Manage alerts and notifications guide

Course officer staff are enrolled at category level as Programme Administrators to manage a programme of modules. In Moodle 4, staff in the Programme Administrator role are also enrolled directly on modules within the category to provide access to the Modules overview block to organise, filter, display and star modules. You will need to review the guidance below to reduce and manage notifications.

Please note that staff enrolled in the Category only Programme Administrator role are not directly enrolled on modules and do not need to manage notifications.

Direct enrolment on modules means that staff in the Programme Administrator role will receive notifications about activity in each Moodle module within a category. This will result in hundreds of emails a day unless action is taken.

Category only Programme Administrators do not need to manage notifications as you are not directly enrolled on all modules within a category.

Below are the steps required to manage notifications and reduce and organise email from Moodle  

1. Switch off notifications

To reduce the amount of emails from Moodle modules that you are directly enrolled on, switch off all notifications that are not locked.

1. Open the User menu by selecting your photo on the top right of Moodle.
2. Select Preferences.
3. Select Notification preferences from the panel on the left.
4. Toggle the button to off for email and web for all options that are not locked.
5. Check the box alongside Disable notifications. This seems to disable web notifications which lecturers might enable via the Assignment or Video Assignment activity.

2. Set Forum digest to subjects

Forum posts and digests are locked on for email to ensure students receive important communication from modules. To reduce the amount of emails received from a category of modules, set your Forum digest to Subjects (daily email with subjects only) to limit to one email a day from Moodle forums.

3. Set up two email rules in outweb (email.city.ac.uk)

To manage Forum digests and assignment notifications which are not controlled from Notification preferences you will need to set up an email rule. Additionally the notification setting to disable emails generated from Quickmail (Email within in Moodle modules) does not work. You will need a second email rule to manage these emails.

• Set up an outlook folder titled Moodle notifications.
• Set up email rule 1: This rule will manage Forum digests and email notifications from Moodle Assignment and Video Assignment activities. Sender address includes: noreply@city.ac.uk and Message body includes: Are you reading this in an email? This rule will help you to manage Forum digests and email notifications from Moodle Assignment and Video Assignment activities. 
• Set up email rule 2: This rule will manage emails from Quickmail. From: noreply@city.ac.uk and subject includes: 2024-25] You will have to edit this rule every year to include the new academic year in the Subject includes filter.
  • Ensure you add the close bracket to the subject. The subject is required as some notifications from other university services come from noreply@city.ac.uk

Rule settings for Rule 1

Rule settings for rule 2

Dismiss existing web notifications

To clear existing web notifications.

1. Select the notification (bell icon) to the right of the top navigation menu in Moodle.
2. Select the tick icon to mark all your web notifications as read.
3. This will clear existing web notifications.