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*Pilot Tool*

This tool is being offered on a limited pilot basis. You will not find it in the standard list of tools available in Site Info > Edit Tools. If you want to add it to your site, please submit a HelpSU ticket to request it.

This tool has yet to be thoroughly tested by our team and may have performance and/or functional problems we have not yet discovered. In terms of support, we ask that instructors take on the responsibility of fielding 'how to use the tool' questions from their students as part of the terms to using this tool in their CourseWork sites. The CourseWork team will provide limited support in fielding the following types of problems:

• system errors resulting from accessing and using the tools (e.g., exception reports)
• permission issues (e.g., ability to use admin options)

What it does

The Messages tool is a site-based mail system for messaging between individuals and groups of a particular site.

Key concepts

Viewing messages: Unread messages are in bold; viewed messages are marked as read, but you can mark any read message as unread. By default, messages are listed chronologically, but you can select the By Conversation view to display messages in indented threads.

Composing messages: A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface allows rich text, plain text, and HTML editing. You can also add attachments.

Note: Pasting text from Microsoft Word directly into the WYSIWYG editor may result in garbled output, even if the text appears correct in the editor. Instead, to insert formatted text from a Word document, click the Paste from Word icon, and paste using Ctrl-V or Command-V.

Message priority: You can set priority levels for messages to distinguish important messages from others.

Things to consider

• Using Messages, you can send messages to another individual, a select number of individuals, a select number of groups, all members of a certain role, or all members of the site.
• Messages are sent directly to participants' email addresses; copies also appear in your Sent folder and the recipients' Received folders within Messages. Recipients must reply using the Messages tool, not their email programs.