Tuesday, February 28, 2017

February 28, 2017 - EvaluationKIT  - You will not believe this one!

We started using EvaluationKIT in the fall semester of 2016 while we were still self-hosted.  At that time, we talked with EvalKIT about our move to SaaS and they shared with us a link to their SaaS building blocks.  

I learned today that their link to their SaaS B2s were ... let's call them ambitious.  It seems their integration will use REST API not building blocks.  What they shared with us and what we had loaded on our SaaS environments are apparently not going to work so we wasted time and effort.

To our benefit, Blackboard Support Tier II appreciating our situation is riding in as my "knight in shining armor" and will work with EvalKIT's developers and help us deploy and test the REST API.  

Yes, I have to trail blaze once again but it is great Bb Support is there to help and support us.

Monday, February 27, 2017

In testing 3100.11, Q4 2016 CU1, we found a problem with meta data displaying in Users and in tables for users and courses in the GUI.  Put in a ticket with Support and found out our "custom theme" is causing the meta data to display.  It is another example of not being able to brand our environment.  

This apparently means for every update, we will have to rebuild the theme.  I really wish I did not have to do that.  

Thursday, February 16, 2017

February 16, 2017 - Building Block in SaaS Will Require Change Management

In SaaS, one no longer has the ability to add or update building blocks.  From my chair, that is GREAT!  The wear and tear of keeping up on the Maintenance Guide and Groups A, B, C, etc. for properly updating B2s was a great deal of work.  I am MORE an happy to simply create a ticket and ask Support to add/update a building block.

One change I wasn't expecting was seeing in Saint Mary's collection of B2s non-licensed 3rd party building blocks such as Respondus Lockdown Browser.  It is listed but the status is inactive.  

For the SaaS environments, it appears all partner building blocks will be listed, it is just up to each client (institution) if they wish to license it and make it available.  We have been dealing with the Barnes and Noble for years this way so to me, this is no big deal.  I sort of like seeing who are "possible" partners!!!

A girl can dream!
February 16, 2017 - Changes in Privileges to Roles

I do not know when this happened but privileges to standard roles (instructor, course building, TAs) got changed along the way.  The student role was not affected.

I put in a ticket with Support and requested a report of our activity accumulator and Support was able to help find who had created accounts and what enrollments had taken place outside of our SIS feed files.  SaaS is checking to see when and why the privileges were changed.

Note to self... periodically check privileges.