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.