Overview

What is the Overview?

When you log in to OWL, you will immediately see your Overview area, or your individual workspace in the system. Your Overview displays the Message of the Day, as well as your calendar, course announcements, and message notifications. You will also see links to account utilities, enrolled courses, and other system-wide resources. The Overview contains:

1. Message of the Day
2. Calendar
3. Home Information Display
4. Recent Announcements
5. Message Center Notifications

The Overview area of OWL is designed to give you an overview of what is happening in your courses and provide access to your individual account information and preferences.

What is the Message of the Day?

In the Overview area, you will see announcements from your system administrator under "Message of the Day" (MOTD). The Message of the Day is typically used for system-wide announcements. Most institutions use this space to display messages about scheduled maintenance, system updates, and important dates and events.

• View the Message of the Day.

  You may customize the appearance of the Message of the Day by selecting Options.

  1. You can choose to view just the subject line or the entire body of the message (default selection) by selecting the appropriate radio button.
  2. You may also use the drop-down menu to select to view All, One, or Two lines of the message body.
  3. You may also specify how many days in the past messages should be displayed. This is useful if you prefer to only see recently posted messages.

  If you make any changes to the default options, be sure to click Update to save your settings.

  

  
  Select Options to customize the display. (Optional)

  

  
  Message of the Day Options

  

What is the Calendar?

The Calendar shows all events from all of the sites in which you are enrolled. In addition, you may also create individual, private calendar entries that are only visible to you from your Overview area.

1. View Calendar.

   You may customize the appearance of your Calendar by selecting Options.

   Click Options to customize calendar display. (Optional)

   

   
   Select custom preferences and Update.

   

2. Subscribe to your Calendar from another application.

   If you would like to subscribe to your Calendar from another calendaring application, such as Outlook or Google Calendar, select Publish (Private) to generate a URL that can be used to set up your subscription.

   

   
   Click Generate.

   

   
   Copy the URL and use it in your desired calendar client.

   

What is the Home Information Display?

The Overview may be customized by your institution to display information for all users. The Home Information Display often contains static information, unlike the announcements which may change more often in the Message of the Day.

• View the information display.

  

What are the Recent Announcements?

The Recent Announcements area in Overview displays announcements from all of the sites in which you are enrolled. You may use the drop-down menu to view all items, public items only, or items sorted by group. (You must be a member of a group in order to see group announcements.)

• View recent announcements.

  You may select either All, Public, or By Group from the View drop-down menu to customize the display.

  Note: By default, you will only see announcements that have been posted within the last 10 days in this location. (If you wish to see announcements posted within the past year, you should click on the Announcements link in the Tool Menu.)

  

What are the Message Center Notifications?

The Message Center in Overview displays the count of Messages and Forums posts for all of the sites in which you are enrolled. New messages are indicated by a number and envelope icon. If there are no new messages or posts, the word "none" will be displayed.

• Clicking on the title of the site will take you to the homepage for that site.
• Clicking on the New Messages indicator will take you directly to the Messages Inbox for that site.
• Clicking on the New in Forums indicator will take you directly to the Forums for that site.

1. View Message Center.

   

2. Customize message center display. (Optional)

   You may select Options to customize the list of sites displayed in the Message Center area.

   Select the "Don't Show" box to place a checkmark next to any sites that you prefer not to see in the Message Center list, and then click Update.

   Note: If you have already hidden sites in Preferences, they will not show up in this list.