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Communication

Move from LATTE to Moodle 4

Beginning with the Fall 2024 semester, Brandeis will move from LATTE to Moodle 4. Please visit our Moodle 4 documentation. LATTE courses will be available through Fall 2024.

Overview

Quickmail is a block within Latte that provides selective, bulk emailing within courses. You can select all or a number of students or course participants to receive email. Note: Quickmail does not keep a record of replies. All replies will go to the registered instructor’s Brandeis email outside of LATTE.

How To

Compose a new message

The instructor must add the Quickmail block to his/her LATTE course if it is not already there. (If you are unsure of how to add a block to your course, please see the article here).

The Quickmail block has several options available including:

    • Compose Course Message - use this to begin crafting a new message
    • View Drafts - view messages you've saved as drafts
    • View Scheduled - view messages you've scheduled to send out in the future
    • My Signatures - view any email signatures you've set up
    • Alternate Emails - choose to send Quickmail messages using a different email address as the "from" email
    • Configuration - make some additional Quickmail configurations within your course shell

Click "Compose Course Message" to begin creating a new Quickmail message.

The From email will default to your Brandeis email address, as enrolled in the course shell. 

Use the To dropdown to indicate who should receive the message. Depending on your course's setup, you can choose to include all enrolled users, only users enrolled as a student, users within a certain group or specific users enrolled in your course shell. Selecting an option from the dropdown will automatically add it to your recipient list. Note: The "To" field does NOT accept manual text entry. It will only populate with a list of the users, roles, groups etc. associated with your course shell.

If you do not see a specific student or enrolled participant within the recipients dropdown list, they either:

    • have dropped the course and the system updated their enrollment
    • they have not successfully enrolled in the course in Workday Student
    • they need to be manually added to the course (common for academic administrators)

Graphical user interface, text, application, email

Description automatically generated

Use the From dropdown to indicate any others you'd like to exclude from your specified recipient list. (For example, all students except one or two specific students enrolled in your course).

Indicating exclusions is not required to send your Quickmail message.

Scroll down and you will see an area to indicate the subject line and body of your message.

Quickmail now supports use of specific merge fields within the message body. These merge fields can be used to personalize your email body. The "Supported user data fields" area underneath the body text field lists the available merge fields that can be copied and pasted anywhere into the message area. The available merge fields are the following:

    • [:firstname:] - The user's first name, as indicated in the LATTE system
    • [:lastname:] - The user's last name/surname, as indicated in the LATTE system.
    • [:fullname:] - The user's first and last  name, as indicated in the LATTE system.
    • [:middlename:] - The user's middle name, if it's indicated in their LATTE user profile within the LATTE system. (This isn't automatically populated
    • [:alternatename:] - The user's alternate name, if it's indicated in their LATTE user profile within the LATTE system. (This isn't automatically populated).
    • [:coursefullname:] - The course code and course name of your LATTE course shell. (You can also confirm the course full name by checking your shell's "edit settings" area at the top - accessible via the administration block
    • [:courseshortname:] - The course code only of your LATTE course shell. (You can also confirm the course short name by checking your shell's "edit settings" area - accessible via the administration block.. I.E. 213BIOL-16A-1
    • [:courseidnumber:] - This is a long, unique idnumber that gets populated from Workday. This is not the same as your course's code. (You can also confirm the course id number by checking your shell's "edit settings" area - accessible via the administration block)
    • [:coursesummary:] - This is a new feature with the LATTE upgrade to 3.10. Course summaries are not currently used.
    • [:coursestartdate:] - The start date of your course shell, as indicated in the Edit Settings area of your course shell (accessible via the Administration Block)
    • [:courseenddate:] - The start date of your course shell, as indicated in the Edit Settings area of your course shell (accessible via the Administration Block)
    • [:courselink:] - The url to your specific course shell, where you have begun to compose your new quickmail message.start date of your course shell, as indicated in the Edit Settings area of your course shell (accessible via the Administration Block)
    • [:courselastaccess:] - The student's last access to the course. You can also view this from the participants page of your course shell
    • [:studentstartdate:] - The date the student was enrolled into your course shell.
    • [:studentenddate:] - The date the student was unenrolled/suspended from your course shell.