Your Moodle Profile and Preference settings affect your experience using Moodle, so you should review them carefully.

Edit Your Moodle Profile

Your Moodle Profile page can be viewed only by certain other individuals. For example, students cannot view each other's profiles, but an instructor or TA can view the profiles of the students enrolled in a course they are teaching.

Profile settings also impact privacy to some degree. You can choose to hide your email address from others, or choose to upload a photo to display when you contribute to a forum.

1. From the User menu (your name and profile picture, top right), click Profile. The Profile page opens.
2. On your Profile page under User details, click Edit profile. The Edit profile page opens.
3. On the Edit profile page, we recommend you consider the following settings:
   • From the Email display drop-down menu choose between:
     •    Hide my email address from non-privileged users: Privileged users such as teachers and managers will always be able to see your email address.  Students cannot hide emails from teachers, but this will hide your email from other students. Hiding your email address does not prevent Moodle from sending you emails; it prevents other Moodle users from seeing your email address. Messages sent by you through Moodle will display your name and have a reply-to address of <noreply@moodle.umass.edu>. Please note that the information displayed in the "From" field varies on the email client of the email recipient.
     •    Allow everyone (in Moodle) to see my email address: This can't really happen, but the setting is there. It is essentially the same as the next option (Allow only people in your courses to see my email address).
     • Allow only other course participants to see my email address (default).
   • To display a personal avatar that will display in discussion posts, click the User Picture heading to expand the page and upload an image file.
4. To save changes to settings, click Update profile. You'll be returned to your Profile page.

Edit Your Moodle Forum Preferences

Your Moodle Preferences determine whether forum subscriptions are sent as one daily email digest or as separate emails, and more.

1. From the User menu (your name and profile picture, top right), select Preferences. Your Preferences page opens.
2. On your Preferences page, under User account, click Forum preferences.
3. On the Forum preferences page, you may wish to adjust the following settings:
   • To control email notifications from Forums you subscribe to, from the Email digest type drop-down menu choose between:
     • No digest (single email per forum post) (default).
       By default, you'll receive an email every time a classmate or instructor posts to a discussion you are subscribed to.
     • Complete (daily email with full posts).
     • Subjects (daily email with subjects only).
       Digest emails are sent at approximately 5 p.m. each day and compile notifications from all your courses in Moodle.
       Note: Digest settings do not affect email notifications sent when you make submissions in Moodle, or email messages sent by Quickmail (Quickmail emails are always delivered immediately).  For more information on Quickmail, see The Quickmail Block in Moodle.
   • The Forum auto-subscribe setting determines whether you will automatically be subscribed and receive emails when new posts are made to forums in which you have participated. To avoid inbox overload, we recommend the default setting: No: don’t automatically subscribe me to forums discussions.
   • The Forum tracking setting helps you to see which posts you have not yet viewed in a forum. We recommend the default setting: Yes: highlight new posts for me.

4. At the bottom of the page, click Save changes.

Note: Some instructors may set up forums so that you will be subscribed initially, but allow you to opt out; look for an unsubscribe link at the bottom of email notifications. For more information about email preferences for forums, refer to Manage Email Notifications in Moodle for Students, or Manage Email Notifications in Moodle for Instructors.

Set Up Your Notification Preferences

Users can decide how they want to receive new notifications—in the Moodle Notifications menu (bell icon in the top menu bar ) by email, by both menu and email, or not at all.

1. From the User menu (your name and profile picture, top right), select Preferences. Your Preferences page opens.
2. On your Preferences page, under User account, select Notification preferences. The Notification preferences page opens showing a matrix where you can select how to be notified for different activities.
   Note: Not all activity types provide notifications.
3. (Optional) To receive no notifications, select Disable notifications (at top).
4. In the matrix of settings, for each activity type or event reminder, in the right columns of the matrix select On or Off:
   • Web: Notifications will appear in Moodle under the Notifications menu (bell icon ). A red number will appear when there are unread notifications in the menu.
   • Email: Notifications will be sent to the email address that appears in your Moodle User profile.
   • Online: You will receive notifications while logged in to Moodle.
   • Offline: You will receive notifications the next time you log in to Moodle.
     Note: To avoid missing notifications we suggest users check Yes for both Online and Offline.
5. Selecting buttons toggles settings on and off. There is no Save button for the entire page.

Examples:

If you wish to receive notifications for an activity or event type in the Moodle Notifications menu but you do not want to receive an email, select:

If you wish to receive notifications for an activity or event type both in the Moodle Notifications menu and by email, select:

Note: The Moodle Messaging system (for instant messages) is not enabled on Moodle in the Cloud. Ignore settings under Inbound message configuration.

Using the Notifications Menu

The number of unviewed notifications shows on top of the bell icon.

1. To view notifications, in the top menu bar select the Notifications menu (white bell icon ). A list of notifications appears in a pop-up.
   Note: For alerts to appear, Notification preferences must be set to Web: Yes for each kind of alert you want to receive. See Enable Notifications, above.
2. To view detailed information for a notification, select View full notification. The Notification page opens displaying the main body of the notification.
3. To open the activity or event referenced by the notification, select the main body of the notification.