blocks/moodletxt/send

Sending a Message via MoodleTxt

This page will run you through the process of sending out a message from the MoodleTxt compose page. Given the wide number of options that MoodleTxt provides for outbound messaging, this page is designed as a wizard, to easily section off the various stages of composing a new message. You can move forwards and backwards through the steps of the wizard by clicking on their titles at the top of the form.

Step 1: Recipients

Firstly, you must select the recipients for the message. You may send a text message to one or more individuals, to a pre-defined group of users/contacts, to additional recipients you specify on the page, or any combination of the three.

On the left of the screen you will see the "Potential Recipients" list. This list holds all the recipients (of a given type) that were found in your Moodle system. These are the recipients that you can add to the message. On the right of the screen you will see the "Selected Recipients" list. Any recipient that is in this list when the form is submitted will receive the message.

To add a recipient to the message, find them in the list on the left, select them, and click the button with the right-facing arrows (>>). The recipient will move across to the selected list. To remove them from the message, click the button with the left-facing arrows (<<). The recipient will be removed from the selected list, and reappear in the potential list on the left.

You will notice that the recipients you are selecting are colour-coded. These colours designate the type of recipient that you are selecting. Underneath the two lists you will notice a number of coloured buttons: "Users", "User Groups", "Addressbook Contacts", "Addressbook Groups". Users are the user accounts and user groups defined in your Moodle installation. Address Books contain the contacts and groups you define within MoodleTxt. Click on one of these buttons to display the appropriate contact list.

To select Moodle users and user groups, click the “Moodle Users” button. (This is the button selected by default when the page loads.) Two lists will appear – the top list is a list of the Moodle user groups that have been defined within the system, and the bottom list is a list of the individual users available on the current course.

You can select/deselect contacts from your address books in the same way, by first clicking the “Address Books” button, and then moving groups and contacts to/from the “Message Recipients” list.

(To select more than one contact from a list, hold down CTRL on Windows/Linux, or the Apple key on a Mac, and click on each contact. You can also select a group of sequential contacts by clicking on the first contact, then holding the SHIFT key and selecting a contact further up/down the list. This will select every contact in a range.)

Finally, if you wish to add additional recipients to the message, clicking the “Additional” button brings up a set of three boxes that allow you to add new contacts to the message on the fly. Enter the contact's first name, last name and phone number in the appropriate boxes, and click the “Add” button. The new contact will be added to the “Message Recipients” list on the right of the page.

If you want to remove recipients from the message, select one or more of them from the list in the “Message Recipients” box and click the “Remove” button in the centre of the page. The selected recipients will move back to the boxes on the left of the page, and will no longer receive a copy of the message. (Any contacts you added with the “Additional” tab will be destroyed when removed from the recipients list.)