For each course on a Xen platform, your team can send bulk email messages to learners directly from the Instructor View. In the Learning Portal, select Instructor, then select Email.
These messages can use HTML styling and may include links to videos, social media pages, or other course-related materials. Staff and Admin team members can send bulk messages before, during, and after the course run.
Note: Learners are less likely to read course emails when sent too frequently. As a best practice, limit messages to one per week, unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.
Important Consideration
Some courses use third-party services such as MailChimp for bulk email. Avoid using both third-party services and Xen’s built-in bulk email feature. Using multiple services can result in spam filtering or messages being missed by learners.
This guide covers
Message Addressing
Recipient Group Definitions
Email by Enrollment Track
Email by Cohort
Managing Scheduled Messages
Message Workflow States
Message Addressing
When sending a bulk message from the Instructor View, you choose recipients by selecting from predefined groups. Learners who appear in multiple groups will only receive a single message.
Available Recipient Groups
Myself - Send a test message only to yourself.
Staff and Administrators - Message course team members with Staff or Admin roles.
All Learners - Message all currently enrolled learners (excluding unverified accounts or learners who opted out).
Additional groups may include:
By Enrollment Track (e.g. Audit Track, Verified Track)
By Cohort (each cohort is listed as a separate group)
Who Is Included in Each Recipient Group
Staff and Administrators
Includes:
Staff and Admin course team members
Excludes:
Beta testers
Discussion moderators not assigned Staff/Admin roles
Community TAs or Group Community TAs
All Learners
Includes:
Enrolled learners who have accessed the course
Excludes:
Learners who haven’t activated their accounts
Learners who opted out of email communications
Course team members, even if enrolled
Note: To avoid spam and improve deliverability, Xen only sends messages to learners who have logged in within the last 18 months.
Sending Email by Enrollment Track
If your course supports multiple enrollment tracks, each track is listed as a recipient group. If only one track exists, no track-based option is available.
Example:
Learners in the Audit Track
Learners in the Verified Certificate Track
Sending Email by Cohort
If cohorts are enabled, each cohort is available as a separate group. These only include learners who’ve been assigned to a cohort.
Important: Learners not yet assigned to a cohort are excluded. To message all learners, use the All Learners group instead.
If a default cohort exists, you'll see:
Cohort: Default Group
Note: The default cohort is created if no cohort exists when the first learner accesses the course. You can reassign learners manually later.
Managing Scheduled Email Messages
Once scheduled, emails appear in a Scheduled Emails table with:
Send Date
Recipient Group
Subject
Author
Actions
Actions available
View - Preview the email content
Edit - Change content, recipients, or schedule
Delete - Cancel the scheduled email (status becomes REVOKED)
Message Workflow States
When an email is scheduled, the Xen platform assigns it a workflow state. These include:
Queuing - Task created and queued
Pending - Task waiting to run
Scheduled - Task scheduled for future send time
Started - Processing subtasks
Progress - Subtasks in progress
Success - All subtasks complete (some may have failed)
Failure - Error during processing
Revoked - Task cancelled
Track progress via the Pending Tasks section in the Instructor View > Course Info tab.
When complete, view status in the Email Task History Report.
FROGED