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How do I create an Intelligent Agent and how do I test them? Administration | Course Admin

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Change default settings

Before you set up an intelligent agent, we advise you to change the default setting that determines whether receivers of an automatic e-mail can see who send it.

  • Navigate to Administration in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Course Admin.
  • Click Intelligent Agents below Communication.
  • Click Settings.
  1. Select Set custom values for this course.
  2. Fill in your own name below Name that emails come from.
  3. Below Reply-To address for responses you can enter the e-mail address the replies will get send to.
  4. Click Save.

Create intelligent agents

  • Navigate to Administration  in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Course Admin.
  • Click Intelligent Agents below Communication.
  • Click New.
  1. Name the intelligent. Choose a name that is obvious to you, the student will not be able to see it.
  2. Add a description. It is recommended to add a summary of the choices you make for the following steps, so you can easily see how you have set up the  intelligent agent in the overview later.
  3. Add a Category if necessary. These can be used to divide agents into different categories. 
  4. The  intelligent agent is automatically turned on directly after creating it. Deselect the box under Status to change this.

Use Scheduling to determine when and how often the intelligent agent should perform the action:

  1. Whether the intelligent agent should check of someone meets the set criteria once, hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly;
  2. Whether the intelligent agent should repeat the evaluation daily, weekly, or monthly and on what day it should perform the evaluation;
  3. At what time the intelligent agent should perform the evaluation.
  4. Enter a start and enddate to set a period in which the intelligent agent should be performed.

Below Criteria you can set up which conditions a student has to fulfill before they receive an email:

  1. Use Role in Classlist to determine for which students the intelligent agent applies. Select:
    • All users visible in the Classlist if the agent applies to all users in your course (meaning the teachers are included too).
    • Users with specific roles if the intelligent agent is only for users with a specific role (coordinator, teacher, grader, student).
  2. Use Login Activity to select when the intelligent agent needs to send an email. Select: 
    • User has not logged in for at least ...day(s) if the email needs to be sent an x amount of days after the student has not logged in. Specify the amount.
    • User has accessed course during the past ...day(s)  if the email needs to be sent an x amount of days after the student has logged in. Specify the amount.
  3. Use Course Activity to select when you want the intelligent agent to send an email. This is similar to Login Activity, but when you use Course Activity it is about the number of days of (in)activity (accessed/not accessed).
  4. Add Release Conditions if preferred. Click Browse to add an existing release condition or click Create to create and attach a new one. After you have added the release conditions, you can use a drop-down menu to choose whether the intelligent agent sends the email after the students have met the requirements for either one or all of the release conditions.

Use Actions to adjust the settings for the e-mails:

  1. Select how many times the intelligent agent can send an e-mail:
    • Select Take action only the first time the agent's criteria are satisfied for a use if the agent can send an e-mail if the user meets the criteria only once.
    • Select  Take action every time the agent is evaluated and the agent's criteria are satisfied for a use if the intelligent agent has to send an e-mail every time the student meets the criteria. Note that using this option is strongly discouraged!
  2. Select Send an email when the criteria are satisfied if you want the intelligent agent to work automatically. If you do not change anything you have to start up the intelligent agent manually.

Below Send an Email you can fill out the following fields:

  1.  Use the email fields to enter information about who the intelligent agent needs to send an email to. Enter your own email address if you wish to receive the emails yourself - this is useful because it allows you to get updates about what students are and are not doing in your course. Based on these emails you can choose to warn or inform a student (which you have to do yourself). You can also use the replacement string {InitiatingUser} in the To-field if you want the intelligent agent to send the student an email.
  2. Add the subject.
  3. You can add an image in your text.
  4. Type the message in the HTML-editor.
  5. You can add a file to your e-mail.
  6. Click Save and Close to save your changes and return to the Agent-List page.

Testing intelligent agents

For each intelligent agent you can perform a practice run. This allows you to perform an evaluation without sending any emails. After the practice run you can see who meet the criteria of the intelligent agent in the overview on the Agent-list page.

  1. Click the fold-out arrow next to the intelligent agent.
  2. Click Practice Run.
  • Click Run.
  • Click Done  to return to the Agent-list page.
  1. Click View History to see the results of the Practice Run.
  2. Click ...users identified to see the report of a Practice Run.

When you perform a practice run, first an icon will appear indicating the intelligent agent is activated. The icon will disappear after a few minutes, after which you can see the history.

Evaluating manually

If you choose to scan an intelligent agent manually, you can do so using the Agent-List page. This is useful if you have not scheduled the intelligent agent, and it will also allow you to maintain more control.

  1. Click the fold-out arrow next to the intelligent agent.
  2. Click Run Now.
  • Click Run.
  • Click Done to return to the Agent-list page.

The results will appear in the overview behind the intelligent agent concerned.

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