Notification Options

Administrators control whether or not notifications are available. You can set the email format for notifications: individual messages, daily digest, or user choice. You can also set the number of days that must pass before notifications are removed.

Administrators can set the default notification preferences for users. Users' options are prefilled, but they can edit the options based on the administrator settings.

How do users receive notifications?

Doesn't seem familiar? Jump to the "Ultra" help about notifications.

Blackboard Learn delivers notifications in these ways:

My Blackboard: The Updates page displays notifications for all of a user's courses and the Posts page displays unread discussions, blogs, journals, and wikis.
Home Page modules: Within a course, modules display notifications for that course only.
Email: The system can distribute notifications by email if an administrator selects that setting.
Mobile app push notifications: The system can distribute push notifications in the Blackboard app. Push notifications notify users of course events on their mobile device screens.
Notifications Dashboard: If your institution has access to the community engagement features, the Notifications Dashboard appears on the My Institution tab as another way to display notifications for all of a user's courses.

Notifications are distributed every 20 minutes by default, which administrators can configure. The exception to this is email, which you can set to a once-per-day daily digest instead of every 20 minutes. For technical details about how notifications work, see Notification System Framework.

Notifications must be enabled for the Blackboard Learn system before any course notification data is collected.

General notification options

Doesn't seem familiar? Jump to the "Ultra" help about notification options.

On the Administrator Panel in the Tools and Utilities section, select Notifications. These options control the availability of notifications and the methods the notifications are distributed. Some options are required [r].

Notification options
System Availability
Notification Collection [r]	Control the availability of notifications. If Disabled, notifications are turned off completely. Events that occur while notifications are disabled aren't recorded. Turning notifications back on doesn't show any notifications for events that occurred while notifications were disabled.
Email Settings
Send email notifications as	Choose how email notifications are sent: None: No messages sent. Individual Messages: Send each notification in an individual email. Daily Email Digest: Send notifications as a single daily digest email that compiles all notifications for the day. Allow User Choice: Users choose between individual messages and a daily email digest. You set which of these appears as the default email format to users.
Send submission receipts [r]	Enable or disable email notifications for students when they submit coursework. Submission receipts allow students and instructors to maintain a record of submissions, even if the submission is deleted or otherwise lost. Students can access past submission receipts from the My Grades page. Instructors can access students' submission receipts in Grade Center reports.
Send email notifications from [r]	Type an email address that the system uses as the sender of the notification messages. Bounced messages return to this email address. Recipients are instructed to not reply to this address.
Send daily email digest at [r]	Set the time that daily digests are sent to all users who selected that option. This time setting affects the email digest only. All other registered distributors like SMS and Text-to-Voice still distribute every 20 minutes by default.
Notification Cleanup
Remove important notifications more than ___ days old. [r] Remove other notifications more than ___ days old. [r]	Set the age of messages at which they are deleted. Select Show Important Notifications and Show Other Notifications to view lists of the specific notifications in those categories. Use this setting with caution. Deleted notifications can't be retrieved or easily reissued.

SMS options

SMS notifications are available if your institution used Connect SMS Service before August 3, 2023. If this is the case, SMS notifications continue to be offered and existing SMS notification settings remain in place. For set up instructions, go to Set up SMS notifications.

SMS notifications are no longer available for self-hosted and managed hosted institutions.

ULTRA: How do users receive notifications?

Doesn't seem familiar? Jump to the "Original" help about notifications.

Blackboard Learn delivers notifications in these ways:

Activity Stream: The Activity Stream displays notifications for all of a user's courses.
Email: The system can distribute notifications by email if the user has a valid email address in their profile and selects activities in Notification Settings. The user can choose to receive emails right away or in the daily digest.
Mobile app push notifications: The system can distribute push notifications in the Blackboard app or the Blackboard Instructor app. Push notifications notify users of course events on their mobile device screens. Users can customize push notifications on the activity stream settings panel, their profile pages, or directly in the app.

ULTRA: General notification options

Doesn't seem familiar? Jump to the "Original" help about notification options.

Users need to add an email address to their profiles to receive email notifications about activity in all their Original and Ultra courses. Then, users choose how often and which activities they want to receive notifications for. Organization activities won’t trigger email notifications.

More about the notification types

Go to Administrator Panel > Tools and Utilities > Notifications to edit notification settings. These settings are required.

Notification options
Email Settings
Send submission receipts	Enable or disable email notifications for students when they submit coursework. Submission receipts allow students and instructors to maintain a record of submissions, even if the submission is deleted or otherwise lost. Students can access past submission receipts from the My Grades page. Instructors can access students' submission receipts in Grade Center reports.
Send email notifications from	Type an email address that the system uses as the sender of the notification messages. Bounced messages return to this email address. Recipients are instructed to not reply to this address.
Send daily email digest at	Set the time that daily digests are sent to all users who selected that option. This time setting affects the email digest only. All other registered distributors like SMS and Text-to-Voice still distribute every 20 minutes by default.
Notification Cleanup
Remove important notifications more than ___ days old. Remove other notifications more than ___ days old.	Set the age of messages at which they are deleted. Select Show Important Notifications and Show Other Notifications to view lists of the specific notifications in those categories. Use this setting with caution. Deleted notifications can't be retrieved or easily reissued.