Introducing Activity Notifications#

The Ulmo release introduces a new Notifications experience that helps learners and instructors stay informed about course activity. This is the first release where the feature is available and more upgrades are underway.

Notification Tray#

A bell icon (đź””) in the upper right corner of all pages shows unread notifications count across discussions, grading, and course updates. Clicking on the icon opens the tray which displays notifications organized by platform area.

The notifications tray appears to the right of course content

Web interface showing the notification bell icon with an unread count, and the notification tray expanded#

Email Notifications#

Users can receive notifications by email, with flexible delivery options: immediately, daily, or weekly.

Daily and weekly emails contain notifications from the past 24 hours and 7 days, respectively. Site operators can configure schedule of these emails.

A screenshot of a daily email, showing 1 course update, 1 grade update, and 9 new discussion comments/threads

Daily email digest displaying notifications from Discussions, Grading, and Course Updates.#

Notification Preferences#

Notification preferences on the user Account Settings page allows users to choose which activities they want to hear about, how often, and through which channels (in-platform tray and/or email).

A screenshot of the Account Settings > Notifications page

Notification preferences on the Account Settings page, showing toggles for enabling tray and email notifications and dropdown menus for selecting email frequency.#

Supported Activities#

The table below summarizes all supported activities and their corresponding preferences.

Table listing supported notification types, including activity and preference name, audience and defaults.#

#

Activity

Recipients

Preference Name

Tray Default

Email Default

1

New response on your post

Post author

Activity Notifications

ON

Daily

2

New comment on your post

Post author

3

New comment on your response

Response author

4

New response on a post you follow

Post follower

5

New comment on a post you follow

Post follower

6

Response on your post is endorsed

Post author

7

Your response is endorsed

Response author

8

A new discussion-type post

Anyone

New discussion posts

OFF

OFF

9

A new question-type post

Anyone

New question posts

OFF

OFF

10

A new post from the course instructor

Anyone

New posts from instructors

ON

Daily

11

A post has been reported

Forum moderators

Reported content

ON

Daily

12

A response has been reported

13

A comment has been reported

14

New course updates

All enrollees in a course

Course updates

ON

Daily

15

New ORA submission for staff review

Staff, Admin on a course

New ORA submission for staff

ON

OFF

16

ORA grade awarded to learner

Learners

ORA grade received

ON

Daily

Documentation#

For instructions on using Notifications in courses, managing preferences, reviewing activity, and understanding delivery settings, please refer to the Notifications & Preferences.

For site operators, configuration options are available in the Operator release notes.

Maintenance chart

Review Date

Working Group Reviewer

Release

Test situation

2025-12-05

Product WG

Ulmo

Pass