Moodle's inbuilt facility for instant messaging is the Chat activity that is used in courses or the front page. The module works out of the box and without any configuration using Ajax method (default) or Normal method. However, it creates a significant load on the server in large installations or when chat rooms are used intensively.

To rectify this, the activity supports a chat server daemon, which has to be configured. You can set up of the daemon by navigating to Plugins | Activity modules | Chat.

To make use of a chat server daemon, you will have to change Chat method to—you guessed it—Chat server daemon. The daemon, usually called chatd, has to run in the background on your Unix system (it does not work on Windows servers). This might either be a PHP script or an executable. The Refresh userlist (the interval that's used to update a user list) and Disconnect timeout (the time without connection after which a user is treated as disconnected) parameters are common for all chat methods and might have to be adjusted if you experience connection issues.

The chat server daemon-specific settings require Server name, the Server IP address, and Server port that is used by chatd. These can be on the same system as Moodle (as shown in an earlier screenshot) or, for better performance, on a separate or dedicated server. The Max users parameter specifies the maximum number of users who can use a chat simultaneously.

An alternative method to the chat daemon is the use of a stream to update conversations in the normal chat method. However, Apache has to be configured to support this update method.

One often requested synchronous feature that is absent from the Moodle core is video conferencing. However, there are a number of external systems for which Moodle plugins have been developed. The most popular ones are:

Providing video conferencing to your teachers and learners has one major technical drawback—depending on the types of tools that are used (audio, whiteboard sharing, recording, video) and the quality that is chosen (sampling rate and resolution), the facility can be very bandwidth-hungry. This is why most providers offer dedicated hosting services in addition to local installation options.

The installation of third-party plugins is covered in detail in Chapter 8, Moodle Plugins. All the video conferencing systems that have been mentioned also come with comprehensive configuration and usage instructions. The following screenshot is of the configuration screen of the WebEx Meeting settings plugin for Moodle:

Moodle comes with a flexible messaging facility that can be seen as a basic multichannel communication system. It does not only support messages from users to other users but also notifications between Moodle and its users. You, as an administrator, might be notified when updates are available, and a learner might get notified when an assignment is due. Not only this, users can also reply to forum posts via e-mail or even send attachments to their private files.

We can distinguish between inbound and outbound messages, as seen from the perspective of Moodle. For instance, a message sent from one (Moodle) user to another (Moodle) user is seen as outbound, as the sending takes place within Moodle. A file that's sent via e-mail by a learner to his private files is seen as inbound, as Moodle is receiving the attachment. We will be dealing with both types of directions in the remainder of this section.

Outbound messaging

Messaging has to be turned on by checking the Enable messaging system checkbox in Advanced features.

Each user has the ability (via Messaging in the User account section in their Preferences) to configure how to receive messages, depending on whether they are online or offline. For each notification type (such as subscribed forums, posts, or feedback notifications), the following so-called message outputs can be selected once they have been enabled and configured:

• Popup notification: This uses the built-in messages tool and does not require any customization.
• Email: The message will be forwarded to an e-mail address.
• Jabber message: Jabber is an instant messaging protocol, which is used by a number of popular clients, such as Google Talk and Apple's iChat. Other applications (for example, Facebook) provide an interface to Jabber.
• Mobile notifications: Messages will be sent to the mobile Moodle app. This is described in more detail in Chapter 16, Moodle Networking.
• Other: It is expected that additional channels, for example, Twitter, Google+, or SMS, will be added in the future, most likely as third-party plugins.

Email, Mobile notification, and Jabber message (and any additionally installed notification methods) have to be configured before they are available to users in your Moodle system. This configuration takes place by going to Plugins | Message outputs | Manage message outputs:

From this screen, you can also launch the configuration screen for each message output via the respective Settings link:

E-mail configuration

Like instant messaging, Moodle's e-mail works without any configuration using its internal PHP-based method. To improve its performance and make use of your existing e-mail infrastructure, you have to configure an SMTP host:

Setting	Description
SMTP hosts	This is the name or IP address of the SMTP server. If multiple servers exist, they have to be separated by a semicolon(;). The standard port syntax is supported.
SMTP security	This is the protocol to be used if a secure connection is required.
SMTP Auth Type	This is the authentication type to be used when connecting to an SMTP server.
SMTP username	This is self-explanatory.
SMTP password	This is self-explanatory.
SMTP session limit	These are the number of messages (groups) that are sent per SMTP session.
No-reply address	This is the From address for a user when a notification is sent from an activity; for example, the notification for a forum.
Always send email from the no-reply address	Use this setting if anti-spoofing controls are blocking your users' e-mails.
Characterset	This is the character set to be used to send e-mails.
Allow user to select characterset	This specifies whether users are allowed to override the default setting in their user profiles.
Allow attachments	This specifies whether e-mails can have attachments, for instance, forum posts or badges.
Newline character in mail	Different mail servers treat and convert newline characters differently. Change this only if you experience problems with line spacing.

If you experience issues sending e-mails, check the Debug email sending checkbox by going to Development | Debugging. This will display detailed information when sending e-mails via SMTP.

The Jabber configuration

You require access to a Jabber host to be able to use this feature. You can either set up your own XMPP server or use a commercial host, for example, Google Talk. Jabber's configuration settings are shown in the following screenshot:

Once the self-explanatory fields in Jabber's configuration screen have been set up, each user will have the ability to specify their Jabber ID by navigating to My profile settings | Messaging.

Mobile notifications

In order for Moodle to send push notifications to its mobile app, you need to configure the setting by going to Plugins | Message outputs | Mobile notifications. You will need to request an access key in order to make use of the public Air notifier instance (refer to the link at the bottom of the screen).

Details on the mobile app and its settings are described in Chapter 16, Moodle Networking.

Default message output

Once your message outputs have been configured, each user has the ability to set preferences for any notification types that they have permissions to receive as well as each configured message output. This takes place in Messaging in the User account section of their Preferences. As the administrator, you should specify the default values for these settings. Additionally, you can decide which settings non-administrator users cannot change by going to Plugins | Message outputs | Default message outputs:

For each notification type you, can individually specify for every message output (Popup notification, Jabber message, Email, and Mobile notifications) whether the default settings are as follows:

• Disallowed: If this is selected, the functionality is deactivated
• Permitted (default): If this is selected, users can change settings in their profile
• Forced: If this is selected, values are frozen and cannot be modified locally

The values under Defaults are Online (when logged in to Moodle) and Not online (when not logged in).

In the preceding screenshot, users will receive an e-mail about Assignment notifications, whether or not they are online. They cannot change this setting so as to avoid claims that they were unaware of any deadlines. When they are online, they will receive a pop-up message. This setting can be overridden in their profile message settings. Jabber has been disallowed for this notification type. If the user has the mobile app installed on their smartphone, they will receive a notification, regardless of whether they are online or not.

Additionally, you have the option to disable notifications of a particular type for all messaging channels. This was done for Warning when you quiz attempt becomes overdue.

Inbound messaging

Moodle allows users to reply to forum posts via e-mail and send attachments to their private files. In order to allow this to happen, Enabled incoming mail processing has to be activated by going to Server | Incoming mail configuration | Mail settings.

You further have to configure a mailbox and incoming mail server settings:

It is highly recommended that you use a dedicated e-mail address for this. Don't use your day-to-day e-mail address! The following settings have to be configured (we use the fictive [email protected] e-mail address):

Setting	Description
Mailbox name	This is an e-mail account (moodleadminbook).
Email domain	This is the domain name of the e-mail provider (gmail.com).
Incoming Mail Server	This is the URL of the IMAP server (IMAP.gmail.com). IMAP has to be enabled for your e-mail account.
Use SSL	This consists of the types of e-mail encryptions that are used. It is recommended that you make use of this if they are supported by your e-mail server. Check the security settings of the mail server.
Username	This is self-explanatory. It is the same as the mailbox name.
Password	This is self-explanatory.

Once this has been configured, you have to specify which types of e-mails will be processed by Moodle. These are called message handlers and can be accessed by navigating to Server | Incoming mail configuration | Message handlers. These have been implemented as plugins to allow further message handlers in the future.

There are three message handlers that come with Moodle:

• Email to Private files
• Reply to forum posts
• Invalid recipient handler

The first two have already been mentioned and should be self-explanatory. The invalid recipient handler deals with messages from senders that do not match the e-mail address of the user. It is recommended that you do not disable this message handler for security reasons.

To enable any of the other two handlers, select the Configuration icon in the Edit column and tick the Enabled setting. It is recommended that you leave the expiry setting as is.

A good explanation of an incoming e-mail configuration with hints for other e-mail servers can be found at https://docs.moodle.org/en/Incoming_mail_configuration.

Support contact

A topic related to asynchronous communication is users of your Moodle system seeking assistance. When you go to Server | Support contact, Moodle lets you specify Support name, an Support email address, and Support page.

Your contact details are displayed at various places throughout Moodle, for instance, during self-registration. There is no support block you can put on the front page but you can easily mimic this using a (sticky) HTML block.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds have to be enabled via the Enable RSS feeds setting in Advanced features. Moodle supports the consumption as well as the production of RSS feeds!

The RSS consumption takes place in the Remote RSS Feeds block and can be configured by navigating to Plugins | Blocks | Remote RSS feeds. The parameters available are Entries per feed (the number of atoms that are loaded and displayed) and Timeout (the amount of time before the feed expires in the cache).

The RSS production can take place within a number of activities, namely, Blog, Database, Forum, and Glossary. Each module has a Enable RSS feeds setting in its respective plugin settings. For security and privacy, each RSS feed URL contains an automatically created token for the user. If there is an suspicion that this has been compromised, users can reset this via the Security keys link in the User account section of their preferences.