November 29, 2016 - Ultra Experience Turned On in Our SaaS Test Environment

Yes, I leaped!  I have enabled Ultra in our SaaS test environment.  I did not hear any explosions nor did I smell smoke. 

I am looking forward to building a new course and restoring an "original" course into this.

Login Page

The main page (former institutional tab)

November 28, 2016 - Item Analysis Not Available in the GradeCenter

In my testing of the SaaS production environment using the Original Experience, I noticed Item Analysis was missing in the action menu for a test column in the GradeCenter.
I confirmed it is there in our self-hosted version running October 2014, CU4 but not in SaaS running Q2, 2016.  

I put in a ticket with Support and was told I can access Item Analysis from Course Management >Course Tools>Tests, Surveys, & Pools>Tests, click the down arrow beside a specific test.  While that is an option, the instructor's workflow is going to be doing this from the GradeCenter.

The following was added to my case as a Known Issue:
Knowledge Base Article Number: 000043093
Case Number: 02408564
Case Subject: No Item Analysis Available in Test Column Options
Targeted Version: Future-Reference
Estimated Timeframe: N/A

The case was closed by Support.

November 22, 2016 - Modules

Now that we have access to Communities, I want to build and use some custom modules and set up the institutional and course tabs with specific modules.  
We use 3 columns with the desire display of the following:

Institution tab - "My Bb Saint Mary's"
3 columns and 1 footer 

In left column from top to bottom: 
My Announcements 
My Media 
My Messages 

Center Column 
My Courses 

Right Column 
Video Tutorials 
What's New 
To Do 
Alerts 
Needs Attention 
Footer is Dictionary 

Course Tab - In left column from top to bottom: 
My Announcements 
My Messages 

Center Column 
My Courses 

Right Column 
What's New 
To Do 


Logged in with my username as a system admin, I was seeing the modules in a different order and I was seeing the Tools module.  I shouldn't since I had removed it as an option to view.

Logged in with a generic instructor role, I was seeing the modules in different columns.

I put in a ticket with Support and the technician went in and changed the settings for the tabs.  I responded and said no changes were to be made to our system without my permission.  He went in and changed the setting back but something happened and our branding changed again.  

I reached out to the leadership of Support with my concerns.  The case was reassigned and a note placed on our account that no changes are to be made without consulting us.  

November 21, 2016 - Server Slowness both Production and Test

I am noticing some slowness with both the SaaS Production and Test servers.  Lukas is checking that for me.

November 18, 2016 - Branding Changed - Browser Background Button Gone - Got the Fix!

When we had the servers restarted, I think our branding changed.  I cannot say for sure the restart was the cause but it isn't a problem since I know how to reset the branding the way I want except.... under Content Frame, the background image no longer displays the browser button so there appears to be no way to get from of the "+" sign background.

I put in a ticket with Support and found out in SaaS, it is functioning as designed.  
However, Support shared with me a way around it.

1. Log into the environment as a System Administrator using the Chrome browser
2. Navigate to System Admin tab > Brands and Themes > Customize Default Brand > 
3. Customize Colors
4. Right-click on the image you wish to have removed, and click "Inspect" from the drop-
5. down menu. This should open a new sub-window
1. -- NOTE: Once the Inspect console sub-window is opened, you may need to 
2. perform step 3 again to show the correct code area within the new sub-window.
6. After the image's HTML data, there should be a SPAN tag, expand that tag to see that 
7. it contains reference to the Remove button.
8. Double Click on the STYLE attribute within that SPAN tag
9. Delete the Visibility and Display information within the Double Quotes
10. Press the Enter Key to temporarily alter the page.

-- Expected Result: The button should now be visible and clickable on the screen. You should be able to do this for every image whose Removed button appears to be missing.

November 15, 2016 - CAS, Server Restarts, Collaborate Setup in SaaS, Q42016

In my weekly meeting with Lukas, BbPM, we discussed the following:

1. CAS signal-sign-on will be put on the back burner and we will revisit next summer  (Saint Mary's is the holdup on this)

2. Server Restart causing changes in building blocks is a known issue.  No fix date released yet.

3. Collaborate Ultra on SaaS requires new credentials.  We have those and have set it up.

4. Q4, 2016 was not added to our production environment yet.  Blackboard is working a problem on it in SaaS.  Lukas will keep me updated.

November 9, 2016 - SaaS Server Restart Changed Status of Building Blocks - Known Issue

When we had a rolling restart done to our SaaS production servers, the status of some building blocks changed.  Fortunately, I have my spread sheet of all the building blocks and their status so I could quickly check each.  I put in a ticket with Support and was offered the following article on Behind the Blackboard:

000042606 Some Partner Building Blocks Become Inactive After Service Restart or System Upgrade

Based on my experience, the article needs to be updated and I was told it would be.

November 8, 2016 - Kaltura Problem Found and Fixed

In my weekly meeting with Lukas, our Bb PM we talked about the problem with Kaltura.  I am very worried.  Lukas asked me to put in a ticket with Support.  He also suggested we might have to do a new migration to resolve the issue.  I have done a ton of work and really do not want to have to go through a whole new migration.

The Kaltura rep suggested we restart the servers.  Lukas did that for us and no change.

I put in the ticket with Support.  Support came back with a solution to re-link the video.  To be fair to the Support technician, he didn't understand from the case that we had 2,500 videos with the problem.  He sent it to Tier II.

Meanwhile, "back at the ranch", my colleagues were peeling me off the ceiling.  How could I have missed checking the videos in the courses?  It is critical to check everything!

Tier II came through with information on the problem and a fix very quickly.  It turns out in our migration the database identifier did not translate correctly.  Tier II was able to write a query to deploy system wide.  

November 7, 2016 - Kaltura failures

I contacted both our Bb SaaS PM and the Kaltura rep about the failures.
They are both working on it from their sides.
We have over 2,500 videos.  I do not want to re-link all of them.

November 6, 2016 - Kaltura Videos Are Not Working in Courses

I discovered the videos we have integrated from Kaltura to Blackboard course are not working.

When the Kaltura building block was added, I tested the video repository under the module My Media.  All videos appeared to be there and are working.  

Inside of courses where videos are selected, i could see the thumbnail of the video and thought we were all good.  BUT... if you click on the video inside the course, the link does not work.  

I may have a stroke!

I sent a note to Lukas, our BbPM and to our Kaltura rep.

November 3, 2016 - Kaltura Flip FLOP!!!

Apparently, our Kaltura representative forgot she had asked someone to help us with our questions about the new building block.  We are back to the original guy who is not very clear with his information.

I do not have the time for this!

November 2, 2016 - Restores Finally Completed & Flexible Delivery Option

Lukas, BbPM, shared the restore tool had some problems but the 6 courses should be restored now.  He asked that I test them.

Looking ahead - November 11th, Q4, 2016 will be updated on our Production server.  After that version, no new versions will be added without my requesting it.  I understand in SaaS, I have to either upgrade to the latest version or stay on only 1 version behind.

Our test server will also upgrade automatically when a new version is made available.

November 1, 2016 - Kaltura Assigning a New Person to Answer Our Questions About Their Building Block

Received an odd email from our Kaltura customer care person saying a new person was being assigned our transition to Blackboard SaaS.  The new person sent me a set of forms to complete.  I am way past all of this information so I wrote back and asked for clarification.

October 25, 2016 - Flatfile SIS upload of Spring 2017 courses

I manually uploaded our 5 files for the Spring 2017 semester into our SaaS Production server.  Files included:
Course to Courses,  store
Faculty Bio to Person,  store
Faculty Assign to Course Membership, store
Student Bio to Person,  store
Student Assign to Course Membership, store

Confirmed no errors, 
The right number of courses were created, 
The right number of bio and assignments went in.

This is a big hurdle cleared!

October 19, 2016 - Course Restores

Since our test migration worked so well, the only courses left to migrate are our current Fall 2016.  When they finish on December 20, 2016, our DBA will take a batch archive of these and save them for Blackboard to load into our SaaS environment.  For now, we want to test restores so be sure there are no issues.  We are going to restore about 6 courses right now and be sure all goes well.

October 14, 2016 - Kaltura Integration

There are concerns with the Kaltura integration.  Blackboard is working with Kaltura on this and unfortunately, the representative Kaltura assigned to us is new to the company and doesn't really know the job yet.  I am having to lean on Blackboard a great deal to get this to work.  Good new is Blackboard is committed to getting this to work.

October 11, 2016 - SSL Certificate

We want to use our current Saint Mary's url to access Blackboard on SaaS and Lukas, our Bb PM assures us that Blackboard will manage the SSL certificate.

September 26, 2016 - SaaS Production, Found a Minor Problem - "Show All"

In the GUI, when trying to view all courses using the "Show All" button, it will not display all the courses based on the criteria.

I put in a ticket with Support and it was found to be a known issue.  Support details include:

Knowledge Base Article Number: 000042592
Case Number: 02388223
Case Subject: Viewing course lists
Targeted Version: Future-Reference
Estimated Timeframe: N/A

September 23, 2016 - Sent Building Blocks to be Loaded

Sent to Lukas BbPM the following building blocks for SaaS:
1. Dub Labs

2. York Data

3. Top Hat

4. Kaltura - Blackboard already has this

5. Data Camp is a LTI integration only

6. EvaluationKit

September 20, 2016 - Strange Email from Blackboard

I received a strange email today as a followup to a stranger telephone message I received the Friday before from someone identifying herself as being from Blackboard Client Care. She wanted to schedule a hour long meeting with me and my team to share with us information about Behind the Blackboard, how to submit tickets and how Manged Hosting worked.  

Thinking I was receiving this information by mistake, I contacted our rep and reminded him we have been a Blackboard client for over 10 years and I did not have time to sit through an hour meeting reviewing information I already knew. 

He responded that it was a basic email for new clients.  

I am not a fan of managed hosting and am not happy to have received this communication.

This is a waste of my time.  Just sayin'

September 20, 2016 - Review of Building Blocks, Cloud Connector, Course Clean-up

Met with Lukas Bb PM via Collaborate to discuss building blocks.

I learned that:
Blackboard IM – interface for integration with Enterprise IM, can be ignored

Browser Settings Tester – adds a link on your login page that allows you to run quick test of your browser compatibility with Bb Learn

Evaluation kit – you need to work with their support to get setup done on their side before you can setup B2 on Learn SaaS site. Please check with them the instructions for DB migration to ensure we will not lose any data

Financial Aid Reporting – it used to case a huge traffic on your DB on your local site. Please let me know when you will enable in on your SaaS site so I can ask our DBA team to monitor the extra load. We may need to add more resources to your database in order to be sure your environment has ready to handle the real workload once your SaaS site is released to your students

Internships.com B2 built by Bb - No longer supported by Blackboard; No known replacement which will need to be provided by Internships.com

McGraw-Hill Connect and Create – supported and already included in default Bb Learn installation

MERLOT Search – currently installed on your SaaS as it was migrated with your content but after our tests we found it is not currently working, will check internally if there is any project to get this B2 certified for SaaS

Paste from Word Mashup – replaced with new features in Learn SaaS

Pearson's MyLab & Mastering – supported and already included in default Bb Learn installation

SignUp Lists - This tool defines some custom Content items that can be used in a Blackboard course. Tool is opensource but already part of our default Bb Learn Installation. For more information please see: http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/signup/wiki/?pagename=FrontPage

Student Goal Performance Dashboard – enables you to create dashboard to see how students follows their plans, for more information please see: http://en-us.help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/Hosting/Tools_Management/Goal_Performance_Dashboard

WebAssign – per official site version 2.2.0 is working with Learn SaaS. For more info please see here: http://www.webassign.net/manual/admin/c_d_blackboard.htm

xpLor Connector – has been renamed to Blackboard Cross-Platform Learning Object Repository

Dub Labs, Kaltura Integration, York Data Source Key Tool – Need to provide war files so they can be uploaded

B2s on Testing environment

Will match building blocks on both environments production and tests

Cloud connector and other B2s

You can see that cloud connector and other setups may be disabled for now. This is due to DB migration we proceeded. With this migration your Learn instance ID has been migrated too. Learn instance ID is used for identification for some services like cloud connector and could cause conflict with your local site. We will adjust these setups as part of setup update during “Live migration”.

Course removal and environment cleanup

You already started the environment cleanup before the test DB migration. You can now continue only on the SaaS site because for course migration you will specify which courses you want to get migrated exactly. Please note you can use SIS feed files to remove multiple courses at once to avoid doing it manually via GUI. Please remove also Summer and Fall courses you will want to get migrated to SaaS again

September 15, 2016 - 135 Building Blocks... Really?!?!

Questions/Comments for Lukas, our Blackboard SaaS Project Manager

1. Questions about the IP addresses for our SaaS production server and our SaaS test server
Lukas responded with clarifying information.

2. Now have 135 building blocks.  Version numbers have changed.  It keep track of all I will need to go through each one-by-one and update my spread sheet.  To be fair, this is not a requirement but is something I feel I need to do it keep appropriate track of building blocks.

3. It appears this test migration has successfully brought everything over.  I am not sure we need to repeat this process again.  Can we go with what we have?
Yes, we will use this test migration as our "true" migration.  We only need to add the Fall 2016 courses after December 20, 2016 (after the semester ends).

September 13, 2016 - Cannot Access our SaaS servers!

Lukas responded.  The problem with accessing the server was an easy reordering of LDAP.

I am into our SaaS Production server.  

Our branding, is there!

The number of users match!

The number of courses match!

There are more building blocks and the version numbers are very different.

I will need to update my list of building blocks.

This is an excellent start!

September 12, 2016 - Test Migration Complete

Our test migration to SaaS is now complete.
I wanted to begin testing but could not get into the server.
I emailed Lukas about the problem.
Not a good start!

September 6, 2016 - Status of Test Migration

Had a Collaborate session with Lukas, our Blackboard SaaS project manager.

Our test migration is currently in managed hosting.

Lukas has been checking our building blocks to be sure he has everything needed.

After each meeting, Lukas provides an email recounting our discussion and listing next steps.

August 29, 2016 - Status of Test Migration

Lukas, our Blackboard SaaS project manager, responds to my previous day's email.  Our test migration is not complete.  It seems August was a busy month for clients moving to SaaS in August and September and since we are not moving until January, our project was moved back.  He will update me when the migration is complete.

Migration in the works...not completed yet.

August 28, 2016 - NOTE to Those Who Follow Our Lead

Fall classes began on August 22, 2016.  The week before (week of the 15th) our days were busy with training student team, new faculty orientation, College forum, faculty development day, and getting everything ready for the start of school.  I had no time to worry about our SaaS deployment.

On August 28 I sent an email to Lukas Pavlacka our SaaS project manager to inquire on the status of our test migration.  I also sent along an update of our project plan and asked him to look that over.

NOTE TO NEW SaaS Clients:  
It will be beneficial to have a list of current building blocks when you create your archive to move to SaaS.  It will come in handy later.  Trust Me!

August 5, 2016 - Archives Made Available

Our Director of Network and Systems made the archive available to Blackboard.

Ball is in Blackboard’s court.  Their process includes a test of loading our archives into a server in their Managed Hosted area then into SaaS.  We understand this will take some time.

July 28, 2016 - Archives Created and Stored

Our DBA creates a full database backup (archive) of our production system.

He moved it to a server so Blackboard can retrieve the file and upload it.  We have to wait until our Director of Network and Systems returns from vacation so we can punch a hole in the firewall and let Blackboard into the archive.

July 26, 2016 - SaaS Environments Built

Our SaaS environments - production and test have been built.  

The sites were built quicker than this.  It just took time to get the information to us.

Both are currently running Q2, 2016.