Communication

Learning Suite has a convenient system for sending emails to your instructors, TAs, and other students (if enabled by your instructor). Emails sent through BYU Learning Suite are sent to the email address on file for each recipient. Note that receipt of emails cannot be guaranteed since emails are received via each user's external email system such as Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.

1. To send an email, click Email from the Course List page or navigate to a specific course and click Email from the left side navigation.

2. Select the desired recipients. Note that instructors may have disabled student-to-student communication. Choose Individuals or Groups to sort by individual persons or to email a group.

3. Add any recipients from your Contacts and/or manually add any additional recipients. Due to the method used to send emails from Learning Suite, you will not have a copy of emails sent in your personal email account's "sent" folder. If you want a copy of your email, check the "Copy myself" box.

Compose your email, add any attachments, and click Send Email.

Reply to An Email

Emails sent through Learning Suite are sent from the learningsuite@byu.edu email address.

In order to reply to these emails, click reply. The individual’s personal email address will automatically be selected as the recipient, and the email will not be sent to learningsuite@byu.edu

Note: If the learningsuite@byu.edu is copied and pasted as the recipient, the intended recipient will not receive the email.

Messages

Messages is a useful tool to communicate with instructors, TAs, and students. Messages differs from email in that the messages are stored and delivered within Learning Suite and the messages are threaded.

To access Messages, click your name/icon in the upper right corner of Learning Suite and select Messages from the drop-down menu. The orange badge will let you know if you have any unread messages.

Conversations
Messages allows you to create conversations with instructors, TAs, and students in which all recipients can respond and participate.

Inbox View
Inbox allows you to see all of your messages on the left side of the screen and the selected message on the right.

Messages can be sorted by date, subject, sender, or course. Click on the current key word and click the desired sorting method.

Message Actions
You can perform different actions with each individual message.

• On the left of the message header, choose the star icon to mark a conversation for follow-up.
• Choose the read/unread circle icon to mark the message unread/read.
• On the right side of the message under the date, click on the archive icon to archive the conversation or the trash icon to delete the conversation.

Message Folders
Click the Inbox drop down menu to switch to the different folders available in Messages. For example, if a message is deleted, it is moved to the Deleted folder and can be viewed there. If a message is archived, it can be found in the Archive folder.

Semester View
Messages defaults to show the current semester’s messages only. To switch to previous semester’s messages, click on the current semester located in the header and select the desired semester from the drop-down menu.

What is FERPA?
The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects students' rights to private educational records. FERPA-protected information is defined as anything communicated from the school to a student that (1) pertains to that student, and (2) is communicated by a system managed by the university. For details go to www.ed.gov or see BYU's FERPA page.

Send a Message

Messages sent through the internal Messages functionality are saved and viewed internally in Learning Suite. Users can set up a Preference to receive an email notification if they receive a Learning Suite Message, however, users cannot reply to Messages through email.

Please use common courtesy when sending messages to entire classes. Do not spam recipients with requests to fill out surveys, buy your housing contract, or advertise your website. Learning Suite Messages should be used for course work only.

Access Messages by clicking on your name/icon in the upper right corner of Learning Suite. Click Messages from the drop-down menu.

1. Click the green pencil/paper icon to begin composing a new message.

2. Recipients can be added by the following methods:

• Start typing the name of the recipient in the To field. All matching individuals in your address book will appear--click the name of the intended person from the suggested list.
  

  

• Click Expand Course Contacts and choose a course from the drop-down list [1], choose whether you want to see individuals or groups [2] and select the individuals or groups below [3]. Note that you can choose to send the same email to groups and to individuals. 
  

  

3. If you want to remove any recipients from the message, click the X to the right of their name in the To: field.

4. Type the subject of the message in the Subject field [1], type your message in the Message field [2], and click the paperclip icon on the bottom right [3] to add any attachments to your message.

5. Click the Send button to send your message or the Save button to keep it as a draft. Click Cancel or click the X in the top right corner to cancel message creation.

6. A green alert box will appear in the top right to confirm your message was sent. You can see your Sent messages by choosing the Sent folder from the drop-down folder menu on the top left.

Reply to Messages

When you reply to a message in Learning Suite, it becomes a threaded conversation. Note that instructors may disable student-to-student messaging, but you will always be able to message your instructors or TAs. 

Please use common courtesy when sending messages to entire classes. Do not spam recipients with requests to fill out surveys, buy your housing contract, or advertise your website. Learning Suite Messages should be used for course work only.

1. Access Messages by clicking on your name/icon in the upper right corner of Learning Suite. Click Messages from the drop-down menu.

2. Your current messages will show on the left. Click on the message you wish to reply to, and the message will open on the right side. Type your reply in the Reply field [1], add any attachments [2], click Save [3] to save the reply as a draft, click Reply to Sender [4] to reply ONLY to the sender, or click Reply All [5] to reply to everyone on the message thread.

3. Messages will appear in the conversation in chronological order. Instructor and TA names will be highlighted in blue.

Message from Previous Semesters

Messages defaults to the current semester but students can view messages from past semesters or terms for up to one year.

To access Messages, click your name/icon in the upper right corner of Learning Suite and select Messages from the drop-down menu. The orange badge will let you know if you have any unread messages.

The default semester/term is listed; click the current semester/term and chose a different semester/term from the drop-down list.

Spring-Summer Semester Messages
Spring-Summer courses span both spring and summer terms, but the way these courses are handled in the university's database, these classes will show up as spring courses in messages. Once summer term begins, users in spring-summer courses will need to navigate to spring term to see their messages. All other message functionalities will stay the same.

Learning Suite can send an email to notify users when they have received a Learning Suite message. Users will also need to grant permission for FERPA records in order to use Messages.

1. Access preferences by clicking your name/icon in the upper right corner and select Preferences from the drop-down list.

2. Click on Messages in the Preferences dialog box and select Filter. If you choose to filter new messages from other students, any messages sent to you from students will be automatically archived. You can access these messages later by clicking on the Archive folder in Messages.

3. Click the Notifications option in the Messages preferences to choose when Learning Suite should send you an email notification. To permit Learning Suite to email you notifications about Messages, you must read and agree to Grant release of FERPA education records. For help with email preferences, click here.

4. Click the Save button when all preferences have been adjusted as needed.