Happy 2018! One year on SaaS and Going Strong, Now, on to Ultra!

We have now operated on SaaS using the 2012 theme and all courses using the original experience for one year now.
We successfully updated to Q2 2017 (3200) in May of 2017 and Q4 2017 (3300) in December 2017.

Now comes the next step exploring the Ultra Experience and Ultra course types.

We are happy to participate in a Blackboard Program call UPP (Ultra Product Partnership).  We are provided a server with the Ultra experience and we can add courses, instructors, and students.

We were provided a 2-hour training session via Collaborate on some of the functions in Ultra.

First impression by our 4 faculty who are going to pilot this for us is they "LOVE' the look of Ultra.

Stay tuned for updates.

Upgraded to Q2 2017 CU1 Saas 3200.0.1 FDO

Overnight our production system was upgraded to Q2 2017 CU1 which in 3200.0.1.

No slow downs, roles appear to be keeping the right permissions.  rubrics are still available. 

This is great since Summer Sessions begin Monday.

My only concern and I will continue to question this... the only way I know what 3200.0.1 means is to do a search on Behind the Blackboard.

The FDO page on help.blackboard.com,

https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/About_Learn_SaaS_Deployment/Learn_SaaS_Plus_and_Advantage_Options/Flexible_Deployment_Option

is an appropriate overview but does not give me the details I need to understand what exactly what version I had.

I keep hoping for the "Code Book" ! 

May 12, 2017 - Last day of the semester

We are finishing our first semester on SaaS.  I am happy to say our move to SaaS has been a success!  

Yes, there were hiccups (custom theme and 2 3rd-party buildings not being as ready as they should have been).  AWS went down twice.  

Theme issue was resolved and should not be a problem for new SaaS clients.  Kaltura and EvaluationKIT B2s were fixed by Blackboard.

My "take-aways" from this first semester were: 

1. Appreciation for our faculty as they supported this move to SaaS with worked with me through the "hiccups".  

2. Ease of working with Bb Support in resolving issues.  Support's commitment to supporting us when we need them was and is outstanding!

FDO - Flexible Deployment Option - Be mindful, it is not as flexible as you may think.

If you review the following link from Bb Help
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes/Learn_SaaS_Release_Schedule#fdo_schedule

you will notice the flexible deployment schedule for 3200 (Q2 2017) has 3 scheduled dates only:

• 18 May 2017, 5:00 PM EST
• 25 May 2017, 5:00 PM EST
• 8 June 2017, 5:00 PM EST

This presents a dilemma for me because our summer course, our ONLINE summer courses begin May 22, 2017.  When is the best time for us to upgrade?

I am comforted that 3200 is already loaded on my Test server and has already been released to those on CD (continuous delivery).  Hopefully all the problems with the version have been found and then corrected before we move.

SaaS Versioning and "Lingo"
Our Test environment had been updated to 3100.11.0 which is equal to Q4 2016 CU1
The Test environment is on CD or "Continuous Delivery".

When it came time to upgrade our production environment which is on Flexible Deployment Option known as FDO the version was listed as 3100.0.2.

That took me by surprise and I immediately re-did all of my tool testing.  In searching Behind the Blackboard, I discovered an article 000043586 which indicated my version was Q4, 2016 CU1 with 2 security patches.  

I reached out to a few Blackboard sources and learned about how that in the version numbers:
- the first 4 numbers represent the "release" 3100 = Q4 2016
- first set of number after the first decimal (3100.11.0) represents the build for CD, continuous delivery build #11
- the second set of numbers after the second decimal (3100.0.02) represents the build for the FDO, flexible deployment .0.2

The SaaS Update Schedule is located at 
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes/Learn_SaaS_Release_Schedule#fdo_schedule

Our Custom Theme is back and working great!
Thanks to the good working of Product Development, the Web Tech team, and Bb Support, we have our custom 2012 theme working great again.

As you may recall from an earlier post, in our 2012 theme we use 2 small images, one of our College logo and another is the 1x1 transparency slide to hide the plus sign "+" image on the background of the Learn environment.  

In pleading my case to Blackboard that I want to be able to "brand" my environment, they adjusted the SaaS environment so that all of us can do that now.
We made the change during our Spring Break in March and I am happy to report all is working well now.

I know this took some work on Blackboard's part and i very much appreciate their efforts to provide what we needed.  I believe this will benefit everyone.

Back posting again!
I am so sorry for not taking the time to post in recent weeks.  Work and life have been very busy.  The next few posts are all great news.
Thank you for taking time to review.  I hope you find the information in the blog helpful!