Add Intelligent Agents

Intelligent agents act as your automated assistants, helping you monitor student activity and send personalized messages based on specific conditions you set.

For example, if you’re teaching several classes with around 40 students each, you can create an agent that automatically emails students who haven’t submitted an assignment by the due date. Instead of manually checking and messaging each student, the agent performs this task, saving time and ensuring consistent follow-ups.

If you want to check in on a specific student who has been missing classes or activities, it’s better to send a personal message instead of setting up an agent. Intelligent agents are most useful for automating repetitive tasks across large groups, not for handling individual student concerns that require a personal touch.

By setting up intelligent agents, you can streamline communication, increase engagement, and track course activity without constant manual monitoring. Here are more ways on how you can use them:

• Notify students who haven’t joined a discussion.
• Congratulate students with high quiz or assignment scores.
• Alert students with low overall grades.
• Remind inactive students who haven’t logged in.
• Send a welcome email on first login.
• Notify students who completed a content topic.
• Follow up with students who didn’t finish a quiz.
• Remind students of upcoming deadlines.
• Send motivational or thank-you messages to active students.

To create intelligent agents, follow these steps:

1. From the BigSky homepage, click on the course where you want to add an intelligent agent.
2. On the navigation bar, click Communication > Intelligent Agents.
3. From the Agent List page, click Settings in the upper right corner.
4. Tick Set custom values for this course, type your BMail on the fields Name that emails come from and Reply-To address for responses.
5. Click Save.
6. Back to the Agent List page, click New Agent.
7. Enter a name for the agent. You may also add a description.
8. If you wish to further organize your agents, you can assign each to a new or existing Category to group them. To add categories, just click Add Category.
9. Under Status, tick the Agent is enabled box if you want to activate the agent immediately. If not, skip this field and activate your agent later.
10. Expand the Scheduling section and select the Frequency for the agent to run:
    • No Schedule
    • One-Time Run
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
    • Annually

Update the schedule fields for start and end dates, time, and repetition options.

Choose the frequency carefully. You may use daily or weekly runs for missed submissions or low grades, and use hourly or daily runs for activity-based triggers such as logins or quiz completions. Avoid overly frequent runs to prevent duplicate notifications or email overload.

11. Next, expand the Criteria section and set the specific conditions:
    • Under Role in Classlist, select the applicable users.
    • Choose the relevant activity to monitor, whether Login Activity or Course Activity.
12. Then, expand the Actions section:
    • Choose from the Repetition options.
    • Tick the Send an Email and fill out the fields:
      • Enter the email addresses of the recipients in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields.
      • Provide a Subject. You can use replacement strings (e.g., {InitiatingUser}, {OrgUnitName}) to personalize the email with dynamic information such as the student's name or course name.

13. Add an attachment as an option.
14. Click Save and Close.

You have now successfully created your intelligent agent. If it isn’t enabled yet, you can perform a test run before activation. Once activated, it will automatically monitor your set conditions and send notifications based on your configurations.