course Tools and select Intelligent Agents.
- Select New Agent.

- Agent name will not be visible for the student. Choose a name that easily identifies this Intelligent Agent.
- In the Description box you can fill in a summary of the Intelligent Agent. Which students do I want to reach with this Intelligent Agent? This will help you find your Intelligent Agent in your list of Intelligent Agents.
- Status box is unchecked by default. If you want your Intelligent Agent to be enabled, check the box.
The following settings are necessary for the use of Intelligent Agents: Scheduling, Criteria and Actions. These are shown at the bottom of the screen and can be flipped open. For examples of Intelligent Agents, see Use of Intelligent Agents
Scheduling
Here you can specify how often the Intelligent Agent should be deployed.

Example: Daily

- Enter every how many days the Intelligent Agent should be repeated
- Choose a time when this should happen
- Optional: choose a start date. This is important when you have selected the use of Login or Course Activity data under Actions
- Optional: choose an end date. This is important when you have selected the use of Login or Course Activity data under Actions
Criteria

-
Role in Classlist allows you to decide which roles are targeted by the Intelligent Agent:
- Select All users visible in the Classlist if you want to target all the roles in the classlist (including instructors).
- Select User specific roles if you want to target only specific roles (instructors, graders, students etc.). For instructors and students, it is important that you choose both the regular role and the SIS role.
2. Below Take Action on Activity you can choose:
-
Login Activity
- Select User has not logged in for at least # day(s) if you want your message sent to users who have not logged in for a set amount of days.
- Select User has logged in during the past # day(s) if you want your message sent to users who have logged in during the past set amount of days.
Select these options only when you want to use users' login data. Do not select this if you do not want to use this (See Use of Intelligent Agents for more information if you are not sure if you want to use this).
-
Course Activity
- Select User has not accessed course for at least # day(s) if you want your message sent to users who have not accessed the course for a set amount of days.
- Select User has accessed course during the past # day(s) if you want your message sent to users who have accessed the course during the past set amount of days.
Select these options only when you want to use users' activity data. Do not select this if you do not want to use this (See Use of Intelligent Agents for more information if you are not sure if you want to use this).
5. If you want to use Release Conditions to select the targets of your Intelligent Agent, select Create to create a new release condition or Browse to use existing Release Conditions. For more information see What are release conditions?
Actions

- Under Repetition you can select:
- Take action only the first time the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user if you only want your users to be messaged once (the first time the criteria are satisfied).
- Take action every time the agent is evaluated and the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user if you want to message your users every time the criteria are satisfied. Under Scheduling you can choose if you want the Intelligent Agent to check the criteria every # days or weeks. Therefore, we recommend you to select the option Take action only the first time the agent's criteria are satisfied for a user, otherwise your user will receive many emails, decreasing the power of the Intelligent Agent.
2. Select Send an email when the criteria are satisfied if you want the user to receive an email when he/she meets the criteria.

- Add replacement string {InitiatingUser} in To-box. If you want to monitor what the emails yourself too, add your email address to the Bcc-box.
- Add subject.
- Select if you want to add a picture or Quicklink to the email.
- Type message. In Use of Intelligent Agents you can find some formats of emails, including the usage of replacement strings.
- Select if you want to add an attachment.
- Under Email Format choose HTML format.
Select Save and Close and go back to the Agent List-page
For every Intelligent Agent you can start a Practice Run. A practice run allows you to test your Intelligent Agent, without sending a real email to your users. After the practice run, you can see which users matched the criteria of the Intelligent Agent.

- Select the arrow next to the Intelligent Agent you want to test.
- Select Practice Run.
- Click on Run
- Click on Done and go back to the Agent List-page
- Select .. users identified to view the practice run report.
3. Select View History to view the Intelligent Agent's history, including the Practice Run.
If you want to run your Intelligent Agent manually (so another run besides the scheduled run), you can do that by performing a Manual Run.

- Select the arrow next to the Intelligent Agent you want to run.
- Select Run Now.
- Click Run
- Click Done and to back to Agent List-page
3. Select ... users identified to view the run report
4. Select View History to view the Intelligent Agent's history, including the Manual Run.