The notifications panel on the dashboard is the original alert system for instructors of notifications they may need to attend to. It is superseded by these new features. It is still there but you may no longer need to use it - in that case you can use the "hide" link to remove it (use the "show" link to bring it back).

This is a NEW feature we think you'll like. We have added a set of counters to the dashboard statistics display to alert you to notifications you may need to attend to.

There are two alerts:

"Your notifications" are for the currently logged on instructor. "All notifications" are the totals for the whole organisation combined. Mostly you'll want to pay attention to "Your notifications" but you can also keep an eye on the "All notifications" one as maybe an instructor is away and messages are not being seen or something like that and you may want to let you manager know so that can be addressed.

There are two categories:

"Chats" are chat messages from students, "Answers" are notifications about a students answering a lesson that need to be marked/responded to.

There are two statuses of each category:

The first number is UNREAD notifications and the second number is READ notifications. So "9/23" means 9 unread out of 23 total messages, or "0/55" means 0 unread messages out of a total of 55 messages. If there are unread messages a red dot is displayed to alert you to this (a green dot shows if there are no unread messages).

Additionally you can click on the words "CHATS" or "ANSWERS" to be taken directly to the "Notifications" page with the selection automatically set to show you those exact messages. Nice!

There is also a "Total" underneath that is just the "chats" and "answers" added together just for your information/interest.

NEW: In addition to the dashboard counters, you can also see similar counters on the enrollments page. A new column has been added called "Communications" and a similar summary is shown for:

But in this case it is chats and answers of that student. Again it shows unread/and read counters. Again you can click on the "Chats" or "Answers" words to go directly to the Notifications page with the selection set exactly for you so it shows applicable chats - if there are unread messages then it will show those, if there are no unread messages then it will show the read ones instead. Nice again!