---
title: "Recommendations engine settings"
slug: "recommendations-engine-settings"
tags: ["Reference", "Site Administrator", "Totara Engage"]
updated: 2026-01-05T09:07:46Z
published: 2026-01-05T09:07:46Z
canonical: "totara.help/recommendations-engine-settings"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://totara.help/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Recommendations engine settings

You can configure how the [recommendations engine](/19/docs/what-are-recommendations) works by navigating to *Quick-access menu > Plugins > Machine learning settings > Recommendation engine*.

> [!CAUTION]
> Note that the legacy Recommender engine is deprecated as of Totara 17. The current recommendations functionality is provided by the **Machine Learning Service**.
> 
> For technical setup and configuration details, see the [Machine Learning Service developer documentation.](https://totara.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEV/pages/121186094/Machine+Learning+Service)
> 
> Additional information about how recommendations work (including [AI powered recommendations](/19/docs/what-are-our-ai-features#aipowered-recommendations)) can be found in the [Recommendations developer documentation.](https://totara.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEV/pages/1188495389/Recommendations)

Remember to click **Save changes** when you have finished configuring these settings. The other settings on the **Recommendation engine** page are only used by the legacy recommendation engine, and will be deprecated in a future release.

The **Recommendation algorithm** and **Processing threads** configurations can be modified from their default values by setting environment variables before starting the Machine Learning Service, as described in the README.md file of the Machine Learning Service (integration/extensions/ml_service/README.md).

| **Setting** | **Description** | **Notes** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Number of items-to-user recommendations | Select the number of items-to-user recommendations generated by the recommendations engine. | The default/recommended value is 5. |
| Number of items-to-item recommendations | Select the number of items-to-item recommendations generated by the recommendations engine. | The default/recommended value is 5. |
| Time to analyse interactions | Set the time period (in weeks) from which user-item interaction data will be drawn. | The default/recommended value is 16 weeks. |

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