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Release Notes
Illuminate November 2025 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 November 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary
New canonical data model for Ally
Accessibility data is key for institutions to guide decisions and support inclusive digital environments, identify faculties and courses that need improvement in accessibility, evaluate the adoption of accessibility tools and have support to comply with AX regulations and laws.
Now, Ally score data is available in Illuminate in the new canonical data model CDM_ALY. Its refresh rate is every 12 hours. CDM_ALY is available for institutions with Blackboard as their LMS. Please note that this initial release does not yet map Ally data to other Blackboard data models, such as CDM_LMS.
Ally data is available in Snowflake, where administrators can create custom queries to report on various aspects of the accessibility performance at your institution.
Tables and data details are in the Data Dictionary. You can use these queries published in the GitHub queries repository to start exploring Ally data:
| Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Status | Entry | Source | Description |
| 2025-10-24 | Added | CDM_ALY | Ally | A new canonical data model for Ally. |
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 November 2025
Updated Features, Administrator
Improvements in first time user experience and user management
To improve the first-time user experience of Illuminate Reporting, administrators can now create and configure new users prior to the user’s first login. This ensures that new users can access appropriate reports and data on their first access.
From the License Management tab in Settings, use the new Create User option to enter the exact username and identity provider for an existing Blackboard user, and then configure their Illuminate permissions. The user will appear in the user list. You need to assign the user an Illuminate role in Blackboard Administrator panel or by adding the user to the correspondent SAML group.
Image 1: New user creation menu
Other improvements
This release also includes several improvements to user list and permissions management:
- User deletion: Administrator can delete viewer users in the user list, freeing up a user seat in your license. Be sure to remove the user’s roles in Blackboard or SAML to fully revoke access to Illuminate. Deletion of Administrators and Authors is not yet supported.
- Live Institutional Hierarchy permissions: Hierarchy Nodes permissions, previously updated through a nightly process, are now refreshed in real time.
- License identification: Your Illuminate license type (Core or Premium) is now visible in the License Management tab in Settings.
- User roles and identity provider: The user list now displays each user’s assigned roles and corresponding identity provider.
- Full list sorting: All columns in the user list are now sortable for easier navigation and management.
Image 2: Improved user list in License Management tab in Settings
Illuminate October 2025 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 October 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Updated Features
New Columns
| Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Status | Entry | Source | Description |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.PERSON_COURSE.ACTIVE | PERSON, COURSE | A value of '1' indicates the person is active, and '0' means inactive. The field is determined based on the availability indicator and row status of the course user |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.PERSON_COURSE.STUDENT_IND | PERSON, COURSE | A value of 'True' indicates the person is a student in the course and 'False' means they are not. This is determined based on the course role being 'S' and the person not being either a Preview or Support user |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.COURSE.FIRST_COURSE_WEEK | COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY | The start date of the first week in which the course was accessed by any user |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.COURSE.LAST_COURSE_WEEK | COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY | The start date of the last week in which the course was accessed by any user |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.COURSE.FIRST_COURSE_TIME | COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY | The earliest date and time when the course was accessed by any user |
| 2025-10-06 | Added | CDM_LMS.COURSE.LAST_COURSE_TIME | COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY | The most recent date and time when the course was accessed by any user |
Blackboard source tables available in Snowflake for Illuminate Premium clients in Europe region
We continue expanding the availability of Blackboard source tables to more regions. 191 source tables from Blackboard’s Open Database Schema are now available for Illuminate Premium clients in Europe. Deployment to US region will follow in later releases. The transactional database for Blackboard is normally only available to Direct Data Access customers.
These entities are available in Snowflake as views in a new LEARN schema within the existing Illuminate database. This data is refreshed every 4 hours.
Europe region migration to Multi-tenant architecture
Instances hosted in Europe region are migrated to Multi-tenant architecture, which is a more reliable data connection method. Migration in US region will follow in later releases.
You can check whether your instance is multi-tenant by viewing CDM_LMS in Snowflake. Multi-tenant instances have data organized in views while single-tenant instances have data organized in tables.
As part of this change, the primary key (ID) field for all rows in all views is updated to be unique across all tenants, therefore any queries that reference specific IDs will need to be updated.
Illuminate August 2025 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 September 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Reporting, Updated Features
Data Q&A available in Singapore AWS region
Data Q&A is now available for clients hosted in the Singapore AWS region, which covers institutions not only in Singapore, but also in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and more.
Using Data Q&A, viewers can ask questions based on available topics and receive an answer in the form of multiple visualizations, as well as a text-based summary generated by AI.
Image 1: Data Q&A feature in Illuminate
Key considerations
- Institutional Authentication is required to use Data Q&A. If you don’t have this authentication in your Illuminate instance, you can request it through a support ticket at no additional cost.
- To turn on Data Q&A, go to Settings, then Global Settings, and select Opt-in to generative AI capabilities.
- For now, Data Q&A is available to users with access to all institutional data.
- By default, Administrators and Developers have this permission and can use Data Q&A.
- You can grant Data Q&A access to Authors and Viewers users by editing the user in the settings menu and adding the “All reports - Data unrestricted” or “Data unrestricted” permission in the Reports permissions section.
Illuminate June 2025 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 11 June 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Reporting, Updated Features
Our June 2025 release of Illuminate includes:
Blackboard source tables available in Snowflake for Illuminate Premium clients in Canada, Sydney, and Singapore
The transactional database for Blackboard is normally only available to Direct Data Access customers. 191 source tables from Blackboard’s Open Database Schema are now available to Illuminate Premium clients in Canada, Sydney, and Singapore. Deployment to the EU and the USA will follow in later releases.
These entities are available in Snowflake as views in a new LEARN schema within the existing Illuminate database. These tables are refreshed every 4 hours. Other canonical data models have an overnight refresh rate.
Note that these are not documented in the data dictionary, but existing documentation is available on our help pages. The new 191 tables included in Illuminate are documented in an Excel file.
Image 1. A query with LEARN schema source tables in Snowflake.
Video Studio data mapped with Blackboard
The existing canonical data model for Mapping (CDM_MAP) was updated to map users and courses between Video Studio (CDM_MEDIA) and Blackboard (CDM_LMS) canonical data modes. Two columns were added to CDM_MAP:
- MEDIA_CONTAINER_ID in the CDM.MAP_COURSE table
- MEDIA_PERSON_ID in the CDM.MAP_PERSON table
Entities are documented in the data dictionary.
This release also includes the following bug fixes:
Learning
- Fixed an issue with Student Summary where some visuals were filtered based on course start date instead of activity date. Minor improvements were also released.
- Fixed an issue with Social & Collaborative Engagement which excluded inactive students due to date filtering based on last access instead of course creation date.
Leading
- Fixed an issue with Learning Tools Adoption where some tool types were not included.
Teaching
- Fixed an issue with Course Summary where the Student Engagement and Performance tab included data from non-student roles.
Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 11 June 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary
| Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Status | Entry | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-06-10 | Added | CDM_MAP.PERSON.MEDIA_PERSON_ID | Anthology Illuminate | Foreign key that references the primary key of the CDM_MEDIA.PERSON entity. |
| 2025-06-10 | Added | CDM_MAP.COURSE.MEDIA_CONTAINER_ID | Anthology Illuminate | Foreign key that references the primary key of the CDM_MEDIA.CONTAINER entity. |
Illuminate Enhanced Reporting November 2023 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 November 2023
New Features
Our November 2023 release includes:
- Custom Reports is now available for all clients with Enhanced Reporting. This new enhanced feature will allow you to create custom reports that meet your needs and deploy them alongside our standard (pre-built) reports.
Find out how Custom Reports works.
- Data Q&A is now available to all clients with Enhanced Reporting. This new feature will allow you to explore your institutional data regardless of your technical expertise by asking questions in natural language and getting customizable visual answers, saving time and effort.
Find out how Data Q&A works.
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