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Manage domains, users, courses, styles & themes, and integrations.
Domain settings allows you to customize your domain to best suit your district or organization. This article walks through the settings you can edit to give an overview of this powerful feature.
To access Domain Settings:
- Open the vertical menu in the toolbar of Domain Details.
- Select Domain Settings.
The settings you can edit on this screen are arranged in alphabetized cards. This article provides an overview of those settings.
Clicking the angle brackets icon, < >, in the toolbar opens the Text editor for Application settings, Domain customizations, and XLI settings.
Contents
Activity templates
Activity Templates: If enabled, Buzz allows you to create activity templates that content authors can copy items from the syllabus of the indicated course and edit for their own needs.
Authentication
Authentication: Buzz supports the use of Single Sign-on (SSO) features to allow users to sign into one application (for example, a student information system) and be automatically logged into Buzz without needing to re-enter credentials.
Learn how to enable Single Sign-On (SSO) in Buzz.
If you don't want to use SSO:
- Select Buzz in the authentication Type dropdown.
- Indicate if you want to Allow users to create their own accounts.
Note: Domain password policies are now handled on their own card: Authentication-password policy.
Authentication-password policy
- Set up your domain password preferences:
- Minimum password length, in characters.
- Minimum character classes used, up to four (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, other).
- The Number of unsuccessful login attempts before lockout.
- The Minutes until lockout expires. By default, lockouts don't expire.
- The number of Days until passwords expire. By default, passwords don't expire.
- The number of Days to wait before you can reuse a password. By default, there is no wait.
Avatars
Avatars: If enabled, Buzz allows users to choose a profile picture from a list of pre-approved avatars. From this card, you can add, upload, and delete these avatar images.
Badges
Badges: Buzz allows course authors to set up badges that can be automatically awarded to students upon their completion of a specified activity or accomplishment, or awarded manually by a teacher or grader. From this screen, you can add, edit, and delete these Badges.
Blackout dates
Blackout dates: Use blackout dates to specify the dates you don't want included when calculating due dates for users in that are enrolled in a continuous enrollment course.
Provide a Name and Start and End dates.
Clipboard tabs
Clipboard Tabs: Add tabs for third-party apps to seamlessly integrate for intervention or other personalized learning goals. For example, you may integrate with a messaging tool. To do so, provide:
- A tab Title.
- The third-party URL.
Course templates
Template Courses: If enabled, Buzz allows you to Add course templates that content authors can use as a structure when creating new courses.
Editor
Editor: These fields control elements of the Editor tool. From this screen, you can:
- Hide Activities (activity types), so they don't appear in the Editor by listing them in the field; check the box(es) that you want to hide:
- Check the boxes next to Required rights you want a user to have in order to see the Editor tool.
G Suite service account
G Suite service account: G Suite integration enables:
- Easy creation of Google Drive documents in the Student app when completing a dropbox activity.
- PDF snapshots of Google Drive submissions.
- Automatic permissions management.
- Automatic copies of Google Drive documents when duplicating activities.
Google Analytics
Set up Google Analytics, so you can monitor and analyze your traffic on the Buzz website.
Landing content
Landing Content: Easily create domain-wide landing page content that appears on the user's Home and specify when and which roles see it.
Language
You can easily set a default platform language for a domain, as well as provide other language options that other users can choose.
Learning standards
Learning Standards: To help assess objective mastery, Buzz allows you to align course activities with Standards from various states and/or organizations (these are drawn from the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) catalogue). By default, Buzz makes the following standards available to all domains (contact your Agilix account manager to add standards to your domain):
- Common Cores State Standards (CCSS)
- Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
- American Psychological Association (APA)
- National Standards for Arts Education (NSAE)
- American Association of School Librarians (AASL)
- National Health Education Standards (NHES)
- District of Columbia (DC)
- Standards from all states in the US, which are represented by their two-letter code.
- To make an organization's standards available in your courses, add its code to the Comma-separated list of standard sets.
- In the Grades dropdown, check the boxes for the grade level standards that you want included as well.
Library extensions
Library Extensions: Buzz allows you to make content from various online resources available in a Digital Library. These can include other courses within their district or organization as well as open sources like OpenEd.
Login redirects
Login Redirects: Add login redirects to allow users to access Buzz data in a third-party app, by authenticating in Buzz first. To do so, provide:
- The ID of the redirect entry.
- The third-party URL.
LTI 1.1 tools
LTI 1.1 tools: Buzz allows you to integrate with other learning tools (like Turnitin). From this screen, you can add and delete Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI 1.1) tools.
In 2019, 1EdTech (formerly IMS) announced that its LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage specifications, which provide additional functionality and security, would replace the soon-to-be deprecated LTI 1.1 specification. Buzz continues to support LTI 1.1, and is also now a 1EdTech-certified platform for LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage.
LTI 1.3 tools
LTI 1.3 tools: Buzz allows you to integrate with other learning tools (like Turnitin) using LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage, which provided more functionality and security than LTI 1.1. From this screen, you can add and delete Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI 1.3) tools.
Metadata for activities
Activity Metadata: Buzz allows you to add and remove the metadata sections associated with items (folders and activities) in the Editor tool for the teacher role. From this screen, you can add, edit, and delete metadata sections.
To create a metadata section, you are asked to:
- Provide a Name, which is not visible to the users and cannot include spaces or special characters (you can underscore or hyphenate between words).
- Provide a Title, which is visible to students.
- Choose Input Type from the options listed here. The content entered in these fields is used to create searchable metadata tags.
- Provide Placeholder text for the activity.
- Use the Default field to define the default state or content that you want present in the field (this is not available for the Rich Text input type).
- Indicate the Levels within the course folder structure at which you want this metadata displayed. Level one is the first level of folders under the course folder, level two impacts any folders or activities you add to those folders, and so forth. If you don't specify here, the field is shown at all levels.
- Choose the Item Type for which the section should appear (folders, activities, or all).
- Indicate whether you want to Allow setting per group.
- Indicate whether you want to make the item Visible to students when they select the item in the Activities tool (only applicable to folders).
- Indicate whether you want the metadata Editable in Clipboard in the Teacher app. Checking this box causes the metadata field to appear in the Clipboard when creating activities.
Metadata for courses
Course Metadata: Create metadata fields for teachers, course authors, etc to complete for courses.
Metadata for domains
Domain Metadata: Allows admins to create Domain Metadata fields where users can record and track additional information about a domain.
Metadata for questions
Question Metadata: Buzz allows you to create metadata fields for questions by providing a:
- Name: The XML element name for the data.
- Title: What you want shown in the UI.
Metadata for users
User Metadata: Allows admins to create User Metadata fields where users can track additional information about a user.
Miscellaneous
The Miscellaneous card includes:
- Idle Timeout: Enter, in minutes, the amount of time Buzz can remain idle before logging a user out. Providing a timeout value prevents users from staying logged in indefinitely and having that time recorded and reported as activity. If you leave this field blank, users are not logged out due to inactivity.
- Prohibited Files: List any file types that you want to prohibit users from uploading to Buzz. Do not include periods before the file typ, and separate items with commas.
Observer options
Observer options control settings specific to the Observer app.
Check the Allow observers to view gated content box to allow observers to see upcoming activities that are blocked from students until they complete prerequisites. This can allow an observer to provide better support to their student(s).
Note: To maintain assessment integrity, this option does not allow observers to view assessment questions ahead of time. Observers can only view assessment questions once a student has completed it.
Publish Anywhere credentials and Publish Anywhere platforms
Publish Anywhere must be configured as an LTI in an LMS for content to be delivered there. It is currently 1EdTech (formerly IMS) certified for LTI 1.1 and LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage (recommended). This is part of the process of preparing and exporting content for customer.
Learn more: Introducing Publish Anywhere, powered by Buzz
Resource libraries
Resource libraries are collections of categorized content pages that are built at the domain level and can be searched, bookmarked, shared, and rated by users in all subdomains.
Admins with domain edit rights can create and manage multiple libraries and the pages found in them.
Rubrics
School years and grading periods
School Years and Grading Periods: Set up domain-level Grading Periods for courses in your domain to use. To do so, you must define a school year, create Grading Periods within that school year, and then select the current year and Grading Period for the domain.
Scoring objectives
Scoring Objectives: Buzz allows you to add Scoring Objectives to use in Multi-Outcome Scoring courses.
SpeechStream
Enable SpeechStream with this card (learn more about SpeechStream).
Student options
Student Options: Here, you can:
- Allow students to change their email address.
- Allow students to change their password.
- Allow students to change their profile picture by uploading a new picture.
- Allow students to change their profile picture by picking from the avatar list.
- Allow students to see peers who have completed course activities (Peer Help).
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Include non-gradable activities from continuous courses in the calendar. By default, only gradable activities are included in the student Calendar and To-do list. This option enables you to include them.
- Enabling or disabling this option can take up to ten minutes to be reflected in your domain.
- Show affirmation message when students complete continuous-course activities for the day.
- Hide the ability for students to register themselves for courses by entering registration codes.
- Hide the ability for students to send email from Buzz.
- Specify how you want to manage visibility of Excused activities (activities a teacher has excused a student from). Options include:
- Allow students to show or hide activities they have been excused from (default).
- Always show activities students have been excused from.
- Always hide activities students have been excused from.
- Specify when you want a course to start counting down days before it ends for students with the Course-ending countdown field. This countdown appears in the Activities (Course Home) and Performance tools for students.
- Specify when you want an activity to appear as Due soon in a student's To-do List by completing the Due soon field.
Text Editor (Formerly XML Editor)
You can open the Text Editor from the toolbar.
This screen allows you to edit Application settings, Domain customizations, and XLI settings.
You will be required to use these screens to complete some tasks in Buzz, but for the most part these screens are for advanced users who prefer this editor to the Buzz UI.