Overview of System Messages

• Emails - messages are sent to the email address associated with the recipient’s LMS user account.
• Message Center - messages display for the recipient under the “Mail Center” section of the Classic Home page or the Messages  page on the new user interface Navigation workflow. The number shown on the Message icon indicates the number of messages in the list. It will change as new messages come in and others are deleted.

• Directed to Portal Administrators, Instructors, or the User Executing a Task - These notifications can be about the success or failure of certain administrative tasks (uploads, imports), task assignments (instructor offering assignments), or to notify a user about a completed process (Batch Enrollment or Report Results)
• Directed to Student: The target recipient of the message is the student. The student's direct manager (based on person-to-person or position-based reporting) will only be copied if that direct manager also has a Role that is selected on the message CC settings described below.
• Directed to Student's Manager - The target recipient of the message is the student's direct manager not the student, so enabling message CC Roles is not necessary. The student does not see this message.

The Importance of Customizing Your LMS Messages

Manage Automated Notification Settings

The Customize Message Main Page

Customize a Specific Message

View or Restore the System Default Message

• To view the standard message or test user email receipt, click the View Default button.
• If you have customized a message, but want to revert back to the standard message content instead, click Restore Default. This option becomes available once you have a customization in place.
  
  
  
  

Change Message Details, Support Emails, and Distribution

• Language: Select the language in which the message will be presented. If you have users who prefer a language other than English, you can select the language from the drop-down list and provide alternate, translated text. You must save an English version of the message first.
• Status: Select whether you want the message to be Active or Inactive.
• Subject: Enter the text that will appear in the Subject line of the message. The system default is used if no other is specified.
• From: This is the email address the recipient will see as the sender. The system default is donotreply@latitudelearning.com. Change this to a valid address from your organization, if desired, to make it more recognizable to the recipient. NOTE: In order for your email address to be used as sender, an IT administrator must update your Domain Name Server (DNS) to authorize our domain – latitudelearning.com – as an approved sending host. This network requirement helps minimize “spoofing” where an email is sent by one organization on behalf of another without approval. This security setting was previously known as the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and has been adopted as an easy and effective method to help in the protection of unauthorized senders.
• Reply To: This is the email address to which a user reply will be sent. Replies sent to the support@latitudelearning.com will create service tickets with Latitude Learning Support. Change this to a valid address for the portal administrator/general LMS support from within your organization to receive user inquiries internally. When possible, portal administrators should act as the first line of support for their users. Only authorized administrators should escalate technical issues to Latitude Support for review and resolution.
• CC Recipient’s Managers having these Roles: Select the additional LMS Roles that should receive a copy of the message. For Student-facing messages, if the student is a direct report (in the employee list or My Team page of a manager with a selected role), that manager will also receive the message. When a message is designed to go directly to a manager rather than the employee, e.g. Student - Assessment Completed or Manager - Assignment Overdue, it is not necessary to select these CC: roles. This is not recommended for use on General - Announcement Made.  It can cause the LMS to create and send multiple duplicated versions of the original message to managers and portal administrators, impacting the function of the message queue.
• BCC (blind carbon-copy): Enter an email address to provide a copy of the message to someone that is not disclosed to any other recipients. When adding multiple addresses, they must be separated by a semi-colon (;). Addresses separated by a space or any other character are invalid and will cause message delivery to fail. Note: This will generate the BCC message every time the message event is triggered. It is not recommended for use with General - Announcement Made.
• Include Meeting Calendar Attachment: This option is only available for messages that relate to scheduled events, such as “Upcoming Training Reminders” or “Offering Schedule Changes.” When checked, the email message will include a calendar.ics file that can be imported into most common calendar applications. For information on how to import *.ics files into your email application, please consult your organization’s system administrator or IT help desk.

Create Message Content

• Use a tone and terminology your users will recognize.
• Provide instructions, if necessary, on follow-up actions they need to take.
• Offer links to additional information or preferred contact details (with email links, help desk address, etc.)
• Any changes made to a message text or behavior will be applied immediately to any new messages, in addition to those that may be waiting in the message queue, but have not yet been sent. The message content is not pulled into a queued message until it is actually sent by the system.
• Unless otherwise specified, messages cover all variations of an event and cannot be customized into sub-types, e.g. special Student-Course Completed messages for each Course Delivery Type.
  
  
  
  

• Text in brackets ([ ]) are parameters that represent the personalized data dynamically pulled from the LMS to notify recipients of the exact activity or event. If you remove a bracketed parameter, that data will no longer be generated as part of the message. Remove these with caution. It is also important to know that the parameters that work in one message are not always valid for use with other messages. Note: A list of Valid Message Parameters for each message can be found in the Appendix.
• Hover over any toolbar button to view a tooltip describing the button’s purpose. To edit directly in HTML code, click Source to show the message in HTML code. Click Source again to revert to rich text editing.
• If you want to include images in your emails and you discover that the images are not appearing in received emails, even after allowing download, you will need to edit your image URLs using the Source option. When selecting images using the Image button > Browse Server option, the URL placed in the source is incomplete, as shown below on the image at left. The URL begins with "/ui/formats/PORTALCODE/images/IMAGEFILENAME.JPG". It needs to be updated to include the full path by adding https://lms.latitudelearning.com/ui/formats.
  
  
  
  You can also update the URL directly in the HTML Source by finding the image source-related lines similar to this and adding the portion in red. Your code may be appear somewhat different:
  
  
  
• This display-only area at the bottom shows the original system default message. Click Copy from System Default to overwrite any custom message. This display is useful if you accidentally remove one of the bracketed parameters and need to refer to the original message setup.
• Click Submit to save changes.

Managerial Notifications -- Tips and Tricks