December 12, 2016 - The truth of the Release Notes for Q4, 2016

The Release Notes for Q4, 2016, #000042862 posted November 3, 2016 needs work.

Drag/Drop Files is only available in items, assignment files, student submitted assignment files and attachments to weblinks.  It does not work in the following:
blank page
files
discussion threads
blog
journals
wikis
file response in tests

I searched for over a week to find these settings in these tools only to find out they are not currently available.  That is a chunk of time I will never get back.  It would have helped to have had that information posted in the article.


Submission Confirmation Receipts
Students will now get a confirmation receipt number when they have successfully submitted an assignment.  Students can copy and paste the number.  it is important to note that if students do not copy/paste the number, they will not be able to retrieve it later.
Instructors will be able to view the receipts in the GradeCenter view Reports.


Reminders
There is now a generic email an instructor may send to students who are late with an assignment, test, graded something from the GradeCenter.  The problem is the reminder cannot be modified.  It references the Calendar tool which will be a problem for those who do not use the tool.

December 6, 2016 - SSL Certifications for SaaS

Meeting with Lukas, Bb SaaS PM and Steve, our programmer guru to confirm how we re-direct our users from our current self-hosted site to the new SaaS site.  Our current url will need to become an alias when we do the switch on January 6, 2017

Blackboard has to provide the SSL Certificate and Lukas will request those for us.  The certification distributor will then contact us to make sure it is okay to create the certification.

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 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 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 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!