Release Notes for Learn SaaS - 2021

Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.37+0b5fb53) to client Production servers on Thursday, March 18, 2021

Updates in this version include:

  • In the Ultra Experience, when questions were imported from an Original unit, some of them got randomly and unnecessarily duplicated in the Ultra Question Banks. We've fixed the issue.
  • In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Change Hostname option within the Admin authentication SAML settings returned the user to the Admin Panel page instead of changing the host name. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Experience and Original Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.32+30fa709) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, March 2, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

  • In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor is grading with a rubric a student's submission with a very long description in its content, the instructor needed to scroll down in order to see the submission and scroll up to see the rubric. We made this flow more comfortable, so the instructor can now see the submission and the rubric at the same time.
  • In the Original Course View and the Original Experience, within the Content Editor, a user won't be able to use copy and paste functionalities to transfer images from other sources. The user can include images with the Add Content workflow, as it used to be before version 3900.0. We've made this change to address performance problems that arose with certain large or numerous images. We’ll review whether it's possible to reintroduce this capability in the future.
  • In the Original Course View, when an XSS filter is applied to sanitize the content for different fields present in the plugin modules section, the fields are sanitized for both trusted and untrusted users as well. This behavior only occurred when a course tool was created via importing a package with the Import Package & Utilities  functionality. We fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.28+7eb0c69) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, February 23, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

  • In the Ultra Course View, in Assignments, Assessments and Journals, when a student inserted a math formula image it was replaced with a broken image and ALT text and the instructor couldn't see it properly in order to grade the submission. We fixed the issue.
  • In the Ultra Course View, when copied from an Original course, incompatible discussion board availability settings were retained, blocking access to current students. We fixed the issue.
  • In the Ultra Course View, when feedback was about to be recorded for an Assignment using Chrome, a misleading error message appeared instead of the expected recording controls and prevented the user to continue. We fixed the issue.
  • In the Original Course View, students were unable to view iframe content in the Notes area for Contacts, Tasks and Glossary posted by their instructor including YouTube and Kaltura uploaded content. We fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.22+d9cd600) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, February 16, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

  • In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor entered grades in each category of rubric for an assignment with rubrics, the page reloaded and the focus was taken away from the comments and/or grade fields. We fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.19+5f99a51) to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, February 12, 2021

Updates in this version include:

  • Some Test/Stage environments encountered a deadlock during startup and couldn’t be upgraded. We’ve reverted the changes made while we gather the required diagnostic information to implement a permanent solution.
  • In the Ultra and Original Course Views, in Mobile, course messages had duplicated content in their push notifications and appeared encoded and unreadable to users. We’ve reverted the changes made while we verify a permanent solution.
  • In the Ultra Course View, in Mobile, course messages' push notifications were sent to sender users. We’ve fixed the issue (updated).
  • In the Original Course View, the Goal Performance Dashboard was failing on SaaS Servers for certain reports. We've fixed the issue.

API updates - 3900.8.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Ability to manage user-to-node associations: We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

  • Users of APIs now have the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy node associations between users and Institutional Hierarchy associations nodes.

For more information about our Rest Public APIs, please refer to: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi

Highlight on bug fixes

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Course View

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

  • In the Ultra Course View, when a user created a TurnItIn assignment using the LTI 1.3 integration and clicked to access the LTI content on the Activity Stream, the peak panel was displayed empty. We've fixed the issue.

  • In the Original Course View, after a refractor process from SOAP to REST when grades were called from the Grade Centre, the REST public API was considerably slower. We managed to improve the response time and fixed the issue.

  • In the Original Course View, where a calculated formula rounding was required, the number 5 was rounded down rather than rounded up for some values. We've fixed the issue.

  • In the Original Course View, after a performance improvement for the Blog View response times was made in the 3900.0 release, the workflow for grading non-participants was affected. When an instructor wanted to find non-participant users to grade them with zero, students were not visible in the blog or journal. We've reversed the related improvement changes until we find a permanent solution.

You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.8.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Localize EMAIL and SMS notification messages to user's preferred language

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.8.0 | Release to Production 4 March 2021
Ultra Experience and Original Experience

In both Ultra and Original Experiences, system notification emails were always sent in the SYSTEM DEFAULT language. Now, system notifications sent by email and SMS will be sent in the USER’s chosen language instead. This aligns Learn with our goal to provide individual choice wherever possible. Users continue to have control over their notification types and modalities in their notification settings.