Open edX bulk email using mandrill

In my previous article, I explained how to solve celery error in Open edX instance. In this article we will be talking about one of the important feature in Open edX called bulk email, this feature will allow staff or teaching assistant to send email directly to student, staff even yourself.

Mandrill

Go to https://mandrillapp.com to register mandrill account, then access https://mandrillapp.com/settings/index to get SMTP & API Credential.

We will use the credential from image above

Host: smtp.mandrillapp.com
Port : 587
SMTP Username : edx@oonlab.com
SMTP Password : wwesKLAXxIvsHQfHrxsdnw

Note: To get SMTP Password you need to create New API Key.

Open edX

Now go ahead to Open edX instance then add the credentials to lms.env.json and cms.env.json

"EMAIL_HOST": "smtp.mandrillapp.com", 
"EMAIL_PORT": 587, 
"EMAIL_USE_TLS": true,  

credentials for lms.auth.json and cms.auth.json

"EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD": "wwesKLAXxIvsHQfHrxsdnw", 
"EMAIL_HOST_USER": "edx@oonlab.com",

Set ENABLE_INSTRUCTOR_EMAIL to true by add this code below to lms.env.json

"ENABLE_INSTRUCTOR_EMAIL": true,

Email Template

Open up Django admin then go to course email templates (link: https://yourdomain.com/admin/bulk_email/courseemailtemplate/) and add course email template.

In course email template add string message_body in html and plain template.

Html Template : message_body string
Plain Template : message_body string
Name: leave blank

Save!

Boom! now you can send Bulk email directly from LMS.

If you need help for planning, implementation, hosting, theming, support, training, and custom development for Open edX you can email me here