So, you want to send some DMs to your learners in Bridge? Cool. 

Here are all the details you’ll need to make sure it delivers just the way you want it. 

First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure that “Direct Message” is turned on in your Admin > Notifications panel.

You will then have the ability to send direct messages to learners from within Bridge.

As an Admin or Author, you can send a message to learners assigned to a course. When choosing “Send Message” from the meatball menu in the top right-hand corner of the course description, you will have a few options for recipients: Everyone, Overdue, Not Started, Required, Finished, and Permanently Failed.

In this example below, the user is an Account Admin, and they want to thank their learners for taking the course.

A second way to message learners is through groups. A manager can send a message to their learners as default (and this cannot be changed). Permissions can be viewed by going to Admin > Roles & Permissions. For this permission, the title is “Message Users.”

Managers are given autonomy over their groups automatically in Bridge. This happens through the  auto csv, manual CSV, or API user provisioning into Bridge when an active UID is listed as the manager UID for a single or group of learners.

A manager will, by default, have the permission to go to Admin > Users & Permissions > Manage Groups and see a group called “My Learners.”

When clicked, Stephanie Manager has the option to message their learners through the mail icon in the top right-hand corner.

How these direct messages appear to the user is dependent on a few areas: the support siteadmin for Bridge, the notification configurations for the account, the support configurations for the account, and the user configurations for the account.

A manager does not have permission to manipulate account, support, or user data, so the notes below or mostly relevant to Admins who may want to showcase different data in those emails.

The notification will deliver to the user as this:

Let’s start with the username in both the subject line and the sender information in the first line of the notification.

This is pulled from the “Full Name” in the user data of Bridge for the user who initiates the action to send the DM. This is an aggregate of “First Name” and “Last Name” from the user provisioning. This is where the Admin would have the ability to temporarily change the “Full Name” value if they wanted the notification to look like it’s from the company (i.e. Sleigh).

If auto csv is enabled, there is little room for concern as the daily sync will rectify the name change if the Admin forgets to change it back. If your company is doing manual uploads, you will want to pay close attention to changing the name back.

The sender information appears as the sender’s name.

This is pulled from two areas in Bridge that are synced. The first is found in Admin > General > Notifications > More Settings > From Label. The second is found in Admin > General > Account Settings > Custom From Label.

It is impossible for these two fields to hold different values.

The footer will have a contact name, as well.

This will pull from Admin > Account Settings > Custom Support Contact Information > Name.

Custom Support Contact Information will also influence other fields in the footer of the notification.

The email field is found under Admin > Account Settings > Custom Support Contact Information > Email or Ticket URL.

If your company has put a phone number in the appropriate field for the Account Settings, then that, too, will be exposed in the footer.

The final element that an Account Admin can control is the logo that appears in the header of the notification.

This is pulled from Admin > General > Custom Branding. The primary logo and the reversed logo will be exposed depending on a user’s settings with dark mode.

Finally, there is one part of the footer that the Account Admin cannot control.

It is populated by the name of the account on the Bridge side.

You would need to contact support or your CSM to make an account name change, and there could be other implications that should be considered.

This is found in the first line in the footer: “You have received this email because [insert name] uses Bridge.”

You can see here that the name of the account in Bridge siteadmin is Sleigh Learn:

Now that you know everything ever about direct messaging in Bridge, let’s get to it!