Create a course. Create 2 users. Make one of them a teacher in the course and the other a student. Add an assignment to the course. Enable 'Notify graders about submissions setting'. As admin, enable "Mobile services": Site administration ► Mobile app ► Mobile settings Create a Token in the mobile app service for the teacher in the site (not an admin account) Click on Site administration ► Plugins ► Web services ► Manage tokens As the teacher, go to your profile: Click your avatar ► Profile Remember the id in the URL of the profile page. E.g. if the URL is  https://MYSITE/user/profile.php?id=3,  the id is 3. Open the console an execute this curl request, replacing WSTOKEN with the token you just created and the site url with yours. The USERID value has to be replaced with the id you annotated before. curl 'http://SITE_URL/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'useridto=USERID&moodlewssettingfilter=true&moodlewssettingfileurl=true&wsfunction=core_message_get_unread_notification_count&wstoken=WSTOKEN' --compressed Check that it returns the number "0". As the student, submit the assignment. Run the cron to send the assignment notifications. Execute the same curl request.   Check that now it returns the number "1".