Archived Learn SaaS Release Notes

Learn SaaS release 3900.30.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.30.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 7 December 2021 | Release to Production: Thursday, 6 January 2022.
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

For full feature details please see the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.30 version included below on this page. Details can be found on Behind the Blackboard.

Latest release: 3900.30.0-rel.39+97a2be2 to Production servers on 24 of January 2022.

For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.

Bb Annotations: Save preferences / Settings 

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery | Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View, Original Course View, Original Experience

For this improvement, we constantly work with our partners to align the product functionality with the pillars of efficiency and pedagogy, now we are pleased to present this update for Bb Annotate tool, available for both Original and Ultra Courses which is built around the common and really used workflow: the grading process.

Since the initial deployment of Bb Annotate, we have identified that saving preferences is a great need for instructors and grading roles, avoiding the need to reset common preferences when switching from submission to submission. For this release, we will be able to go through the inline grading process in the Course, saving common preferences for Annotation tools, and having the possibility to save custom Stamps to add to the submissions, these new functionalities are user-defined, which means that user preferences and custom stamps will persist through all courses.

With this release, we help our instructors and grader roles to improve their productivity, decreasing work time in a “do it once and then forget” way and encouraging the use of the application as a preferred tool for feedback.

Enhancement is going to be out in January, the exact date may differ from the release update and even be different across regions. This improvement will be released to client Production environments with the 3900.30.0 release.

Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 16 November 2021 | Release to Production: Thursday, 2 December 2021.
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.28.0 version included below on this page.

Last release: 3900.28.0-rel.22+1a80aa0 to Production servers on 16 December 2021. Replaced by version 3900.30.0 on Production on 6 January 2022.

For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.

Assist disclaimers for third-party tools

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.30.0 | Release to Test/Stage and Production 6 January 2022
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

The Assist updates are micro-service changes that will affect all Test/Stage and Production instances on the same day. On this first launch for a third-party tool, as a user, you'll see and need to accept a legal disclaimer anywhere Assist is used. You can set later not to see the disclaimer again for each tool.

Ally File Transformer in Blackboard Assist (global availability)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.30.0
Ultra Experience, Original Experience, Base Navigation, and Blackboard App

The Ally File Transformer helps students to personalize their learning experience. It can convert files into alternative formats that better fit their needs, devices, and learning preferences. Ally File Transformer, as a free part of Blackboard Assist, is available by default but can be turned off.

• Available at no cost with Blackboard Assist enabled. An Ally license is not required.
• It converts files to alternative, more accessible formats including HTML, ePub, electronic braille, audio, BeeLine reader and to a PDF that’s undergone optical character recognition (OCR).
• For institutions licensing Ally, the Ally File Transformer allows students to convert their own files or files they've found via research or project work.
• The Ally File Transformer comes automatically with Blackboard Assist. There is an option to turn it off, if preferred, in the Administrator Panel > Partner Cloud Settings.

Previously available for North American higher education clients, the Ally File Transformer will now be available with Blackboard Assist for clients globally on January 6. Blackboard Assist is available for all Learn SaaS clients except for US K12.

Blackboard Assist (business/government availability)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.30.0
Ultra Experience, Original Experience, Base Navigation, and Blackboard App

Assist offers your learners one central hub within Blackboard Learn to find and access the services they need to flourish. Previously, Blackboard Assist was not available to clients with business or government licenses. From January 6, 2022 these clients will also have the chance to enable Assist.

Enable Blackboard Assist within Blackboard Learn and you will:  

• Give learners one place to find vital support services: Blackboard Assist’s prominent placement in Blackboard Learn helps make learners increasingly aware of all connected support resources.
• Get learners to take advantage of available services: Blackboard Assist’s around-the-clock availability through both the desktop and Blackboard app means that learners can access these support resources whenever and wherever they need them. Featuring services offers an additional way to capture your learners’ attention.  
• Gain access to Ally File Transformer: Blackboard’s Ally File Transformer helps learners to personalize their learning experience. It can convert files into alternative formats that better fit their needs, devices, and learning preferences.

Bb Annotations - Save preferences and settings: Delay for release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery | Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View, Original Course View, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, and transparency to our users, we’re delaying the Bb Annotations: Save preferences and settings release previously scheduled in tandem with version 3900.28.0 on December 2, 2021. This will now be included in the 3900.30.0 release to client Production sites on January 6, 2022.

Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

We're releasing an updated version of 3900.28.0 (full release number 3900.28.0-rel.11+732fc84) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 30, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the way the system handles an error produced while a document is uploaded again to the Annotation server, changed. Now the Annotation server provides a flag to let the system know when to upload a document again.
• In the Original Experience, when students tried to submit files in a group assessment, they got a UI red ribbon error reading “Failed to submit", but they could see the successfully submitted file after refreshing. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Production environments

We're releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.27+c56b21e) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 25, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Experience, the announcements page wasn't loading in specific cases where announcements contained tables. The logic replacing tables for the text ‘Table with contents’ in the announcement's preview was causing an error and affected the whole announcements panel. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, when students tried to submit files in a group assessment, they got a UI red ribbon error reading 'Failed to submit', but they could see the submitted file after refreshing. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0 | Release to Production 2 December 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We're releasing a new Learn version 3900.28.0 (full release number 3900.28.0-rel.5+d4503d3) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 16, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published in the corresponding individual feature release notes.

Force completion and timer - 3900.28.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0 | Release to Production 2 December 2021
Original Course View

To ensure a secure testing environment and to support academic honesty and integrity, we have made an important update to the behavior of Force Completion to solve a specific issue found with core student assessments. Prior to 3900.28, the timer and force complete options were not strictly linked such that the Force Completion flow was triggered when a student accessed an in-progress test attempt. To both improve the workflow and resolve an outstanding issue, beginning with the 3900.28 release, we have linked the Timer option and Force Completion capabilities. This change now incorporates 2 updates:

• If the student attempts to open an in-progress test in a second window a message opens and informs the student that the assessment is already in progress and there is no option to continue or reopen the same test.
• The status of the test in the primary window remains unchanged and continues to progress until the time limit expires and the test auto-submits.

This change impacts only Original course assessments. Third-party remote proctoring solutions are not impacted. The Timer can still be used without Force Completion.

API updates - 3900.28.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0 | Release to Production 2 December 2021
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View, Original Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates:

• Ultra Discussion APIs: Management of discussion topics/posts (Ultra only). We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including the management (creating, updating, deleting and grading) of discussion posts in Ultra course.
• Adaptive Release API Support: PATCHs, PUTs and DELETEs for Rule APIs and Rule Criteria APIs (Ultra and Original). We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including: the ability to manage the release or visibility of a course content based on timing or student success criteria.

For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi

Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.28.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0 | Release to Production 2 December 2021
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• Issues with Discussion board and Discussion analysis: Discussion analysis showed no information and the Discussion board visible/hidden menu was too small to use. These issues have been fixed and the UI now behaves as expected, and allows for better working space.

• Student assessment answers show "None given" and "saved question 0 multiple times": The access log for assessments displayed confusing and inaccurate messages. The log now displays messages as expected.

• Issues with special characters causing erratic behavior: The platform was having issues interpreting some characters,  causing special characters to appear in the subject of Original course messages in the global navigation updates, and the “What's New” Module. It also caused inadvertent posting of an announcement and emails sent to users to fail when an ampersand was in the course name. This behavior has been fixed and now works as expected.

• Student preview does not work properly on Ultra courses: The 'Reset preview' text box was shown in white over white, which made the message invisible unless the user highlighted it. Also, selecting the 'Reset' button didn't reset the actual coursework for the student preview user. These issues have been fixed by changing the color of the text and correcting the behavior of the 'Reset' button.

• Adding LTI option to the questions feedback: To give instructors more tools for providing feedback on student evaluations, the present development makes the LTIs available in the question feedback RTE. The following plugins were enabled in the automatic feedback editor: LTI content, YouTube inserts and Cloud files access.

• Spacing issues on Ultra documents - Course restore: The line spacing between a heading and paragraphs was affecting legibility. After resolving the spacing issues for courses that are currently in the database, the issue remained for course documents that were restored in Ultra. The space issue was adjusted and corrected for courses that weren't in the database when the upgrader was executed.

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 3900.28.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.22+4fb8410) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 11, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when grading discussion boards, the entire discussion thread wasn't appearing. We've fixed the issue (2).
• In the Ultra Experience, assessments weren't submitted after students selected 'Submit', cancelling altogether the submission prompt. We've fixed the issue (2).
• In the Ultra Experience, multiple options for matching questions weren't supported with voiceOver for IOS phones, and gestures didn't allow a correct interaction with controls or inputs, affecting the experience for IOS users who had voiceOver enabled and tried to select an answer in an exam or quiz. We've fixed the issue (1).
• In the Original and Ultra experiences, In a multi node environment, when the administrator changed the Safe HTML policy, it wasn't reflected in the other nodes of the application. We've fixed the issue and now, the Safe HTML policy updated will reflect in all nodes across the application immediately(1).
• In the Original Experience, after the latest upgrade on November 4, multiple sites in the APAC, US Central, US Mountain, and US Pacific regions experienced periods of unresponsiveness or degradation, due to a database index that wasn't recreated as part of the 3900.26 upgrade. We've fixed the issue.

For client sites already on 3900.26.0 before November 11 release:
(1) These fixes were deployed on November 4.
(2) These fixes were deployed on November 8. 

Learn SaaS releases 3900.26.0 and 3900.28.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.28.0 | Release to Production 2 December 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Due to a critical issue reported in discussion forums during the latest release, we’re performing an unscheduled update today, Monday 8 November, 2021, to the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.26.0 release (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.18+de6a634) to client Production environments in APAC and US Pacific, Mountain, and Central time zones. This update will only apply to production sites which have already been upgraded to 3900.26.0, and won't impact Europe or US Eastern time zones.

The issue addressed in this release is:

• In the Ultra Course View, when grading discussion boards, the entire discussion thread wasn't appearing. We've fixed the issue.

As a result of the delay completing the full roll-out of 3900.26.0 to production environments, we will postpone the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.28.0 release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, November 9, 2021, to Tuesday, November 16, 2021. This new release date aligns with our usual pattern. 

The release schedule has been updated to reflect this latter change.

Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.15+621c3b2) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 4, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Experience, multiple options for matching questions weren't supported with voiceOver for IOS phones, and gestures didn't allow a correct interaction with controls or inputs, affecting the experience for IOS users who had voiceOver enabled and tried to select an answer in an exam or quiz. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra experiences, In a multi node environment, when the administrator changed the Safe HTML policy, it wasn't reflected in the other nodes of the application. We've fixed the issue and now, the Safe HTML policy updated will be reflected in all nodes across the application immediately.

Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.13+180c3aa) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, the Ultra Extension Framework hover events weren't triggered for the new course menu. We've added the analytics hover event for Eesysoft on the new course menu links, and we've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, the Enable/Disable feature, and the Save and Submit buttons weren't behaving properly for assessments that have text questions only. The assessments were enabled in the presence of an answer, but couldn't be disabled when the answer was removed. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, the feature flag progress tracking was removed without making available the toggle for administrators. When announced in the Community site some users requested to recover the feature flag toggle while the administrator flow is completed, and we listened. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, whenever a tab was loaded, individual records for all modules on the accessed page were logged. While on Ultra the impact was negligible, on the Original Experience this could account for between 25% to 75% of data, slowing down the execution of reports for more relevant details. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, some clients were still experiencing overlapping issues on Wiris math formulas after the latest fix we provided. The Stix font family wasn't used when the overlapping happened. We've fixed the issue for formulas created from this point onwards. Formulas created before this fix need to be modified again manually, using the Wiris editor.
• In the Original Experience, in the Administrator Panel's Tools and Utilities section, there was a generic label with a broken link. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, when the Learn version was being upgraded on Windows servers, the script that completed the process generated an execution error. We've fixed the issue, and made sure the upgrading process now finishes successfully.
• In the Original Experience, when admins copied a course with embedded LTI links within the Rich Text Editor to a new or existing course, those links broke. They were still pointing back to the old course where users of the new course didn't have permissions. We've definitely fixed the issue for both links and embedded LTI calls, but the LTI links in the Original editor created before this release won't copy correctly. They'll have to be recreated.

Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Course View

We're releasing a new Learn version 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.2+6bc051d) to client Test/Stage servers on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published in the corresponding individual feature release notes.

Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.26.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.26.0 | Release to Production 4 November 2021
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• 'Needs grading' didn't take effect in Ultra grade journal on 'Grades and Participation' screen: this issue is now fixed and the Needs Grading filter is working as expected.

• Unable to rename file in Ultra assignment: when an instructor tries to rename a file added into an Ultra assignment, a pop up titled "Close Without Saving?" appears when the user navigates away from the page. The edit option is there for instructors to be able to rename assignment's files, and it is now working without errors.

• When the search box was clear in the gradebook grid view, not all columns were restored: when interacting with the search box, the elements (students(rows) and gradable items (columns)) are filtered. Now when the input is clear (by using the X button or removing the text explicitly with the keyboard), and all elements are restored, meaning no filtering.

• Completed Course was not displayed in the vertical message tab for students: this has been fixed. Completed courses are displayed in the messages tab for students.

• The number of unread messages was displayed twice on the Japan Language pack: the  number of unread messages was displayed twice in the Ultra Base navigation on the Japanese Language. This is now fixed.

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 3900.26.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.27+bf491df) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, October 5, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Experience, when instructors sent messages to course users and then marked the course as complete, the unread message count for students wasn't reduced when message was read. We fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, when admins copied a course with embedded LTI links within the Rich Text Editor to a new or existing course, those links broke. They were still pointing back to the old course where users of the new course didn't have permissions. We've fixed the issue, but the links within course copies made before this fix still need to be manually fixed.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.30+4b0740b) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 30, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't access the feedback when selecting the feedback icon in tests that used Respondus LDB, getting a console error instead. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, LTI Contents of Original course in Ultra base navigation calendar were displaying permission errors when selected, preventing users from opening them. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, during the September 16 Production SaaS update, an issue with the  deployment configuration management tool prevented log folders and log files from being added and displayed in the Content Management /internal/logs  folder. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.20+390fc02) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 28, 2021.

Updates in this release include internal enhancements and system optimization.

Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.19+2fb7fc2) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't access the feedback when selecting the feedback icon in tests that used Respondus LDB, getting a console error instead. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, some client Test/Stage instances experienced outages due to an incorrect query during notification cleanup. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, LTI Contents of Original course in Ultra base navigation calendar were displaying permission errors when selected, preventing users from opening them. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Course Views, instructors were required to login again to Learn, after they accessed an LTI tool and selected the Return to Learn button. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0 and 3900.23.0: Update to client Production and Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 to client Production servers and an updated version of 3900.23.0 to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, September 17, 2021. Full Learn release numbers will not change.

Updates in this release include:

• Update to the Ultra UI for iOS 15.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.28+dd6c7ec) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 16, 2021.

Updates in this release include general internal enhancements and ongoing system optimization.
For Learn SaaS, we also deployed OS Fonts to address some remaining Wiris Math Editor issues on overlapping formulas. We've fixed those issues.

Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.11+a845e27) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 14, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Original Experience, some clients' SafeHTML policy was overwritten by default after rolling restart took place. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.25+75ad05d) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 9, 2021.

Updates in this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, the gradebook wasn't finish loading when courses were using SCORMs with adaptive release. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, instructors couldn't delete uncompleted SCORM package's attempts from students, and the process was producing 405 status codes instead. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, some clients' SafeHTML policy was overwritten by default at irregular intervals, usually after upgrades took place. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, a distribution notification alert processing was causing stability issues and peaking the use of memory for a few clients. We've fixed the issue. Affected sites might still receive some backlog alerts.

API updates - 3900.23.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View, Original Course View

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including the ability to manage the release or visibility of a course content based on timing or student success criteria:

• Adaptive Release API Support: GET and POST methods for Rule APIs and Rule Criteria APIs

For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi

Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.23.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when creating assignments with the auto zero set on, any past due standard assignments and basic LTI links are marked with automatic zeros after their due date. However, items deployed using partner cloud were never marked. We've fixed the issue and now the partner cloud and the manual column set the automatic zeros as required.

• In the Ultra Course View, in the instructor view, the help bubble icon on a discussion board disappeared once an instructor had created and closed the discussion. When accessing the discussion again, the icon disappeared as well. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Experience, an instructor added a SCORM package to a course content with a grade category TEST/ASSIGNMENT, and then created another test with a release condition based on the performance of the SCORM content. However, the SCORM test didn't appear for students. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Course View, when users tried to add content to a course by selecting the plus sign "+" for adding content, then selecting on "+ Create", a menu on the right was displayed. If the user then selected the 'X' for canceling the action on that menu, the content area didn't refresh properly. We've fixed the issue.

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 3900.23.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.23.0 | Release to Production 7 October 2021
Original Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

We’re releasing a new Learn version 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.7+ad745cb) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 7, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published during the course of that day.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The regular release of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.21+e2c25ca) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 2, 2021 will include some additional updates.

• In the Ultra Course View, when a custom language pack was installed, the Ultra gradebook filter panel wouldn’t display. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, new menu icons were missing analytics-Id DOM tags, which caused some third-party integrations to break. We’ve fixed the issue.
• During a Learn SaaS upgrade, a few clients experienced outages when a drop constraint command inadvertently locked a table that a certain building block relied on. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Original Experience, Original Course View, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.19+e6e7e83) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 31, 2021.

Updates on this release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, the automatic zero functionality wasn't working for some content items with release conditions that were partially visible within a course. It wasn't working for Ultra courses or Original to Ultra converted courses. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, for course announcements and instructor feedback features, users couldn't use the A/V recording option for Collab in the Rich Text Editor. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Course Views, the Wiris math editor was sometimes displaying overlapped formula symbols, due to an improper font family type setting, making it difficult to read. We've fixed the issue and set a default font family, but please be aware that any formulas currently corrupted need to be manually edited.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.38+a5c3f13) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 26, 2021.

Updates on this release include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Telemetry/LDP Export with Snowflake, Blackboard reports and the Consulting Central B2, were failing for some users, who were receiving error messages and a Snowflake exception. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.15+3067e88) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 24, 2021.

Updates on this release include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Telemetry/LDP Export with Snowflake, Blackboard reports and the Consulting Central B2, were failing for some users, who were receiving error messages and a Snowflake exception. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, attendance activity in the gradebook was triggering many session spikes affecting the system's capacity. We've made improvements for better performance and fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, instructors weren't able to create math equations for content within courses on alternate domains, unless it's the default domain at the Blackboard configuration properties. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Course Views, users created using a SIS integration were seeing an error page when trying to load the Content Market page. We updated the integration and fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.36+070b377) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 19, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, instructors weren't able to create math equations for content within courses on alternate domains, unless it's the default domain at the Blackboard configuration properties. We’ve fixed the issue.

Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.21.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.21.0 | Release to Production 2 September 2021
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, an instructor attempting to grade an assessment submission with rubrics and then cleaning the rubric with the grading's bar grading pill, was seeing the bar's grading pills empty and colorless, unlike the rubric's grading pill. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Course View, when changing the way students were sorted in the gradebook for a course's discussion, assignment, test or attendance, students were sorted alphabetically by first name instead of being sorted by last name. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Experience, within the Grade Center of a course set as Unavailable, the Last Access column was showing students as if they had accessed the course instead of showing no activity. We've fixed the issue.

• In the original Course View, the preview mode for the TinyMCE editor was displaying a grey background. We've updated the editor and made it transparent, for better readability of contents.

• In the Original Course View, there was an inconsistency in the TinyMCE editor between edit and display modes for list items regarding their line spacing. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Original Course View, there were differences of color for certain HTML tags within the TinyMCE editor, between the display and edit modes. We've fixed the issue.

• The course cards in Base Navigation now better reflect the access state for students when viewed by instructors. There are several settings that determine whether students can access a course including the availability setting, course duration dates, and term dates. Previously, a course would appear as “private” or “open” depending only on the availability setting and didn’t consider duration or term date restrictions. Now the displayed state of a course card will consider these settings and better reflect students’ ability to access the course.

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 3900.21.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Ally File Transformer in Blackboard Assist (North America availability)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Test/Stage and Production 5 August 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience, Base Navigation, and Blackboard App

The Ally File Transformer helps students to personalize their learning experience. It can convert files into alternative formats that better fit their needs, devices, and learning preferences.

• Available at no cost with Blackboard Assist enabled. An Ally license is not required.
• It converts files to alternative, more accessible formats including HTML, ePub, electronic braille, audio, or BeeLine reader. Also, to a PDF that’s undergone optical character recognition (OCR).
• For institutions licensing Ally, the Ally File Transformer allows students to convert their own files, or files they've found via research or project work.
• The Ally File Transformer comes automatically with Blackboard Assist. There is an option to turn it off, if preferred, in the Administrator Panel > Partner Cloud Settings.

The Ally File Transformer will be available with Blackboard Assist for Higher Education clients in North America on August 5. Availability for clients outside this region is expected later this year.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021

Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.31+ccd7094) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 5, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when a basic assessment was created in a private course and then the course was opened, unintentionally peer notifications were generated for all basic assessments. We've fixed the issue. The fix will cleanup the stream notifications that were incorrectly created.
• In the Original Experience, when instructors who are enrolled in very large courses (e.g. more than 10,000 enrollments) accessed the system, or navigated the course's landing page, clients experienced slow or no access. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021

Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.27+6b0ef49) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, any image in the data picker component (icons, chevrons, etc.) used within courses, always appeared broken. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021

Original Course View, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.20+7105532) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, July 27, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, users carrying out a proctored assessment on the latest Chrome versions were redirected to login. By updating the authentication method to use a one-time session token rather than cookies, we allowed proctoring partners to continue with their integration projects. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Content Editor, we’ve fixed issues with the height of the editor window and alignment of content in tables. Clients using custom theme packages may need to refresh their theme package from the default Learn 2016 Theme to get these fixes.
• In the Original Experience, a query associated with the disk usage task was consuming CPU time without completing executions. This was affecting performance, especially for Oracle data base clients. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, a text in a table cell remained left aligned even though a different text alignment was specified using the TinyMCE. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, Assist users could have been impacted by the integration not being visible in the base navigation UI. We've removed previous dependencies to allow displaying Assist through the base navigation, and fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021

Ultra Course View, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.13+02039cd) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when making a copy of a course, if quotes were used in custom alt-text descriptions for images, the Ultra assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, when using the REST API for courses copied from a specific template course, due dates for assignments and other activities couldn't be updated. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, some SCORM attempts remained In Progress in the Grade Center, even after a successful completion of the corresponding SCORM quiz. We've worked with our partner to fix the issue and mitigate future problems.
• In the Original Experience, some Learn SafeAssign reports couldn't be rendered.  We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021

Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.51+174af62) to client Production servers on Thursday, July 15, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Experience, when making a copy of a course, if there were quotes used in custom alt-text descriptions for images, the Ultra assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, some instructors and administrators couldn't save their HTML in the new Content Editor despite having the privilege to do so. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, some SCORM attempts remained "In Progress" in the Grade Centre, even after a successful completion of the corresponding SCORM quiz. Rustici identified the potential problem causing the issue. We've made their recommended fixes to mitigate future problems.
• In the Original Experience, some Learn SafeAssign reports could not be rendered. Submissions could remain in a "report in progress" status for days. We've fixed the issue.

Original Content Editor: Format consistency between edit and display - 3900.19.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021
Original Experience, Original Course View

The Content Editor for Original Experience and Original Course View was last updated in November 2020 (3900.0.0). Since then, there have been inconsistencies in the way content is formatted when editing content and when viewing it.

With this release, settings like font, size, color, and spacing are more consistent. When existing content is selected, the editor tool bar updates to display its current font, size, and header settings. This creates a better WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) experience.

The CSS changes associated with these improvements could impact clients using custom theme packages. We recommend testing.

• CSS in a custom theme package could disrupt the consistency between content edit and display in the Content Editor.
• Overly-broad CSS changes in a custom theme package could be applied to the Original Content Editor in unexpected ways. These may need to be corrected in a custom theme package and uploaded to Learn. Alternately, fall back to the default Learn 2016 Theme.
• There may be circumstances in which the Content Editor’s styles are preventing custom CSS from presenting. We are planning an enhancement in an upcoming release to include the opportunity to customize the CSS of the Content Editor within the custom theme package.

API updates - 3900.19.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.19.0 | Release to Production 5 August 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We've made some noteworthy API additions, including providing Ultra Discussion APIs for reading both single and collections of discussion topics and posts.

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

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Original Experience and Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.43+eee598e) to some client Production servers on Friday, July 2, 2021. Only GovCloud clients in the US Eastern timezone and other GovCloud clients who could not be updated yesterday will receive the update during evening hours.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Delay for release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.17.0 release to GovCloud client Production servers in the US East timezone, previously scheduled for Thursday, July 1, 2021.

Also, an issue identified during today's rollout and already corrected, will cause some clients to receive a new, updated release today.

We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Original Experience

We're applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 to client Production servers on Thursday, July 1, 2021. Due to an issue identified during today’s rollout, clients will receive different build numbers depending on the time their update was performed.

Updates with full release number 3900.17.0-rel.37+505c78f include only:

• In the Original Experience, the installer was leaving the SCORM B2 in a corrupted state after an upgrade failure. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, the Rustici Engine required a provider update to fix a library defect and installation snags. We've fixed the issue.

Updates with full release number 3900.17.0-rel.42+b2e6934 include the above fixes as well as:

• In the Original Experience, we've implemented an enhancement to reduce the need for heavy load and to avoid system slow down for the loadAllAchievements process.
• In the Original Experience, a table lock issue prevented upgrades, leading to some outages. We've fixed the issue.

The next full rollout will include all fixes for everyone.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.31+ea0ceef) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, June 29, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when updating time on conditional availability on assessments, if an instructor selected 'Show On' date too close to the current due time, the date picker reverted the selected date back to the current date, ignoring the instructor's selection. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, for a course running the report All User Activity inside Content Areas, no data was presented on a period where it should be data. Running a different report (e.g. Course activity Overview) for the same course during the same period of time, this last report did present the missing data. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, the Self and Peer Assessment process was presenting a performance issue, due to a data file processing that required improvement. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Course Views, alerts for New Discussion Posts didn't appear in the What's New module for courses, based on term availability. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.33+c15f06f) to client Production servers on Thursday, June 24, 2021. Please remember that the efforts to resolve the SCORM upgrade issues are still ongoing. Clients still running on 3900.13.0 will not be updated this time.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, users with Course Builder roles couldn't create journals or any type of content on Ultra courses. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, course announcements became single paragraphs of unformatted text, after making a copy of a course. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the function CONTENT_IS_AVAILABLE(), was a potential driver of performance problems for some clients. We made significant improvements, for the benefit of both courses and organizations's users.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, a critical DB performance issue was present whenever a grade refresh occurred. Also, due to a SameSite restriction of the Chrome browser impacting the major workflow of Cengage B2, users weren't able to import contents. We’ve fixed both issues.
• In the Original Experience, the Downtime Maintenance Schedule date picker worked as expected only when the en_US language pack was set as the user's language. When using other language packs (e.g. en_UK), and error appeared when selecting a desired date. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on releases to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:

• A maintenance update to client Production environments will take place on Thursday, June 24, to apply high priority fixes.
• The efforts to resolve the SCORM upgrade issues are still ongoing. Clients still running on 3900.13.0 will not be updated on June 24.

We aim to update all Production sites to 3900.17.0 on Thursday, July 1. This will include those clients who are currently on 3900.15.0 as well as those who are still on 3900.13.0.

We’ll provide new updates as soon as we have more information.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Original Experience and Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.24+35b8869) to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, June 18, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some building blocks didn’t launch correctly after a libraries' update. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, student preview users couldn’t access journals. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t access assessments with system-generated access codes, as they contained leading zeros or unnecessary commas within. Now the codes are properly generated. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:

• The release remains on hold for clients in the US-East-1 region while continuing to work with Rustici on the SCORM issue. We do not have a target release date yet.
• For institutions that have already received Learn SaaS 3900.15: there will be no further  production upgrades until the SCORM issue has been resolved.
• For institutions that are still using Learn SaaS 3900.13: production upgrade to 3900.15 will not be performed until the SCORM issue has been resolved.

Two issues were identified during the 3900.17.0 release to test/stage on Tuesday. For the benefit of our clients, we're working on a test/stage update, scheduled for Friday, June 18.

We’ll provide new updates as soon as we have more information.

Highlight on bug fixes

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• In the Ultra Course View, manual grade columns were lacking a Post All grades button on the Submissions page. A Post All button is now present there for instructors to use. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Experience, Ultra Courses, Organizations, and Grades pages went blank on Safari, when the zoom was below 100%. Now, the pages display the courses the user is enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Original Experience, the Content Editor wasn't loading randomly. Now, the Content Editor loads in all use cases. We've fixed the issue.

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 3900.17.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Course Role Mapping to LTI Context Roles

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View, Original Experience and Original Course View

Some third-party integrated tools function better when users’ course roles are more specific to the responsibilities they have in their courses. Before, all privileged course users were sent to LTI tools with the context role instructor. Administrators can now edit course roles and choose from a list of LTI Context Roles that may be more appropriate for each.

Default and custom course roles, Original and Ultra courses, and older LTI 1.1 and newer LTI Advantage/1.3 tools are all supported.

To prevent possible disruption for current users, the old default role behavior wasn't changed. Administrators may wish to review all course role configurations after this release, and choose LTI context roles. Any given LTI context role mapping is specific to a course role and will apply to all LTI tools.

Performance tuning: 1M stack size increment for all SaaS sites

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 1 July 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

SH/MH customers may improve Learn thread’s capabilities, memory wise, by updating the bbconfig.max.stacksize.tomcat property value, within the bb-config.properties file to “1M”. This change will take effect when the instance is restarted and in case threads need the extra piece of memory that is being provided, they will have access to it.

Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Delay for release to client Testing environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.17.0 | Release to Production 8 June 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.17.0 release to client Testing servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.

Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Delay for release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021.

• Issues have been identified with the SaaS Downtime Maintenance Schedule (impacting INTL admins when the system locale is not en_US), and, for a few clients, a SCORM issue.
• The release has been rolled out for most clients.
• The release is being held for some clients on the US East Coast.

We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.

Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 Jun 2021
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.17+fc81d0d) to client Production servers on Thursday, June 3, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, users couldn’t download files attached to Organization discussion boards. Instead, they were redirected to Learn’s front page. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.13.0 | Release to Production 6 May 2021
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.31+9040981) to client Production servers on Thursday, May 13, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some courses with many milestone achievements with a display in the past, were causing performance issues when loading their contentStatus. We've fixed the issue.

Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.15.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• In the Ultra Experience, when Ultra Stream Notifications were sent to a specific, targeted role, the system announcement was sent correctly to the specific users with that institution role, but the Admin Announcement UI indicated the notification was sent to everyone. causing confusion for admins. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Experience, in tests, the student's browser needed to be refreshed manually in order to show them tests hidden by conditional availability, even after these conditions were met. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra and Original Experiences, there were software updates related to server performance causing customer email alerts: Administrators were receiving Failed to Phone Home emails for software updates on SaaS environments. They will no longer see those emails. Also, as part of this change, the Update Status column has been removed from the Installed Tools page for Building Blocks. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Original Experience, after a Learn user had disabled their profile image from view, other users were still able to see it as it remained publicly available. We've fixed the issue.

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 3900.13.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Reset Signed URL configuration

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 Jun 2021
Original Experience

This feature improves content delivery, accessibility and performance for China users, serving all files via our CDN Servers. The server will auto-configure and set up the user’s session to use or not to use signed URLs during login. Administrators can manually adjust exceptions by contacting Blackboard Support.

Course Auto-Archive performance and efficiency improvements

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.15.0 | Release to Production 3 June 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

This improvement fixes known issues causing archive-related instability and implements a safety-net to stop archiving courses that repeatedly fail. It also improves efficiency of auto-archives by adding more sources that the system can store as a reference instead of copying them as file data. Last but not least, it ensures that auto-archives are enabled for all sites as part of each release.

Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Test environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.13.0 | Release to Production 6 May 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.19+fa9ae0b) to client Test servers on Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, for LTI links with the proctoring changes added, the Deep Linking response wasn't handling properly array aud fields. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, Organizations, content items or files created with attachments could not be edited, and the user received an error message when attempting to modify them. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, briefly after the Ultra Experience was enabled on their Production environment, admin users were receiving to many emails from [email protected], even from courses they were not enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, users were unable to post results for certain groups, getting instead an error message. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 22 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.36+d29e3aa) to client Production servers on Monday, May 3, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original and Ultra Experiences, Organizations, content items or files created with attachments could not be edited, and the user received an error message when attempting to modify them. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 22 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.33+0562ff2) to client Production servers on Thursday, April 29, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Experience, briefly after the Ultra Experience was enabled on their Production environment, admin users were receiving to many emails from [email protected], even from courses they were not enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 22 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.29+3b9a0fc) to client Production servers on Thursday, April 22, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Experience, for mobile users (Instructor App), instructors can normally access Assessments RWD Ultra Screen in preview mode, but in the latest version this screen was rendered in editable mode. We fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, users enrolled with Facilitator role were getting an error message when changing assignment availability in Ultra courses as opposed to be able to change the visibility of the items. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, in large courses with more than 1000 students using discussions, the JVM was running out of memory or presenting performance delays. We've fixed the issue.

Upgrade notifications for administrators

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.13.0 | Release to Production 6 May 2021
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

In the Ultra and Original Experiences, System administrators for Learn deployed in SaaS can opt-in to receive email notifications when an upgrade process starts and completes. This is particularly helpful for SaaS clients who want to be able to communicate with their support teams and user communities, with greater specificity when feature changes are available or bug fixes have been implemented. Users with the full System Administrator role can opt-in at Admin Panel > Notifications > System Alert Settings. Each administrator must opt-in individually to receive emails.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Delay for release to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 22 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 15, 2021, to Thursday, April 22, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).

The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 15 April 2021
Original Course View

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.23+d32af8a) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, for some instances, when an authorized user attempted to enroll another user in a given course, even from within the course, they received an error message related to the necessary privileges required to perform the enrollment. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0 and 3900.13.0: Delay for release to client Production and Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 15 April 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.13.0 | Release to Test stage 20 April 2021 | Release to Production 6 May 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 8, 2021, to Thursday, April 15, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).

We will also replace the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.12.0 release previously scheduled for Tuesday, April 13, for the 3900.13.0 release to client Test/Stage servers to take place on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. This delay also aligns with our usual pattern, to release a new Test/Stage version the Tuesday after a Production release, allowing us to include additional work in the upcoming May release. 

The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.

Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0 and 3900.12.0: Delay for release to client Production and Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 1 April 2021
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.12.0 | Release to Production 6 May 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 1, 2021, to Thursday, April 8, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).

We will also delay the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.12.0 release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, April 6, 2021, to Tuesday, April 13, 2021. This delay also aligns with our usual pattern, to release a new Test/Stage version the Tuesday after a Production release. 

The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.

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.

Disable notifications for users with high enrollments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 1 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

In both Original and Ultra Course Views, we've improved the timeliness and performance of notifications for all users (including emails, push notifications, Stream, and MyBlackboard) by no longer generating these notifications for users with more than 500 enrollments.

A user with this large volume of course enrollments will still have access to all course resources but won’t receive notifications regardless of their settings.

Typically, users enrolled in so many courses are support staff or instructional designers. We recommend administrators to configure these users to be node administrators instead, with privileges to enroll and unenroll themselves from any course in the appropriate Institutional Hierarchy nodes, and with access to all the courses they may need without enroll them. Enrollment availability or enablement states are not considered for a user to count as to have over 500 enrollment records.

Embed LTI Content in Original Content Editor

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 1 April 2021
Original Experience, Original Course View

In the Original Experience and Original Course View, the ability to support access to third-party content within the Content Editor by the use of LTI is an important milestone for institutions, partners, and tool creators who look to transition from Building Block mashups to the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard from IMS Global. Appropriate LTI course tools will appear for instructors, course builders, teaching assistants, and students in the Add Content menu as additional tools alongside Building Block mashup tools. Two methods are supported: either the tool can add a link in the editor, or if the tool designates that the resource should be embedded, it will be inserted into an iframe in the Content Editor and rendered automatically.

Scripts for Learn SaaS to bulk download course archives

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.10.0 | Release to Production 1 April 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

In order to comply with data retention policies and reduce utilized space, administrators often want to move course archives to another location for longer-term storage. In SaaS, course archives are created automatically, and daily back-ups of course archives are stored in the cloud. We’ve included these scripts written in Python in the Course Settings and Auto Archive Settings pages to allow admins to copy archives locally or to an AWS S3 bucket prior to deleting them from Learn.

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 3900.6.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.6.0 | Released to Production 4 Feb 2021
Original Experience, Original Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.32+4fc1198) to client Production servers on Thursday, February 25, 2021

Updates in this version include:

• 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.

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, 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.

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.

Course archive quarantine

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.6.0 | Release to Production 4 February 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Course View

We’ve improved the performance of the course archives process when an archive fails due to specific, particular circumstances. 

After three unsuccessful archive attempts, the course will be quarantined for evaluation. Administrators will receive an email notification that a course has been quarantined. Once the email notification is received, the administrator can check the quarantined courses list and reach out to Blackboard Support for further assistance, similar to the process for an export course issue. 

• A notification will be sent to the administrator every time a new course enters quarantine.
• The functionality is enabled by default. To disable it, the system administrator should contact Blackboard Support.

Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Addition to client Production release

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.4.0 | Release to Production 7 January 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The scheduled Production release of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.20+93e130c) during off-hours on Thursday, January 7, 2021 includes one additional update.

• Client credentials bearer tokens didn't grant access to Learn when using Applications with Premium API Access enabled. We fixed the issue.

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.4.0 | Release to Production 7 January 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• Added an endpoint that separates child courses from their set parents so that API users can now undo parent/child course relationships via APIs.

Building block self-service

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.4.0 | Release to Production 7 January 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

With this release, SaaS administrators can now install and uninstall building blocks on their SaaS instance without depending on Blackboard Support. This change gives our clients the flexibility of managing their own installations instead of waiting for the Support team. Administrators can install and uninstall building blocks in Admin Panel > Building Blocks > Installed Tools. Installation and removal of a building block will trigger an automated rolling restart. No additional action is needed from the administrator.

Blackboard understands this is an exciting update for our clients. It is worth pointing out that we continue to expand our REST APIs as well as deepening our LTI support. It's important to note that a combination of REST API/LTI is preferred to ensure integration support in the Ultra experience. REST APIs/LTI are the modern standard that SaaS companies use when interfacing with their systems. More and more of our partners are developing towards REST APIs/LTI, and we continue to look forward to the time where our REST API/LTI framework is robust enough to handle all use cases that building blocks currently support.

End of SOAP Web Services capabilities

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.4.0 | Release to Production 7 January 2021
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Blackboard SOAP Web Services were officially deprecated on January 4, 2019 (see the original announcement). 

As of December 31, 2020, Blackboard Learn SOAP Web Services are no longer supported, as they have reached the end of life per our deprecation policy.

In February 2021, we will update the Proxy Tools and Web Services System Administrator pages with the removal of links for Registering new Proxy Tools, Creating new Web Services, and accessing SOAP Web Services documentation and development tools.

The removal of these links does not disable the use of currently installed Proxy Tools or Web Services.

While SOAP may continue to work for your institution, any issues or concerns regarding SOAP will not be addressed by Blackboard other than the recommendation of moving to REST APIs.

Full removal of SOAP Web Services capabilities is planned for the May 2021 and future releases. Note that this plan is subject to change, and that SOAP Web Service capabilities may not be removed until a later release.

Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.2.0 | Release to Production 3 December 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.25+e0228f9) to client test/stage servers on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, when an instructor edited response feedback to a test question, the content editor loaded after a 2-second delay. We’ve fixed the issue.

• When an institution had the same entityID configured in their IDP and SP metadata, SAML authentication failed and users couldn’t log in. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.2.0 | Release to Production 3 December 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.20+e43df0f) to client test/stage servers on Tuesday, November 24, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• The download button for the Insight Report (Beta) for administrators wouldn't respond or create a CSV. We've fixed the issue.

• When restoring a merged course from an archive, Learn only restored the parent course and not its child course(s). We've fixed the issue.

• A few institutions that use the Consulting Central B2 for Blackboard Assist saw slow performance and some downtime in Learn. We've fixed the issue.

• Existing and newly created web links in Library modules were throwing an error when clicked. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.60+0c79e9e) to client Production servers during off-hours on Monday, November 23, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• A few institutions that use the Consulting Central B2 for Blackboard Assist saw slow performance and some downtime in Learn. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Ultra Course View, Original Course View, Ultra Experience, Original Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.57+59c5f28) to client Production servers during off-hours on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• When an instructor copied a journal from one Ultra course to another, all journals from the first course were copied to the second. We’ve fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Course View, some Collaborate sessions didn’t appear in the Join Session overflow menu. We’ve fixed the issue.

• In the Original Course View, response feedback for the Grade Questions feature of the Grade Center was missing the new content editor, and text entered into the box there wouldn’t save. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Unannotated Box documents wouldn’t load in Bb Annotate. We’ve fixed the issue.

• The download button for the Insight Report (Beta) for administrators wouldn’t respond or create a CSV. We’ve fixed the issue.

• When restoring a merged course from an archive, Learn only restored the parent course and not its child course(s). We’ve fixed the issue.

• When a Redis connection failed, Learn didn't attempt to reconnect, so users had to manually retry their task. We’ve fixed the issue.

Fixed issues

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.2.0 | Release to Production 3 December 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The bug fixes in this Learn release include:

• When D2L course content was imported into an Ultra course, document heading formatting was lost. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In an Ultra course, when a user not enrolled creates a discussion, the system throws an error when a student tries to access it: “Oops! Something broke. Please reload the page.” Now, the discussion board opens without error.
• In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t navigate to the next course content item from a discussion board post if conditional availability was set. We’ve fixed the issue.
• The Course List / My Courses module was missing from the main Courses tab on the Institution Pages during the upgrade process. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When an instructor exported a single question pool with a special character from the Original Course View, the pool wouldn’t import as a question bank to an Ultra course. We’ve fixed the issue.

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 3900.2.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

LTI tool availability by institutional hierarchy

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.2.0 | Release to Production 3 December 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Administrators can now manage the availability of third-party LTI tools according to their institutional hierarchy, similar to how they can with Building Block tools. Administrators can control availability of tools by department or course in Admin Panel > Institutional Hierarchy. Original Course View courses continue to allow instructors to override the availability state of tools if allowed. Tool availability in Ultra Course View courses is always managed by the administrator. The options when managing LTI tool availability settings have been updated to reflect these differences.

Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.18+41e3877) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 20, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View with the Spanish language pack, a grade calculation in the Ultra gradebook was incorrectly labeled as NaN. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Some Learn environments that use the Partner Cloud Building Block had problems with content sync. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.19.0 | Release to Production 1 October 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.51+4456ac1) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 15, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• We've integrated Xythos Service Packs 20 and 21, which introduce internal improvements to the content system.

• The verbosity level of new log nodes reverted to the default initial value instead of matching the level set in Log Settings. We've fixed the issue.

Assist

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As students re-engage in their disrupted educational experience, they'll need student services more than ever. At some institutions, these services will be virtual for the first time. Blackboard Assist is a student success hub for campus and online resources, available on your desktop or from anywhere with the Blackboard mobile app. Assist elevates campus and online resources, building awareness so students always find what they need.

Assist supports your educational continuity plans with institutional, Blackboard-sourced, and partner-provided solutions. Institutions can create and feature profiles of their existing services to appear in Assist. Assist also provides access to partner services: curated, high-quality providers offering scalable, virtual solutions to meet student needs. Administrators can manage available partner services that best benefit their students.

Assist will be available in Learn SaaS for higher education institutions in the Original Experience, the Ultra Experience, and the Blackboard app. At this time, it won't be available for K12, corporate, and government clients.

We encourage you to start planning the services you would promote in Assist, connecting with the offices that manage your student services including academic and financial assistance, health and wellness, housing and food security, and student life.

In future releases, Assist will adapt to users and offer personalized recommendations in places of learning such as in courses, the gradebook, and the activity stream.

More on Assist for students

More on Assist for instructors

More on Assist for administrators

Visit the Community site for more details and guides you can use to share information on Assist

Content editor updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience

This release introduces big updates to the content editor in the Original Course View and the Original experience. We’ve made numerous simplifications and improvements, including:

• A single menu to add content that automatically recognizes file types

• Optimized experience for all devices and screen sizes

• Better accessibility for both the editor and the content you create. Menus and icons have higher contrast, pop-ups are gone, and an accessibility checker lets you know about accessibility issues as you write

• The ability to paste content from Word, Excel, and websites with basic formatting and easily remove extra HTML

• The ability to paste a link in the editor and automatically embed videos and previews

• The ability to display formatted computer code snippets

Institutions using custom language packs created for older versions of Learn have found they may need to update their language packs for the editor to work properly.

More on the Original content editor for students 

Visit the Community site for more details and guides you can use to share the changes at your institution

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• Institutions and partners can now provide students direct, deep links to specific Learn course content from their own portal or tool.

Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.0.0 | Release to Production 5 November 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3900.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.19.0 | Release to Production 1 October 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.42+e227a86) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 8, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Emailed course announcements in both the Original and Ultra Course Views now include both the course name and the title of the announcement in the email subject.

• The calculated grade snapshot information didn't update correctly in courses that use the Telemetry B2. We've fixed the issue.

• Learn environments ran out of memory when archiving courses with large volumes of activity accumulator records. We've fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t navigate to the next course content item from a discussion board post if conditional availability was set. We’ve fixed the issue.

• In the Ultra Course View, users who had system permission to create materials but were not enrolled in a course couldn’t add permanent files to a course. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.19.0 | Release to Production 1 October 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.32+99f4ccd) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 29, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• We’ve added unique login counts for the previous 30, 90, and 180 days to the Learn Insight Report.
• In the Ultra Course View, some replies weren’t visible in discussions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, some users’ discussion response and reply counts didn’t appear correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, some users’ profiles and activity in discussions appeared as though the users were unavailable. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, discussion forum links that were broken during a course copy couldn’t be removed from the new course. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When an instructor reverted a course back to the Original Course View from Ultra Course Preview, a lost association with the course data source key caused problems with SIS integration. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some users at institutions that use SSO with the SAML Building Block had trouble logging in to their Learn environments. We’ve fixed the issue.

Changes to deleted file retention period

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.19.0 | Release to Production 1 October 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

With this release, Blackboard will change the content collection system’s deleted file retention period from 45 days to 32 days on clients' Learn SaaS sites. This change will reduce the amount of storage used by client sites and bring our retention period in line with the Learn SaaS Service Level Agreements data retention period. The change will not impact course auto archives or active course data.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.19.0 | Release to Production 1 October 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.19.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.17+ca99c4d) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 1, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• For some administrators, the Insight Report (Beta) displayed 0 for Auto-Archived Courses and Organizations and Days of logs available instead of the correct count. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, when an instructor quoted a post with embedded files, students couldn't access the files from the instructor's reply.  We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some environments encountered short periods of downtime after RDS maintenance. We've fixed the issue. 

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.32+577dd66) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 27, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, when partner content was used in a course, some content provider options didn't display in the Content Market. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, Vimeo videos wouldn't embed in course content. We've fixed the issue.
• For some administrators, the Insight Report (Beta) displayed 0 for Auto-Archived Courses and Organizations and Days of logs available instead of the correct count. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.30+8445ff0) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 20, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some users couldn’t log in to their Learn environment when a SAML SSO provider was created as inactive and then was set to active. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, SAML logout pages displayed in the default language instead of a user's preferred language. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.11+9b66d12) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 18, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, forgotten password emails for custom, secondary brand domains incorrectly sent users to the main brand domain. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, content added with LTI tools wouldn't open with learning module navigation. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some users couldn’t log in to their Learn environment when a SAML SSO provider was created as inactive and then was set to active. We’ve fixed the issue. 

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.28+ba39496) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 13, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, forgotten password emails for custom, secondary brand domains incorrectly sent users to the main brand domain. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, content added with LTI tools wouldn't open with learning module navigation. We’ve fixed the issue.

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• We added the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy node associations between courses and Institutional Hierarchy nodes.
• We enhanced the public assignment APIs to support SafeAssign options, which aligns with the functionality offered in the user interface.

Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.

Enhancements to course archive and restore

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

This update makes the archive process more comprehensive. Now, archives gather data for users who may have dropped the course during the term, which provides a fuller picture of user activity in restored courses for records and reviews.

When an archive is restored, course and enrollment records are returned to the enablement state at the time of the archive creation. User records that match with existing accounts will be linked during the restore process, but the existing user’s enablement state will not change. As before, if records are disabled and locked, an administrator will need to enable records in Learn to review them.

H5P added to list of embedded media

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Ultra Course View

With this release, H5P has been added to the list of supported embedded media in the text editor.

View the instructor workflow

Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to release notes

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.17.0 | Release to Production 3 September 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We prematurely announced that version 3800.17.0 would contain Assist, a student success hub for campus and online resources. We are still testing this feature, and it’s targeted for release in the near future. We apologize for the confusion.

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.24+b25671a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 4, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• We’ve improved system performance and stability for institutions with very large courses (many students and many content items).

Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.29+ffe3614) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 23, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some SIS feed files were blocked and couldn't update information in Learn. We've fixed the issue.
• Courses with missing resources couldn’t be deleted because the archive process couldn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.21+8a56e93) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 21, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some SIS feed files were blocked and couldn't update information in Learn. We've fixed the issue.
• Courses with missing resources couldn’t be deleted because the archive process couldn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.

Bb Annotate release to Singapore Polymall environments shifted

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

The release of Bb Annotate to Singapore Polymall environments has been shifted by one week. It will be available in Test/Stage environments beginning on July 20, 2020, and in Production environments beginning July 27, 2020.

The detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard and the Community site has been updated to reflect this change.

To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.

More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students

More on Bb Annotate for Instructors

Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.26+bfd99e6) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 16, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some users still saw incorrect column headers and missing data in exported Outcomes Assessment reports. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Experience, only two lines of a course announcement displayed at a time. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.15+49a56b1) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some users still saw incorrect column headers and missing data in exported Outcomes Assessment reports. We've fixed the issue.

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• We added the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy nodes. We also added the ability to create child nodes for a specific NodeId, and delete and update institutional hierarchy nodes by NodeId.

Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.15.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

SOAP Web Services API removal

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Please note that in the August 2020 Learn release, as part of the removal of SOAP Web Services APIs from Learn, we are removing the following Java APIs which have been deprecated since 2015:

• CourseCategoryMembershipLoader
• CourseCategoryMembershipPersister
• OrganizationCategoryLoader
• OrganizationCategoryMembershipLoader
• OrganizationCategoryMembershipPersister
• OrganizationCategoryPersister

Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Delay for Continuous Delivery release to Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.15.0 | Release to Production 6 August 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3800.15.0 Continuous Delivery release to Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for July 7, 2020, until Wednesday, July 8, 2020. The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.

Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.23+f2b803a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some SIS integrations didn't process feed files. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, administrators couldn’t see the result categories in an enterprise survey results report. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, certain assessment settings (like rubrics, delegated grading, and peer review) were disabled when an instructor added presentation-only content. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.11.0 | Release to Production 4 June 2020
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.35+a142044) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, June 25, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, some students couldn’t access enterprise surveys. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.17+e9dcbb4) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Experience, users couldn't access the date picker to edit a date. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, some grades entered as letters were incorrectly changed to the next highest letter grade. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, the exported Outcomes Assessment report had some incorrect column headers and was missing data. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, some students couldn’t access enterprise surveys. We’ve fixed the issue.
• We enhanced logging for the SAML B2.

Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.11.0 | Release to Production 4 June 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.34+e7b8bbb) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, June 18, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, when a Learn instance used custom brands or themes based on the 2012 theme, users couldn't see links under the Course Control Panel. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, some grades entered as letters were incorrectly changed to the next highest letter grade. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Original Experience, the exported Outcomes Assessment report had some incorrect column headers and was missing data. We've fixed the issue.

Bb Annotate release to international Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Bb Annotate will be released to international Production environments starting on Monday, June 15, 2020.

The release is staggered by Regional Data Centers. To find your specific date, consult the detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard or the Community site.

To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.

More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students

More on Bb Annotate for Instructors

Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.4)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• We added the ability to provide public APIs to Read Institutional Hierarchy Nodes.
• We added the ability to provide APIs to access and manage user avatars.

Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.13.0 | Release to Production 2 July 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.13.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.11.0 | Release to Production 4 June 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.23+7619f1a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. 

Updates in this version include:

• Files attached to discussion threads replaced existing discussion files when copied into existing courses. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, when an instructor created a test from a question set, they couldn't add more than one question. We've fixed the issue.
• Some administrators saw large numbers of assignment submission exceptions in their logs. We’ve added log information to help determine the sources of those exceptions.

Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.11.0 | Release to Production 4 June 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.13+dc44ed6) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, May 26, 2020. 

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, students with special characters in their name couldn't launch a test in Respondus LockDown Browser. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, instructors couldn't enter maximum points for a graded discussion thread. We've fixed the issue.
• Some administrators still saw "New Box View" as their building block title after Bb Annotate was turned on. We've fixed the issue.

Bb Annotate release to U.S. Production environments and international Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Bb Annotate will be released to U.S. Production environments starting on Tuesday, May 26, 2020.

Bb Annotate will also be released to international Test/Stage environments starting on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

The release is staggered by Regional Data Centers. To find your specific date, consult the detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard or the Community site.

To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.

More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students

More on Bb Annotate for Instructors

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.11.0 | Release to Production 4 June 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.3)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.9.0 | Release to Production 7 May 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.24+a58123a) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• We changed the title of a basic usage report for Learn administrators. It's now called Insight Report (Beta). Learn more about where to find the report and how to read it.
• In the Original Course View, some tests got stuck in "In Progress" status, so instructors couldn't end attempts or grade them. We've fixed the issue.
• Some Learn instances didn't receive grade events information from Caliper. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Custom SafeHTML filters reverted to the default policy with certain SaaS upgrades. We've fixed the issue.

Bb Annotate release to U.S. Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Bb Annotate will be released to U.S. Test and Stage environments starting on Monday, May 4, 2020. More information on the Bb Annotate release plan can be found on Behind the Blackboard and the Community site.

To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.

More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students

More on Bb Annotate for Instructors

Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.9.0 | Release to Production 7 May 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.17+0de27ea) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 28, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Administrators couldn't send SMS or text-to-voice notifications to users through Connect for Learn. We've fixed the issue.
• Some Learn instances had performance issues related to mobile Notifications. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.9.0 | Release to Production 7 May 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.13+116516d) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• A basic usage report for Learn administrators on system usage and storage. Learn more about where to find the report and how to read it.
• Improved dynamic flow control for better system resiliency and efficient database queries.
• In the Original Course View, the Overall Summary of User Activity report only listed the Guest user in the Access/Date graphic. We've fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, course content that used adaptive release with groups created an unwanted membership criterion that blocked student access to the content. We've fixed the issue.

API updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.9.0 | Release to Production 7 May 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We've made some noteworthy API updates, including:

• We added the ability to search and sort on the timestamp when a course membership was modified. Developers can increase efficiencies in report generation, audit completion, and membership information display.
• We redesigned the Groups API and separated Groups and GroupSets. Now, developers will have easier access to Groups in a GroupSet and behavior that better resembles how the Learn interface presents Groups.

Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.9.0 | Release to Production 7 May 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.6.0 | Release to Production 2 April 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.16+f1c0e8e) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, April 9, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, some students' participation in gradable discussions didn't report correctly to the gradebook. We've fixed the issue.
• Some fixes behind the scenes to keep your environments tidy.

Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.6.0 | Release to Production 2 April 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.16+f1c0e8e) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.

Updates in this version include some fixes behind the scenes to keep your environments tidy.

Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.2)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Adjust first day of the week in the calendar

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.6.0 | Release to Production 2 April 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Different global regions have different calendar conventions, including which day displays as the first day of the week. With this release, Blackboard calendars will display the most common convention for the first day of the week based on a user's selected language. Users will be able to see the change in the month and day views of both their overall and individual course calendars. The date picker display will also change in the Ultra Course View and for administrator notifications in the Ultra Experience.  

Users can change their language in the user profile. Administrators can customize the first day of the week for their language pack if they choose.

Global logout with SAML authentication providers

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.6.0 | Release to Production 2 April 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Library upgrades in our SAML authentication provider B2 could affect the first logout attempt of any Learn user session created through a SAML authentication provider with Global Logout support. If a user's session was established before the library upgrade, they won't be able to log out of their SSO session through Learn the first time they try. On first logout, users will be presented with a page that informs them that their SSO session is still active.

Users can log out through the identity provider, or they can log in again, which will present them with the option to log out of their SSO session.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.6.0 | Release to Production 2 April 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3800.6.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.32+1b0447c) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• When an Original Course used two percentage range rubrics, the second rubric didn’t always have the correct total number of points. We’ve fixed the issue.
• If a user changed their password through their SIS using encryption methods other than SSHA, they could be kicked out of their session after logging back in. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Original Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.26+312e74d) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, February 25, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some integrations using LTI 1.3 deep link couldn't launch a needed resource link. We've fixed the issue.
• Column headers in the Ultra grade center were duplicated after an administrator customized the colors in their institutional brand. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some users couldn't see their avatar thumbnails in the users and groups section of the Original Course View. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.25+95332d7) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, February 20, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some administrators encountered LDAP authentication problems because the TLS connection failed. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.20+6b6dbf5) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, February 18, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, instructors were informed that their institution had made messages read-only for students in English instead of their selected language. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some administrators saw a both successful and a failed login for each sign-in attempt in their authentication logs. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some administrators encountered LDAP authentication problems because the TLS connection failed. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Ultra Course View:
  • Some users saw the upload icon buffering even though they could upload and download files. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some students couldn’t download files they added to essay questions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issue with grading in the Ultra Course View:
  • Some student submissions reordered randomly while an instructor was grading. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Original Course View:
  • Some users couldn’t upload files with % in the filename. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some users couldn’t download files attached to submissions that use Box view. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.24+29cd420) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, February 13, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Experience, the last login date wasn’t updating accurately for users with cloud profiles. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn’t see images they added to the text editor until their content was posted or submitted. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Ultra Course View:
  • Some users saw the upload icon buffering even though they could upload and download files. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some users couldn’t download files they had previously uploaded if the filename contained a special character. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some students couldn’t download files they added to essay questions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issues with grading in the Ultra Course View:
  • Some student submissions reordered randomly while an instructor was grading. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some instructors encountered a blank screen after entering a grade for a student assignment that had multiple attempts. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some instructors didn’t see entered grades in the gradebook until they refreshed the page. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Original Course View:
  • Some users couldn’t upload files with % in the filename. We’ve fixed the issue.
  • Some users couldn’t download files attached to submissions that use Box view. We’ve fixed the issue.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3800.4.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 1 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.1)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 1 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.20+2226729) to some client Production servers during off-hours beginning Thursday, February 6, 2020. This update will be applied to clients in the following regions or time zones:

• Americas Central
• Americas Mountain
• Americas Pacific
• Asia and Oceania
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Updates in this version include:

• In the Original Course View, users couldn’t access pre-existing course glossaries. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't view inline or download files attached to essay questions if the file names had certain special characters. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn’t view inline or download files with New Box View. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some assignments submitted through SafeAssign got stuck in In Progress status and the submission didn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Users accessing Learn with the Google Chrome 80 beta release had trouble with SAML login authentication. We’ve fixed the issue.

Phased release schedule for 3800.2.0 Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

The 3800.2.0 Production release will be divided by region or time zone to ensure release quality. All upgrades will occur during off-hours in each region or time zone.

• Asia, Oceania, Europe, Middle East, and Africa: By region.
• Americas: By four major time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.
  • If your institution lies outside one of these time zones, you'll be included with the nearest time zone. For example, clients in the Atlantic time zone will be upgraded with the Eastern time zone.
• Americas Eastern time zone: In three groups.
  • These groups are alphabetical by the official name of your institution on file with Blackboard. If you want to confirm the name we have, please log in to Behind the Blackboard and select My Account > My Institution. Your institution name is displayed in the upper-left corner with your client ID number.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3800.2.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Original Course View, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.52+5c69d6d) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, January 2, 2020.

Updates in this version include:

• Some administrators couldn’t export the student goal performance report from the Administrator panel. We’ve fixed the issue.

• In the Original Course View, some instructors encountered error messages when they created calculated questions that use predefined calculus functions. We’ve fixed the issue.

API assessment attempts filter

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience

With this update, API users can view and filter a list of assessment attempts based on when the attempt was created, modified, or submitted.

Java 11 JDK and Building Blocks

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As we have previously announced, Blackboard Learn’s 3800.0.0 release uses a new version of Java, Java 11 JDK. Java are the libraries on which the Learn application runs and also the libraries that power Building Blocks, the add-on tools and features you may use in your environment. We’re implementing Java 11 to improve security and performance. Staying on recently updated libraries is crucial to staying ahead of those who may try to compromise your learning environment.

This important update can impact custom and third-party add-on tools using the Building Blocks (B2) integration framework, and we strongly encourage all clients and partners who use Building Blocks to test them with Java 11. We’ve extended the time 3800.0.0 will stay on Test/Staging servers to allow more time to test Building Blocks (see the Learn SaaS CD Release Schedule).

To help identify potential incompatibilities with third-party add-ons, we’ve developed a Building Block scanning tool. While the tool doesn’t replace functional testing, it can help developers understand what changes need to be made if issues are found with a Building Block. Because the tool can be resource-intensive, it should only be run on your staging or test environment.

For additional resources on Java 11 testing and details about the Building Block scanning tool, visit the Developer portal.

Learn more about Java 11

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3800.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Partial delay for Continuous Delivery release to Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3700.16.0 Continuous Delivery release to client Production servers for US East customers, previously scheduled for December 5, 2019. All Continuous Delivery client Production servers will receive an updated version of the 3700.16.0 release during off-hours on Wednesday, December 18, 2019.

More information on the delay available on Behind the Blackboard

Updates in this version include:

• Students and instructors using the Ultra Course View couldn’t download file submissions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some instructors couldn’t access Message attachments in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
• In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor graded one assignment and moved on to the next, the first assignment displayed again instead of the next one. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Instructors couldn’t copy more than 50 questions into a new test in the Ultra Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
• The Rustici fix for Chrome was included in 2017.1.67.  This version was applied to 3700.16, 3700.0.5, 3500.0.9, 3400.0.14 versions of the Learn product.  Customers that upgrade to these versions won't be impacted by the future Chrome release.

Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Addition to client Production release

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, the scheduled Production release of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.33+fdffbe0) during off-hours on Thursday, December 5, 2019 will include an additional update.

• Users of some LTI tools couldn’t create LTI content or use services because the tools weren’t properly validated. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.25+b897566) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 26, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Some users got an error message when they downloaded student submissions in certain file formats. We've fixed the issue.

• Some LTI 1.3 workflows didn't launch from Partner Cloud Settings. We've fixed the issue.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.16.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 5 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.5)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 5 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3700.14.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.14.0 (full release number 3700.14.0-rel.9+dce67da) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 5, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Some internal CSS files were processing incorrectly. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.19+09cd901) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 31, 2019.

Learn SaaS release 3700.14.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.14.0 (full release number 3700.14.0-rel.8+884e842) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.

Account lockout

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

In this release, by default Learn will lock user accounts after 5 failed login attempts. Administrators can disable the feature or edit its limits by selecting Account Lock Settings in the Administrator panel. Administrators can decide the maximum failed attempts allowed within a specified period. They can also choose how long accounts remain locked and whether accounts unlock automatically if users reset their passwords.

More on configuring Account Lock Settings

Student help with account lockout

Instructor help with account lockout

Guest Account can't be enrolled in courses

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Previously, when an unauthenticated user accessed Blackboard Learn and the "Enable Guest" property was enabled they were associated with the "Guest" account. Instructors were able to enroll this "Guest" account in courses and organizations, circumventing application entitlement handling.

This account is a unique Blackboard System Level account that was never intended to be enrolled. Allowing this account to be enrolled meant possible data exposure to unauthenticated users as multiple un-authenticated users could be associated with the account.

Therefore, in this release we removed the ability for the "Guest" account to be enrolled in courses stopping potential data exposure concerns between unauthenticated users. Existing "Guest" account enrollments will remain and be visible to instructors and administrators so they can clean up these existing enrollments through the user interface.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.14.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

New icons

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience

Iconography is incredibly important in Learn Ultra. The icon set we currently use was created when we first brought Ultra to the market. We've done a lot of research with our clients regarding what they liked and didn't like about the iconography in the system. Because of that feedback, we've made some adjustments to the icon set. Most notably, the new icons are darker and appear more prominently now.

Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.10+be2cf60) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 17, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Blackboard Learn’s September 4 update introduced an issue with the LTI Advantage version of the Cengage integration for some institutions. The Blackboard gradebook didn’t always synchronize with graded student activities that used Cengage links created prior to the release. The Blackboard Learn September 17 update resolved the issue, and LTI Advantage with the Cengage integration functions as intended.

Additional updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

• Partners appearing in the Content Market can now leverage LTI Advantage for their association, even if a previous LTI 1.3 domain was registered through core Blackboard Learn.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.24+374338b) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, September 12, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Blackboard Learn’s September 4 update introduced an issue with the LTI Advantage version of the Cengage integration for some institutions. The Blackboard gradebook didn’t always synchronize with graded student activities that used Cengage links created prior to the release. The Blackboard Learn September 12 update resolved the issue, and LTI Advantage with the Cengage integration functions as intended.

UPDATE: Upcoming changes to Open JDK and impact to Building Blocks in Learn SaaS deployments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

To address recent changes in Oracle’s Java support model, Blackboard Learn is transitioning to adopt a more recent version of Java, Java 11 JDK. Our new target for adopting Java 11 is 3800.0.0. Please confirm release dates with the SaaS release schedule.

We strongly encourage all clients and partners who use Building Blocks to test them with Java 11. Partners and clients can access early builds of Learn with Java 11 by requesting to join the Learn SaaS Technical Preview program. 

As part of this change, we are transitioning from the Oracle-supported version of Java 11 to the AWS-supported version of Java 11 called Corretto. This does not impact SaaS or Managed Hosting clients. Operational changes for self-hosted clients are minimal.

For further details on Java 11 Technical Preview testing with Building Blocks and Corretto changes for self-hosted clients, see the following articles:

View the Behind the Blackboard announcement

Join the conversation on Blackboard Community

We previously announced this change to Java 11 to be part of Blackboard Learn release 3600.0, scheduled for April 2019. Later, we'd communicated a new target of June 2019 followed by September 2019. Based on the results of testing with Technical Preview participants and our partners, we concluded that Java 11 adoption should be delayed further.

Previous announcements:

To address recent changes in Oracle’s Java support model, Blackboard Learn is transitioning to adopt the latest version of OpenJDK as it’s released. We previously announced this change with the introduction of OpenJDK 11 as part of Blackboard Learn release 3600.0, and later announced a new target of June 2019. Based on the results of initial testing with Technical Preview participants and our partners, we concluded that Java 11 adoption should be removed from those target releases due to compatibility issues with extensions. The delay allowed for continued testing to uphold the user experience and minimize disruptions.

For developers, partners, and institutions, testing Building Blocks for compatibility is highly recommended because libraries may have changed. For developers, recompiling Building Blocks using the updated Java libraries is also a best practice and should be performed for Java 11.

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We’re changing the way we adopt Java updates in Blackboard Learn. These changes start with Blackboard Learn SaaS release 3600.0 with the adoption of Open JDK 11.

While we expect that building blocks will continue to work as is, Blackboard is aware that some fundamental library changes could affect compatibility. To help ensure that you’re able to thoroughly test for these upcoming changes, we’re introducing a Learn SaaS Technical Preview program.

Partners in the Blackboard Developers’ Network (BbDN) should enter a support case requesting to participate in the program.

Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.4)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.3)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.23+e0c105e) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 3, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Some mobile users saw an error message in the Activity Stream. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Some users couldn't customize their default brand in the Ultra Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Users couldn't create new accounts on Open Education. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Some users had trouble logging out in the Original Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.16+4fb2947) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 27, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Users encountered an error message when saving changes to their default brand in the Ultra Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Open Education pages returned errors site-wide. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Assessments took longer than usual to load in the Ultra Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.

• For users preparing to migrate to a SaaS deployment, the Move Legacy Content tool caused problems with Turnitin feedback. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Delay for Continuous Delivery release to Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3700.9.0 Continuous Delivery release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for August 13, 2019. The new release date is August 15, 2019, two days later than previously announced. The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.31+c948a62) to client Production servers during off-hours on Friday, August 30, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Users couldn't create new accounts on Open Education. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Open Education pages returned errors site-wide. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

UPDATE: We have resolved the AWS resource issue affecting EU clients. All Learn SaaS Production instances should now have received the updated 3700.7.0 version.

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.27+ce363ca) to client Production servers during off-hours on Wednesday, August 14, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Users experienced extremely slow response times during the upgrade. We’ve fixed the issue.

• The banner thumbnail image caused a large number of temporary files to fill the root file structure. We’ve fixed the issue.

Additional updates in the user interface

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• When students open an assessment in the Ultra Course View, the Submit button is disabled until they add content or answer at least one question.
• When a student or instructor uses Box View in an assignment, it opens by default and displays using more screen space.
• We've added a display warning to help administrators identify when they are enabling a feature that may send data outside the specified compliance boundary. This allows administrators to make more informed decisions about the features they enable.
• We've changed the height of the Institution Page banner image to 160 pixels. Because screen size width varies on wider screens, the banner image crops the top and bottom of the image as the content area gets wider.

Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.20+09250fe) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Wednesday, July 31, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• What's New blog notifications didn't display correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.

• Details on files uploaded to essay questions didn't display correctly. We've fixed the issue.

• The Redis cache building block didn't display status and statistics correctly in the Administrator panel. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.9+7230020) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 23, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Some users received an error message when opening the Grade Center. We’ve fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

• Instructors weren't able to edit anonymous Discussion Topics in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.

• Some custom Building Blocks weren’t reachable using the HttpAuthModule class. We’ve fixed the issue.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.17+4d20a83) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 18, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Some custom Building Blocks weren’t reachable using the HttpAuthModule class. We’ve fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.14+eacb9cf) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 2, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• The Discussion Board post count displayed inaccurately. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.12+64e9d47) to client Test and Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 25, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• We’ve removed the Learn Legacy Authentication Provider type, which represented the authentication framework deployed on versions prior to 9.1 SP8.

• Instructors received error messages when they created a folder or downloaded a file with special characters in the filename with SafeAssign. We’ve fixed the issue.

• When a student submitted a file with spaces in the filename, the instructor couldn’t preview or download it in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

• A few improvements for Mobile users:

  • Students using the Blackboard App received errors when starting an assignment attempt in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.

  • Students using the Blackboard App on an Android device couldn’t see what they were typing in an assignment because the keyboard was hiding the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.

Learn SaaS release 3700.3.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.3.0 (full release number 3700.3.0-rel.9+2a83306) to client Production servers during off-hours on Friday, June 21, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• When a student submitted a file with spaces in the filename, the instructor couldn’t preview or download it in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

• A few improvements for Mobile users:

  • Students using the Blackboard App received errors when starting an assignment attempt in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.

  • Students using the Blackboard App on an Android device couldn’t see what they were typing in an assignment because the keyboard was hiding the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.5.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.2)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

New updates for Ally customers

Ally 1.31 | Release to Production 18 June 2019
Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.31) contains improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

Learn SaaS release 3500.0.5: Update to FDO client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Note: Does not apply to Blackboard Learn SaaS FDO on Learn SaaS Q2 2019 (3700.0.0)
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.0.5 (full release number 3500.0.5-rel.49+4a09578) to Flexible Deployment Option client Production servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00PM EST on May 20, 2019.

Learn SaaS release 3700.3.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.3.0 (full release number 3700.3.0-rel.7+29b16e7) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on May 31, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• When a student submitted multiple attempts on a test in quick succession, the system's responsiveness would slow or stop. We've fixed the issue.
• On the Courses page in the Ultra experience, longer course names were appearing with unexpected symbols. We've fixed the issue.
• A few improvements for custom themes in the Ultra experience:
  • We've improved how custom themes are created and updated on the backend in the Ultra experience to improve performance.
  • Deleted custom brands weren't being removed from the database properly, leading to unexpected behavior. We've fixed the issue.
  • When an administrator uploaded a custom navigation logo, the custom login logo was cleared. We've fixed the issue.
  • Some users reported losing the ability to upload a logo to the Institution Page. We've fixed the issue.
  • The Institution Page associated with a custom brand wasn't available for administrators if modules weren't visible. We've fixed the issue.

Additional updates in the user interface

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• Previously, the Courses page in the Ultra experience listed a user's oldest courses first. The order has been flipped and now the newest courses are listed first. If a user designates any courses as favorites, those courses still appear first in the list.
• To improve performance for system tasks, we’ve introduced new retention settings. You can configure how long your system retains information on asynchronous system tasks, including “complete,” “error,” and “incomplete” tasks. Find these options in Administrator Panel > Logs > System Tasks Status > Retention Settings.
• We’ve updated file behavior for Portfolios to improve performance. When a user downloads a portfolio, the assets will reference assets stored on Blackboard's content delivery network (CDN). File names will use https://learn.blackboardcdn.com/. Related updates are described on Behind the Blackboard.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.3.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 1 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.1)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 1 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to FDO client Test/Stage environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.23+4c6d4de) to Flexible Deployment Option client Test/Stage servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on May 15, 2019.

Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.0.0 | Release to Production 3 May 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.10+745b49a) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on April 15, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• System and course role privileges weren't appearing in the user interface as expected. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
• A critical security vulnerability has been internally identified and we have fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.0.0 | Release to Production 3 May 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3700.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3600.0.0: Update to client Production environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3600.0.0 (full release number 3600.0.0-rel.11+318243c) to client Production servers. Your instance may be updated starting in the early evening hours on April 13, 2019 based on your region and timezone.

Updates in this version include:

• A critical security vulnerability has been internally identified and we have fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

Cumulative Update 5 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.5)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 5 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Learn SaaS release 3600.0.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3600.0.0 (full release number 3600.0.0-rel.9+22b493d) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on April 1, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Instructors and students were unable to view portfolio submissions after a recent upgrade. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
• In the Original Course View, the breadcrumb navigation bar at the top of the browser window appeared twice. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
• In the Ultra Course View, we've removed the new Student Preview feature to address quality concerns. It will be included in an upcoming release.

Course role for facilitators

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.

3600.0.0 marks the culmination of previous content lockdown releases with the introduction of the Facilitator role. This course role contains a set of default privileges regarding course calendar, discussions, gradebook, announcements, materials, and groups. Course members can be granted this role to help maintain the pace of the course throughout the term or as needed.

This release includes two new privileges to grant a user the ability to create or delete a discussion in the Ultra Course View.

Additionally, the privileges list shows when certain entitlements are inherited by other privileges. For example, the Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Edit Material Availability privilege is automatically granted to a user who also has the Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Edit Materials privilege. We’ve made this association clearer in the user interface.

If your environment already contains a custom course role with FACILITATOR as the Role ID, you may notice errors after the 3600.0.0 update. We're working on addressing this issue before the release reaches Production servers. To troubleshoot, copy your custom role, rename it to eliminate FACILITATOR, apply it to the appropriate users, and remove the old custom role.

More on the facilitator role

Improvements for auto-archived courses

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

This release includes improvements to automatically archived courses to provide clients with greater flexibility and customization. You can access these settings through the Course Settings area of the Administrator Panel. Administrators can choose the length of time to keep a course archive on their system and whether course archives should include content that lives outside of the course’s directory.

More on automatic course archives

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3600.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Self-service log download and removal of Kibana Building Block

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve added support for server log storage and access from within the Blackboard Learn user interface. Select Manage Content in the Administrator Panel to access logs.

Server logs are created once every hour and stored in the internal > logs folder. Logs are grouped by year, month, day, and hour. Logs are generated in the same format as those you’re used to viewing in Kibana as a JSON file.

The hour folder uses the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) hour. Logs are transferred to the local file system once per hour, but on a four-hour delay. For example, if the current hour is 4 then during this hour logs from hour 0 will be transferred.

As part of the 3600.0.0 release, we will remove the Kibana Building Block and stop sending logs to Kibana. All logs will need to be accessed via the new workflow in the user interface.

More on how to download and reformat system logs in Blackboard Learn SaaS

Additional updates in the user interface

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3600.0.0 | Release to Production 4 April 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• If your institution uses the Turn It In Building Block, students will no longer receive a Past Due notification when they have submitted an assignment on time.
• We’re building more and more content capabilities into the Ultra Course View. In this release, you’ll notice a redesigned menu to accommodate additional options in course content, gradebook, discussions, and documents.
• Users who subscribe to email notifications will notice we’ve updated the message format. We’ve reduced Blackboard branding and optimized the format for better appearance on more devices and email clients.
• We’ve updated the Global HTML filter to accept .txt files for student submissions
• Push notifications in the Ultra experience support Ultra course discussions. Students can receive notifications when someone responds to their discussion, someone replies to their posts, an instructor creates a new discussion, or when participation deadlines are approaching. Instructors can receive notifications for replies to discussion threads or posts they authored.

Learn SaaS release 3500.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.11.0 (full release number 3500.11.0-rel.10+071f567) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on March 4, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• Participants in an Organization saw an "Oops! Something went wrong" message when clicking on Organizations in the Ultra base navigation. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
• Users weren't able to log in to Blackboard Learn with the Ultra experience with Microsoft Edge browser versions 30-41. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

Learn SaaS release 3500.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.11.0 (full release version 3500.11.0-rel.9+0b3fe2f) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on February 22, 2019.

Updates in this version include:

• In the Ultra Course View, students with accommodations and assessment exceptions can be granted additional time in timed assessments.
• Users can access SCORM content in a copied course. More information on Behind the Blackboard.

Blackboard Learn achieves LTI Advantage certification

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is an initiative managed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium to seamlessly integrate learning applications used by instructors into their courses. It includes a standard protocol for establishing a trusted relationship between the tool provider and the Learning Management System (LMS), so that students and teachers can have a seamless, integrated experience of using the tool within the context of their course.

Blackboard Learn is now LTI Advantage certified. Blackboard is among the first edtech companies to meet the rigorous IMS certification requirements for all components of LTI Advantage. LTI Advantage builds on the latest set of IMS standards and provides educational institutions and edtech suppliers with a set of extensions that allow deeper integration and enhanced interoperability between IMS certified tools and LMSs. LTI Advantage also leverages a robust security framework that offers more advanced protection of sensitive student data and adds features to support the delivery of innovative learning tools and applications necessary for digital transformation within an institution.

More on LTI in Blackboard Learn SaaS

Content lockdown: Expanded user privileges for course announcements control

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

3500.11.0 contains enhancements for granular entitlements in Original and Ultra course roles in support of the formalized facilitator role. Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.

The set of privileges contained in this release relate to course announcements. Individuals with these privileges can create course announcements in both course views. Additional entitlements allow users to view draft announcements in addition to posted announcements.

More on announcement privileges

Cross-origin resourcing tool for administrators

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Administrators may need to allow an external script or third-party application to make direct calls to their Blackboard Learn instance’s REST API. Previously, these requests would be blocked at the browser level. In this release, we introduce a Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) tool to allow your institution to leverage cloud-based or third-party extensions more fully. Administrators can also use the CORS tool to strictly define the allowed domains within an access control list and headers allowed as part of those requests. This secure, scalable tool lets you explore more integration possibilities using REST APIs.

From the Administrator Panel, select Cross-Origin Resource Sharing in the Integrations menu. Select Create Integration to get started.

More on the CORS tool for SaaS administrators

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3500.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.11.0 | Release to Production 7 March 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• Instructors at institutions based in the EU/UK will be able to use the recording feature in assessment feedback. This feature will be enabled in the eu-central-1 region when this release reaches Production servers. More on recording creation for administrators.
• A word count appears when drafting responses and replies in discussions in the Ultra Course View.
• The Messages page in the Ultra Course View wasn’t responsive for users on mobile devices. We’ve made it responsive.
• Instructors can now rename an LTI link from the gradebook in the Ultra Course View.
• Users enrolled in a demo environment may have noticed their SMS notifications were overwritten when upgrading to the 3500.9.0 release. We fixed this issue before the release reached Production servers.
• In a previous release, some institutions may have noticed the CAS authentication provider threw errors. We fixed the issue.
• When an administrator sought to delete all users not enrolled in a course, the system didn’t correctly list the number of users it would remove in the operation. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When copying an Ultra course using SIS, the new course duration was overwritten by the source course. We’ve fixed the issue by excluding a duration on the course copy.
• Users may have received an error message when attempting to connect to OneDrive for Business through Blackboard Learn. The vendor has fixed the issue.
• Group submissions in the Ultra Course View weren’t appearing consistently in the gradebook. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Instructors may have received an error message when saving course reports to the Content Collection. We’ve fixed the issue.
• A synchronization issue caused unexpected behavior in custom language packs. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Course messages with attachments sometimes resulted in an error message asking the user to contact their system administrator. We fixed the issue.
• SafeAssign Originality Reports weren’t loading correctly for users with Korean language packs enabled. We’ve fixed the issue.
• SafeAssign Originality Reports weren’t loading for users after a system update to the 3500.7.0 release. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Unenrolled users can view announcements in unavailable courses.

Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.4)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.3)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Content lockdown: Expanded user privileges for course calendar control

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.9.0 | Release to Production 31 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

3500.9.0 marks the third release containing enhancements for granular entitlements in Original and Ultra course roles. Our next and final release of this feature will include the formalized facilitator role. Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.

The set of privileges contained in this release relate to course calendar events. Individuals with these privileges can add, edit, and delete course calendar events in both course views. In the Ultra Course View, individuals with these privileges can also add, edit, and delete office hours and course schedules.

More on course facilitator privileges

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.9.0 | Release to Production 31 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3500.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates 

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.9.0 | Release to Production 31 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• To improve performance times and user experience, course messages no longer appear in the activity stream.
• Instructors are now prompted to name content they create in the Ultra Course View.
• We’ve made several AX improvements in Ultra:
  • Improved the color contrast ratio for reorder and move icons on the Course Content page.
  • Added a stroke around the panel close button to comply with color contrast ratios. 
  • Improved the hover and keyboard states for active elements to be more visually significant. 
• We’ve updated gradebook entitlements to address security concerns. Visit Behind the Blackboard for more information and guidance. The solution listed in the article will be included in 3500.9 when it reaches Production servers.
• In the Original Course View, we’ve updated the color key in the Course Coverage report to match the legend more accurately.
• When an instructor attached a file as feedback on a graded discussion, students encountered errors trying to download it. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When an unread discussion post appeared as a link in the What’s New module, users encountered errors when opening it. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Calculated questions using exponents in answers in the Original Course View were marked incorrect when students input an acceptable answer. We’ve fixed the issue. 
• Instructors encountered an error when trying to use anonymous grading for attempts still in progress. We’ve fixed the issue.
• We’ve improved the logic for grading multiple choice questions when a student selects both correct and incorrect answers in the Ultra Course View. 
• We’ve removed the ability for students to edit graded group discussion forum titles and descriptions.
• We’ve fixed a CSS error that caused text tagged with <em> HTML to appear on separate lines. 
• We’ve improved the course import feature to preserve the content package’s folder structure.

Blackboard SOAP Web Services deprecation

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.9.0 | Release to Production 31 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

With the release of Blackboard Learn Q2 2019, Blackboard is deprecating our SOAP APIs. We recommend that if you use Blackboard's SOAP APIs as an external application or as part of a Building Block, you should immediately refactor your integration using our Blackboard REST APIs.

Blackboard SOAP APIs will become unavailable with the release of Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2020.

Visit Behind the Blackboard for more information on SOAP web services deprecation and guidance on migrating to REST APIs.

Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.2)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Caliper 1.1 update for Blackboard Learn Telemetry Service

Blackboard Learn 9.1
Blackboard Learn SaaS | Release to Production 3 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Blackboard is pleased to announce updated support for the Caliper Analytics® standard in Blackboard Learn. Caliper is a specification from the IMS Global Learning Consortium® that defines a standard for the exchange of user activity information. Blackboard Learn supports this standard, giving institutions the option to emit near-real-time and batch user event data to an event store system for further analytics and reporting.

The centralized service that processes the Learn telemetry stream into Caliper events data currently uses the Caliper 1.0 specification. On January 3, 2019 this service will change to use the Caliper 1.1 specification.

For more information about how this update affects your Blackboard Learn environment, visit Behind the Blackboard

More on Caliper event configuration is available on the Developer Community

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.7.0 | Release to Production 3 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3500.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
 

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.7.0 | Release to Production 3 January 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• This release resolves an issue where the Blackboard app and Blackboard Instructor app weren’t compatible with Session Fingerprint settings. Session fingerprint settings to Create New Session When Fingerprint Changes are now compatible with the mobile apps’ mBaaS architecture.
• When you access individual students' attendance record in the Ultra Course View, the date column has been renamed Meeting and now appears first. 
• An updated version of the Vital Source Building Block (v3.101.2018040483) is bundled with this release.
• To accommodate Microsoft Azure SAML requirements, we’ve added the option to keep the SAML session age unlimited.
• When viewing assessments that were graded using a rubric more than a year ago, users may have noticed a discrepancy between rubric totals and the grade displayed in the Grade Center. Raw data was not affected. We fixed the issue.
• Grade Journey wasn’t consistently displaying optional data when the extraction was initiated from merged courses. We fixed the issue.
• Users may have encountered an error when attempting to download a file package in the Content Collection. We fixed the issue.
• When a student submission was deleted, attached files were orphaned and retained in storage, sometimes unnecessarily. We fixed the issue. 
• When an Ultra assessment was set to assign automatic zeros, the system wouldn’t log a zero score in the gradebook when a student had saved a draft but not submitted work. We fixed the issue.
• Importing a Canvas course to the Ultra Course View resulted in missing content. We fixed the issue.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.5.0 | Release to Production 6 December 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can view 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 3500.5.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates 

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.5.0 | Release to Production 6 December 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

• The Consulting Central Building Block is bundled with this release. Learn more about Consulting Central on Behind the Blackboard.
• The French language pack previously used an incorrect phrase to label new discussions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Users saw an error when downloading an annotated PDF with comments. We’ve fixed the issue so the downloads now include a summary list of comments.
• To avoid permissions and grading issues, all LTI tools are excluded from the Copy Content option in the Ultra Course View.
• When a student attempted to access an unavailable course in the Ultra experience, the date was recorded in the Performance Dashboard under “Last Course Access.” We’ve fixed the issue.
• When a user attempted to access Organizations in the Ultra experience while using a touchscreen device, the page would display an error. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When the Attendance tool was set to unavailable or inactive at the system level, instructors may have encountered error messages in the gradebook. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Optional data wasn’t consistently included in Grade Journey extractions using REST. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When an administrator attempted to move a user from one child course to another, the user enrollment wouldn’t change successfully. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Students may have had trouble accessing the activity stream due to conflicting backend logic regarding grade columns and due dates. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Special characters in custom Ultra locales weren’t displaying correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Course reports weren’t enforcing the date format for the system’s chosen language pack. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some devices displayed misaligned numbers for options in multiple choice, either/or, and true/false questions. We’ve fixed the issue.
• The words points and score were sometimes used interchangeably in the Ultra Course View. We've updated the user interface to use points where it's more accurate.
• Based on user feedback, we’ve updated the activity stream messages regarding student achievement and activity in courses. The new messages aim to reduce confusion and be more encouraging.
• The Availability Override option didn’t work as expected when a start date wasn’t specified. We’ve fixed the issue so students with this privilege can access courses with or without a specified start date.
• The service that connected cloud storage to Learn environments used a case-sensitive check to verify domain security. When domains used a mix of upper and lower case letters, the service couldn’t complete the request and resulted in incomplete attachments. We’ve fixed the issue.

New updates for Ally customers

Ally 1.23.1 | Release to Production 23 November 2018
New Features, Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.23.1) contains new features, bug fixes, and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

New updates for Ally customers

Ally 1.23 | Release to Production 14 November 2018
New Features, Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.23) contains new features, bug fixes, and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

Calendar items and due date notifications for additional content types

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.3.0 | Release to Production 1 November 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience

The Calendar and To Do modules show the due dates of course items, but this was previously limited to activities and assessments using just Blackboard Learn tools. In this release, the capability is expanded so that other content types, including those from 3rd party solutions, are now incorporated into these Original Experience areas when using a web browser.

Users see these due items in their Course Calendar or My Blackboard Calendar, and due date notifications appear in the To Do module and through other notification subscription channels.

All of the following create calendar items and due notifications:

• Assessment items such as assignments and tests
• Interactive tools including graded discussions, blogs, journals, and wikis
• Grade Center columns created manually and not linked to content items such as an observation or offline assignment
• SCORM packages
• Content items generated from building blocks when a linked Grade Center column has a due date
• LTI resource links when a linked Grade Center column has a due date

Data Integration Logs storage load reduced

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.3.0 | Release to Production 1 November 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve improved the way that data integration logs store information in the shared file system. Searches in SIS logs are limited to seven-day date ranges to improve performance and reduce system strain.

Maintenance items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.3.0 | Release to Production 1 November 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can view 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 3500.3.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.3.0 | Release to Production 1 November 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• When versioned files are imported/restored as part of course import/restore, the version number (of the file in the source course) is appended at the end of the file name so that users can differentiate which version it is. For example, if version 1 and 2 of a file named "geography.html" are imported, the new files will be named "geography_v1.html" and "geography_v2.html", respectively.
• A permissions issue in the Mobile Web Services building block caused tests to be inaccessible when first opened through the app. We fixed the issue.
• An updated version of the Partner Cloud Building Block is bundled with this release.
• An updated version of the Wiley Plus Building Block is bundled with this release.
• An updated version of the Cengage Mindlinks Learning Building Block is bundled with this release.
• An updated version of the Vital Source Building Block is bundled with this release. Grade syncing in the VitalSource Building Block is disabled by default in this release to prevent issues on the vendor's side.
• Files uploaded as part of a SCORM package are now saved in a Content Collection folder (/internal/courses/<courseID>/content/<contentID>) rather than the Local/Shared File System. When a client system is upgraded to this release, a background migration task is invoked upon server startup to move all existing SCORM files from Local/Shared File System to Content Collection. Several optimizations have been added to minimize the performance impact and memory usage for this task and it should be virtually transparent for users.
• Counts in the Ultra gradebook were confusing when some students were denied access in the course after participating in discussions or submitting assessments. We fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, users designated as Observers were unable to view files added to the course through the Build Content > Add File workflow. We fixed the issue.
• Attachments to course messages in the Original Course View resulted in the Tomcat temp directory disappearing, which led to other areas of Learn malfunctioning. We fixed the issue.
• When an instructor attempted to grade a group assignment using a rubric and the language pack used commas to designate decimal places, the grade would display inconsistently. We fixed the issue.
• In the Original Course View, pattern matching questions with incorrectly formatted regular expressions in the answer were marked wrong. We fixed the issue.
• As part of an earlier improvement for content delivery in the Content Collection, we added the ability to disable certain MIME types in Learn. We expanded the list of default allowed MIME types.
• Instructors encountered errors when grading a group discussion with a rubric. We fixed the issue.
• We’ve fixed some issues in reports: All User Activity Inside Content Areas and Course Performance Report.
• Clients using the Australian English language pack in Ultra encountered problems when creating calendar items. We fixed the issue.
• Conversations on course content in the Ultra Course View were capped to the previous 10 replies, with no way to view earlier parts of the conversation. In this release, students and instructors can access earlier parts of the conversation.

SAML updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.3.0 | Release to Production 1 November 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

We’ve enhanced the logout process for SAML single-sign on sessions. When a user logs out of Blackboard Learn, a message appears and asks them to confirm log out for all associated apps in the session. Previously, the SSO session persisted until it expired. Users can choose to terminate their entire SSO session when they log out of Blackboard Learn to protect their security when using public or shared computers.

Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q2 2018 (release 3400.0.4)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q2 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Internet Explorer no longer supported

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.0.0 | Release to Production 4 October 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

Support for Internet Explorer ends with Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018 and SaaS 3500.0.0. Older releases may still work using this browser. Microsoft ended active development for Internet Explorer in January 2016. Some newer features in Learn may not work, including Attendance and Create Recording. Reported issues isolated to Internet Explorer won't be resolved by Product Support. We recommend using another browser.

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.0.0 | Release to Production 4 October 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3500.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3500.0.0 | Release to Production 4 October 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• When a course was converted from Original to Ultra, instructors found they weren’t able to edit point values for assessments and questions that used decimal points in the number of possible points. We’ve fixed the issue by rounding point values down to the nearest whole number. This change is listed as an exception during the Ultra Course Preview.
• Some users were unable to save drafts in discussion forum threads when using a language pack other than English. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Placeholder text in the Ultra login page would sometimes obscure the username and password when the user input this information. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Discussion descriptions in courses using the Learn 2016 theme were sometimes obscured or displayed with a limited width. We’ve fixed the issue.
• Some users were unable to create criteria for Self and Peer Assessments when accessing the feature on Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When the Ultra experience is enabled, the Exit button overlapped the Add button in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
• We’ve rewritten an error message in Ultra to make acceptable date formats clearer.
• When an instructor reversed the decision to ignore an attempt in the Original Course View, the message displayed on the screen was unclear and didn’t indicate the workflow. We’ve updated it to say Attempt marked as Not Ignored.
• When users attempted to select all text in an Ultra assessment attempt, the browser didn’t select the text included in the attempt. We’ve fixed the issue.
• When a user edited a test question in the Original Course View, some options in the text editor didn’t display correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.

New updates for Ally customers

Ally 1.19.3 | Release to Production 9 September 2018
Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.19.3) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

A special note from Product Management

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.11.0 | Release to Production 6 September 2018

We are developing our teaching and learning products toward the greater good of a holistic, next generation digital learning environment through the lens of three critical, unifying product themes: academic effectiveness, learner engagement, and education insight. By focusing on these themes, we will unify the development of our products to empower excellence in teaching and learning, inspire genuine interest, attention, and interaction in the learning process, and enable continuous improvement through accurate and deep understanding of the teaching and learning process.

In the Learn SaaS 3400.11.0 release, we focused our development and design on academic effectiveness and learner engagement. You’ll see below that we’ve also aligned our feature list into groups based on value and benefit to you and your users.

Academic effectiveness

• Download annotated PDFs
• Anonymous grading in Ultra Course View
• Unsubmitted work counts as zero

Learner engagement

• Download annotated PDFs
• Improvements for course messages

Content delivery improvements

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.11.0 | Release to Production 6 September 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Multimedia is essential in many mixed-mode and online courses, and poor performance can lead to a frustrating user experience. To help speed the delivery of online media, such as video, we’ve added configuration options for administrators to control content delivery through signed URLs. Signed URLs allow content to be delivered directly and securely from cloud storage, which provides faster transfers and requires fewer resources to run on the system. A signed URL is equivalent to the actual file after it’s delivered to the browser.

Find the settings on Administrator Panel > Content Management Settings > Cloud Signed URL Settings.

Learn more about content delivery improvements

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) User Report

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.11.0 | Release to Production 6 September 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

One of the requirements of the European Union (EU) GDPR is to allow users to receive human-readable reports of personal information that has been collected about them. Clients receiving user requests may submit a case on Behind the Blackboard, including the user’s ID, to request the exported report package. The report is a ZIP file that contains CSV files with site- and course-level information about user activity, tool interactions, uploaded content, or submitted work within Blackboard Learn. Any grade data in the report are raw values and don’t include any calculations or weighting the instructor may have applied in the Grade Center. The report won’t contain information about other users in the system, content created by the institution or other users, or information from deleted courses.

Flexible Deployment Option customers: In Q4 2018 CU1 (3500.0.1), the GDPR User Report includes Activity Log and Attendance data.

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.11.0 | Release to Production 6 September 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3400.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.11.0 | Release to Production 6 September 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• In the Original experience, administrators had no option in the user interface to remove images they had added to a default brand. This issue was fixed.
• Some institutions who customized the default landing page in the Ultra experience noticed some inconsistent behavior for the destination when users logged in. This issue was fixed.
• Some custom administrator roles were unable to access courses delivered in the Ultra Course View. This issue was fixed.
• Attachments to course messages caused unnecessary file backups that could lead to system performance issues. This issue was fixed.
• In the Ultra experience, default course view settings would sometimes reset on system restart or upgrade. This issue has been fixed.
• Some instructors who used percentage-based rubrics to grade assignments noticed that mid-range values would revert on save. This issue was fixed.
• For environments with automatic course archive enabled, some files older than 45 days weren’t included in course backup files. This issue was fixed.
• We’ve updated the text shown to administrators who choose to use the Ultra experience on Test environments. The message now states more clearly that the environment will need to be completely rebuilt and all data will be lost to convert back to the Original experience.
• We’ve updated the text shown to users when content controlled with conditional release is unavailable. When a student hovers on the content after access is over, the message now reads: You can't access this content after MM/DD/YYYY, 00:00AM. Previously, the message only stated when the content became available, not when access ended.

Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q2 2018 (release 3400.0.3)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q2 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

A special note from Product Management

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.9.0 | Release to Production 2 August 2018

We are developing our teaching and learning products toward the greater good of a holistic, next generation digital learning environment through the lens of three critical, unifying product themes: academic effectiveness, learner engagement, and education insight. By focusing on these themes, we will unify the development of our products to empower excellence in teaching and learning, inspire genuine interest, attention, and interaction in the learning process, and enable continuous improvement through accurate and deep understanding of the teaching and learning process.

In the Learn SaaS 3400.9.0 release, we focused our development and design on academic effectiveness and learner engagement. You’ll see below that we’ve also aligned our feature list into groups based on value and benefit to you and your users.

Academic effectiveness

• SCORM support in Ultra
• Download gradebook
• Custom locales in Ultra

Learner engagement

• Group creation & grading enhancements
• Course list optimization
• Conversation improvements
• Add LTI links to the Institution Page

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.9.0 | Release to Production 2 August 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3400.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.9.0 | Release to Production 2 August 2018
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

• We've updated text regarding external submissions in the Ultra Course View. The assessment setting now says Collect submissions offline, and students see a message that says Offline submission when accessing assessments of this type.
• Instructors encountered an error in graded discussion boards converted from the Original Course View to the Ultra Course View. The error appeared when the instructor tried to change the grade schema. This issue was fixed.
• Recipients were unable to download message attachments that contained special characters in the file name. This issue was fixed.
• Instructors may have encountered an error when attempting to delete submissions that contained attachments. This issue was fixed.
• Course members may have experienced issues opening and viewing discussion boards where a deactivated user had once participated. This issue was fixed.
• Messages in the Ultra Course View sometimes showed the incorrect sender and recipient names. This issue was fixed.
• Administrators may have seen an error regarding permissions when attempting to download an attachment on a student submission. This issue was fixed.
• Users who change their language setting can see system announcements that were posted before changing the setting.
• In the Original Course View, some users had to refresh the page to see their reply to a discussion forum. This issue was fixed.
• In the Original Course View, some users were unable to remove file attachments in draft discussion posts. This issue was fixed.
• Instructors may have observed unexpected characters in the Due Date column of the Ultra gradebook when the assignment had no due date assigned. This issue was fixed.

New updates for Ally customers

Continuous Delivery Ally 1.17 | Release to Production 2 August 2018
New features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.17) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

Mobile Web Services

Blackboard Learn 9.1
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Building Blocks

The Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building Block enables users to connect to their courses through Blackboard's mobile applications: Blackboard app and Blackboard Instructor. The latest version of the Mobile Web Services Building Block is 94.9.12. Check these links for the best available version for your installation.

Mobile Web Services release notes for all versions

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.7.0 | Release to Production 5 July 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3400.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.7.0 | Release to Production 5 July 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• In the Ultra Course View, the Add Content icon is now a darker shade and heavier weight to provide greater contrast with the surrounding elements in the user interface.
• When setting up SMS notifications in Ultra, users now see a message reminding them that their cellular carrier may charge a fee for these messages.
• The SafeAssign Originality Report is disabled for assessments set to collect external submissions.
• An updated version of the Cengage Building Block (v1.101.20182347) is bundled with this release.
• Some students may have had trouble accessing a group assignment if a group member was disabled from accessing the course. This issue has been resolved.
• Lengthy videos displayed through the New Box View service were stopping before reaching the end of playback. The vendor has fixed this issue.

Localization updates

• The German translation for Open to Students in the Ultra Course View has been improved.
• The word “goals” was inconsistently translated in the Spanish language pack for the Ultra experience. This issue has been resolved.

New updates for Ally customers

Continuous Delivery Ally 1.16.5 | Release to Production 2 July 2018
Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.16.5) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

Educator Preview is now the new CourseSites!

Release to Production 27 June 2018

Educator Preview is now the new CourseSites. The learning environment will still serve as the premier place to test drive the Ultra experience, with the added bonus of having a course delivery option for you to teach live courses using either the Ultra Course View or the Original Course View. Check out the new CourseSites and visit the CourseSites Community for more information.

Configure static resources

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.5.0 | Release to Production 31 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Starting with this release, you can specify a desired directory in the Content Collection. To access this setting, go to Admin Panel > System Configuration > Configure Static Resources. Blackboard Learn ships with this set to an internal default directory, but you can change that to any location of your choice. Files in the chosen location are served by the Learn application server as if they were located at the server root, allowing the server to serve static files such as robots.txt and favicon.ico. Before this improvement, this functionality required custom workarounds.

This feature is intended solely for files such as those listed; it is not intended for serving dynamic content or large files.

More on system configuration in Blackboard Learn SaaS

Improvements to User Privacy in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.5.0 | Release to Production 31 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2018 CU1 (3400.0.1), Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Blackboard is committed to protecting the privacy of all users. Due to changing regulations globally concerning use of data and privacy, including the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this release includes updates that impact user experience. Administrators should evaluate the impact this may have for their users.

1. On the login page, we've added links to access the Blackboard privacy and data use statement, the Blackboard terms of use, and an optional privacy and data use statement from the institution have been added to the login page. In the Original experience, the links also appear in the login module and the settings area of My Blackboard. In the Blackboard and Blackboard Instructor mobile apps, the links are found in Settings and in the Terms of Use shown at login. This way, users can access important information about the use of their data and their privacy both before and after authentication.
2. The Security Management: Cookie Disclosure Building Block, originally intended to address regulations in the European Privacy Data Directive, has been replaced by the Security Management: Data Use and Privacy Disclosure Building Block. This Building Block is part of the core system and can't be disabled or removed.
3. For institutions that don't have users who would fall under regulations requiring this acceptance, the terms acceptance interface can be disabled in the Security Management: Data Use and Privacy Disclosure settings page. However, we recommend institutions keep the acceptance interface enabled because some users might access from another location with such regulations.
4. The Security Management: Data Use and Privacy Disclosure settings page allows an administrator to define a web link to institutional statements about data use and privacy. An administrator could also store such a statement in the Content Collection as a public file and link to it.

More on the Security Management - Data Use and Privacy Disclosure Building Block

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.5.0 | Release to Production 31 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3400.5.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.5.0 | Release to Production 31 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View

• We've updated the scoring options for multiple choice questions so they are shorter and easy to scan:
  • All or nothing: All correct answers must be selected to receive full credit
  • Partial credit: Give credit for correct answers with no penalty for incorrect answers
  • Subtract points for incorrect answers: Give credit for correct answers, but subtract points for incorrect answers. The question score can total less than 0.
• When accessing the course catalog as a guest in Ultra, the user wasn't always able to return to the login page from within a course. This issue has been resolved.
• The Maximum Score field in Ultra assessments now displays an error message when a user attempts to input a negative number
• We fixed a bug that incorrectly displayed the number of students with accommodations in a discussion
• When more than one instructor was enrolled in a course, these users were assigned to groups in group discussions in the Ultra Course View. This issue has been resolved.
• Students may have seen an error message when attempting to view grades in a course where a graded discussion was available at a certain date and time. This issue has been resolved.
• The Ultra course roster was including disabled enrollments in the overall count of course members. This issue has been resolved.
• The link to chat with Support in Educator Preview was updated to a new destination

Original Experience and Original Course View

• We've fixed an error that appeared when an instructor attempted to create an assignment using a Portfolio template in the Original Course View
• The number of points possible for an assessment in the Original Course View was inconsistent when a rubric was applied. This issue has been resolved.
• When students uploaded multiple attachments to Self and Peer Assessments, only the first attachment was displayed. This issue has been resolved.
• On the Goal Performance page, the overall progress for a goal was incorrectly aggregating the performance on aligned course items. This issue has been resolved.

General

• Some institution announcements may have disappeared after upgrading from Managed Hosting to SaaS. This issue has been resolved.
• SafeAssign sporadically failed to generate Originality Reports for assignments. This issue has been resolved.
• An error occurred when attempting to create a new system role in Blackboard Learn. This issue has been resolved.

Localization updates

• Placeholder text in fill in the blank questions wasn't properly localized. This issue has been resolved.
• Fields in the attendance report for instructors weren't properly localized. This issue has been resolved.
• Users who selected Swedish as their default language in Ultra saw untranslated strings when viewing events on the base calendar. This issue has been resolved.

New updates for Ally customers

Continuous Delivery Ally 1.16.2 | Release to Production 23 May 2018
New features, Updated features

The latest release of Ally (v. 1.16.2) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally 1.16.2 release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.

Cumulative Update 1 for FDO Q2 2018 (release 3400.0.1)

Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2018
Original Experience

Cumulative Update (CU) 1 for the Q2 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.

More information available on Behind the Blackboard

Auto-archive courses

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Blackboard is introducing a new feature that automatically archives active courses on Blackboard Learn SaaS client sites. Auto-archive is an automated process that archives any course that has had activity since the last time the process ran. Archives are stored in the Content Collection where administrators can view, restore, and download the archives as needed. Blackboard Learn keeps the latest archive of a course indefinitely, but deletes older archives after 30 days.

Using this tool, an administrator can restore an archive of an existing course if the owner has damaged the course. Administrators can also restore previous versions of a course (within 30 days) if the owner needs to compare the current version to an earlier version of the course.

This feature is being introduced to client sites incrementally, so you may not see it available on your system even though the 3400.3.0 release is available.

Learn more about archiving courses in Blackboard Learn SaaS

Content lockdown

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Many institutions use Subject Matter Experts to create content for a course. This content is used across all sections of a course and is facilitated by multiple faculty. To ensure that the content in each course section remains consistent, we’ve added new entitlements for course roles so administrators can grant additional permissions for users that will allow them to view the content but they will not be able to modify the content.

In the coming releases, we’ll introduce even more granular entitlements like these with the goal of ultimately providing a formal Facilitator role that you can enable and designate for chosen users. You’ll find the following permissions are now available:

• Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Adaptive Release > Create Date-Based Criteria
• Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Adaptive Release > Delete Date-Based Criteria
• Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Adaptive Release > Edit Date-Based Criteria
• Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Edit Material Availability
• Course/Organization Control Panel (Grade Center) > Change Due Date of Grade Center Items

More on course roles in Blackboard Learn SaaS

Learn Data Pipeline Upgrade

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Blackboard is upgrading the data management process for Blackboard Learn clients with Direct Data Access (DDA). This change applies to Blackboard Learn SaaS Advantage customer institutions using DDA. Blackboard is migrating SaaS reporting data to a new state-of-the-art Snowflake database. After the migration is complete, clients will have access to a new data microservice for Blackboard Learn. You can get the same data that supports Learn's built-in reporting using the new microservice.

This change is being introduced to client sites incrementally, so you may not see it available on your system even though the 3400.3.0 release is available. Full documentation, including credential requests, user interface access, and affected Building Blocks, will be available soon.

Maintenance Items

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

You can now view 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 3400.3.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• We've updated a message in the mobile view of the Ultra Course Preview to be more consistent with the experience on desktop. Both platforms now show the user the following message:
  If you like the preview, you can permanently convert your course and save any changes you've made during the Ultra Course Preview. If you switch back to Original Course View, changes made during preview are lost.
• We've updated text for students beginning assessments without time limits in the Ultra Course View. When a student opens an assignment or a test without a time limit, the button says View assessment instead of Start attempt. This language more clearly communicates that the student is not compelled to submit the attempt after opening it if it isn't timed.
• We've improved the user experience in the new editor. Previously, when a user wanted to remove a hyperlink from a piece of text, they would need to delete the text entirely. Now, a user can simply remove the hyperlink without affecting their content.
• In both Ultra and Original courses, when instructors first access the attendance feature, they’re able to select Add Attendance and add an attendance column after attendance records are generated. In the Ultra Course View gradebook, instructors can delete attendance if no attendance records exist.
• Administrator preview for a system notification in the Ultra experience previously cut off long pieces of text. The preview now wraps text and this issues has been resolved.
• The SafeHTML filter now applies to additional files types in Blackboard Learn.
• Course content wasn't appearing as expected when a course bound to a term was archived and restored in a system that did not have the equivalent term. This issue has been resolved.
• Instructions on how to set up shared locations and web folders in the Content Collection previously displayed natively in Blackboard Learn. In this release, these instructions now lead to help.blackboard.com so the content can be kept up to date.
• Some users received a past due notification for assessments, even when they had already submitted ahead of the due date. This issue has been resolved.
• In-product help links now appear for all users on the Institution Page.

NewBoxView is default service

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.3.0 | Release to Production 4 May 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

Starting with the 3400.3.0 release, New Box View will be the default service (instead of Crocodoc) for all new Blackboard Learn installations. If your institution decided not to transition to New Box View and is upgrading to a more recent version of Blackboard Learn, this change won't affect you unless you are starting with a fresh install for the new target instance.

LTI placement improvements

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.1.0 | Release to Production 6 April 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

A number of enhancements have been made to LTI Tool Provider setup and placements:

• Administrators can now access LTI Tool Providers directly from the Administrator Panel in the Integrations menu.
• There are new naming and capabilities in the placement options for an LTI tool.
  • Under Type, the student tool has been renamed to Course tool, with availability options for students and non-students. Student Course tools appear in the Student Tools area and no longer require instructor action for students to use the tool. Non-student Course tools appear in the Control Panel for instructors and other course users with access to the Control Panel.
  • The Content Item Message tool type is now the Supports deep linking option within the Course content tool to reflect a name change by the IMS Global organization.
  • There is a new Administrator tool placement type, which lets administrators place LTI tools in the Tools and Utilities menu on the Administrator Panel.

More on LTI placements

Maintenance items for 3400.1.0

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.1.0 | Release to Production 6 April 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

You can now view 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 3400.1.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.

Miscellaneous updates

Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.1.0 | Release to Production 6 April 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience

• Instructors can sort the roster by student last name in the Ultra Course View.
• Attendance in the Original Experience now supports Internet Explorer 11.
• File attachments in the Ultra editor were not displaying as expected due to copy/paste behavior. A message has been added to the editor prompting the user to reinsert any pasted attachments to ensure they display correctly for other course members.
• Content items in the Original Course View were unexpectedly moving their position in a list after being edited. This issue has been resolved.
• Some students who had been removed from an Original course were receiving notifications regarding group activity in the course. This issue has been resolved.
• When upgrading Blackboard Learn, the Mobile Building Block’s environment setting was reset and caused issues for users searching for courses via mobile apps. This issue has been resolved.
• After an upgrade, the scrollbar in the Grade Center appeared on the left side of the screen and obscured information. This issue has been resolved.

Outcomes roles based on Institutional Hierarchy

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3400.1.0 | Release to Production 6 April 2018
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2018
Ultra Experience, Original Experience

When the centralized Assessment team demonstrates the simplicity and time-saving power of Outcomes Assessment, other departments and programs across the institution often want to take advantage of the solution and move their Assessment practices to Outcomes. Historically, though, institutions have been hesitant to roll it out to individual departments because adding Outcomes roles for users outside of the central office would grant full access to the entire institution’s evidence collections, evaluations, and reports.

With this update, we have enhanced Outcomes to respect the access limitations you’ve put in place by configuring Institutional Hierarchy. You can now assign Outcomes roles to key stakeholders within each department and these users will only be able to create evidence collections, manage evaluations, and view reports for courses within their node of the Institutional Hierarchy.

More on Outcomes Assessment in Blackboard Learn SaaS