Restricting Learners' capabilities on the email system

Question

Because of security concerns I have regarding learners' capabilities in the internal email system, we were wondering if there's a way to do the following:

* Restrict a role's ability to send emails to non-Brightspace users (e.g., an external email address when said email address isn't attached to a user in Brightspace).
* Restrict a role's ability to email the entire Classlist simultaneously.

I could see these two things being easily abused if a user's account is hacked or compromised. If it's not there, could we please have the ability to do this in a future release?

Priya.V.1805 · Answer

Hi there! Great points from Jenn! I wanted to add some additional detail based on the Email Permissions article to help address both questions fully. For Question 1 — Restricting emails to external/non-Brightspace users: In addition to Jenn's suggestions, you can control this through the following permissions in Roles and Permissions for the Learner role: * "Send Emails to External Email Addresses": Disabling this prevents learners from sending to any external email address at all * "Send Emails to External Addresses Not in Address Book": Disabling this specifically prevents learners from typing in an external email address that isn't already saved in their address book, even if external emailing is otherwise allowed * "Create Personal Contacts in Address Book" (as Jenn mentioned) : Prevents learners from adding external contacts manually as a further safeguard * "See External Email Addresses for " : Controls whether learners can even see external email addresses in the address book Disabling all of the above for the Learner role gives you the strongest restriction against emailing outside of Brightspace. For Question 2 — Restricting emailing the entire Classlist simultaneously: * "See the Address Book" : Disabling this prevents learners from accessing the address book entirely, meaning they cannot select the full classlist as recipients * "Send Limited Daily Emails for " : Enabling this applies a daily recipient limit to the Learner role. Once a learner reaches the configured limit, they will see a warning and cannot send further emails that day. This is a great safeguard against bulk sending abuse. Together, these permissions give you granular control over both concerns. I would recommend testing any permission changes in a non-production environment before applying to production. Please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you, Priya Vora Product Support Analyst D2L Corporation

Jenn.H.328 · Answer

Hi there!

You can absolutely configure the email to meet your needs. I would recommend that you ensure you are using Send-Only (external email config), this article details what that means. Next, you need to go into your Learner roles and permissions and configure what you want the learner to be able to do.

For example, you likely want to make sure that "create personal contacts in address book" is not set for the learner to prevent them from adding outside users as a failsafe. You can also turn off the ability for them to see the course address book, etc.