When you first enter the Automation Rules process, there may be no rules listed. In that case the view may appear as shown below and you will have three buttons available. The button to Add a Default End-of-Term Automation Rule will create a rule that will deploy evaluations for all of your courses. It sets the evaluations to start 3 weeks before the end of the term and they will be closed after the last day for class meetings. 1

If you click the button titled, Add Default End-of-Term Automation Rule, you will see the rule described in the section titled, Rules in order of application. The important information to note at this time is the dates and times that the evaluations will be released during the current term. This information is circled below. It may seem that this rule cannot be useful in subsequent semesters, because the dates are clearly focused on this term. However, the application reconfigures these dates each semester relative to the date and time for the last day of classes. Note that the rule also specifies the daily times for the evaluation to be available to students. In this case, it will be open from 6:00 AM until 11:30 PM each day. If the default settings are not what you want, you may edit the rule to suit your needs. Click the button titled, Edit Automation Rule. 2

If you click the button titled, Edit Automation Rule, you will see a form that allows you to make some changes to the rule. For example, the release schedule is circled below. You may change the dates so that the evaluation is deployed later or earlier. Critical dates for this term are indicated in the text next to each entry. Please remember that the evaluation start and end dates will be recorded relative to the date the term ends, in this case 4/25/

The circle below focuses on another part that you can edit. You may decide to exclude the department questions. By default they would be included, but there courses that may not be appropriate for the current set of department. Questions. You may also change the rule to include your own questions, if you have published any sets. When there are published sets, a select list will appear to allow you to select the question set desired. If you have no published questions, select the Question Bank to develop and publish a set. 4

This rule does not have to activate evaluations on a preset schedule. Instead you can set it up just to create the evaluations and you can activate them when you are ready. This would be an advantage for you if you wish to set a default question set. To achieve this, select the Manual Activation method by clicking the radio button circled below. When this is selected, the rule ignores the dates and times shown in the release Schedule. You do not need to delete these dates and times. 5

You may label the rule in any way that will help you remember your intensions for its activity. In this case, the title seems to capture the intent. If you have made any changes to the rule, be sure to click the button titled, Save Automation Rule. This will return you to the main page for managing your rules. You will note that there are a few items that are listed but cannot be edited. To change these, you will need to delete the rule and create your own custom rule. 6

If you click the button titled, Save Automation Rule, you will see the changes to rule described in the section titled, Rules in order of application. At this point, you understand how to construct and modify the default rule, but you may have begun to understand that it has some significant limitation with respect to the diversity of courses you may be teaching. To address the more complex management of your evaluations, we will need to add additional rules. Please see the tutorial for construction of customized rules. 7

Each time you save a change in your automation rules, you may review their behavior in the section titled, Course scheduling according to these rules, at the bottom of the page. It shows the characteristics for the evaluation that will be deployed for each of your current courses. Since you only have the default rule at this time, all courses will have the same setup for the evaluation. Next semester, your new set of courses will be set up the same way. This may be adequate for some instructors, but many will benefit from adding more rules. Some will decide that automation rules are not useful and they should delete all rules and use the manual methods for creation and activation of evaluations. 8