Understanding How Announcements and the Pulse App Work in Brightspace

You can learn about how announcements and the Pulse app work in Brightspace.

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Instructors

Announcements work a little differently in Brightspace compared to Blackboard. There is no option to Send an Email inside the Announcements tool. The work around is to send an email to students and link to an announcement. Or encourage your students to install the Brightspace Pulse App to receive instant feedback and notifications on their phone. 

Students may choose to receive information as

  • Push Notifications - These are popup notifications that come from the app
  • SMS (Text) messages - These count towards your phone's plan and appear in the Text message app
  • and / or Email - These messages go to your official Stony Brook email address
If your course has a start date that's in the future (or if the course has an end date that's in the past), creating an announcement in Brightspace will not trigger any notifications.

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Getting the Brightspace Pulse App

The Pulse app will send announcements, published grades and due dates as push notifications immediately to students' phones. They can read course content on their phones as a side-guide while doing their coursework!
Encourage your students to install the Brightspace Pulse app by logging into Brightspace from their phones (brightspace.stonybrook.edu), and click on their Name and then click Notifications. 
Notifications menu option on Brightspace mobile site

Then click on the App Store or Google Play button depending on the device.
Download from App Store/Google Play highlighted

While on the Notifications page, they can check off which emails and SMS (text) to receive.

Enable or disable SMS and email notifications for different types of notifications


How Will Students Know There is New Information? 

When you send an email, chat or have an announcement, post content or a grade, the Pulse app will send out a push notification to all students (on their phones), and on the web, the Bell icon will have an indication that there is something new to read or look at. 

Notifications and bell icon highlighted on home screen top menu bar

This Content Last Updated:
05/07/2025

Supported By


Customer Engagement and Support
Brightspace Support via SUNY Helpdesk
Phone: 1-844-673-6786
This KB Article References:
This Information is Intended for:
Instructors
This Content Last Updated:
05/07/2025