Use this page to help you plan for the technical aspects of phasing out Collaborate Original in 2020.

Specific dates for your region on Behind the Blackboard

If you would like assistance with the planning and change management efforts, our consulting services team can work with you to guide you through the planning efforts, identify training needs, and create a customized approach for your institution. Learn more by reviewing our Consulting Services Catalog or contacting your Account Representative.

Follow this page to get email updates when we update it.

Current usage in Collaborate Original

The first step is to pull usage reports to determine your top users, number of sessions, and quantity of recordings.

Review the data and consider your institution’s approach creating user accounts, scheduling sessions, managing recordings, and preparing courses for an upcoming semester. Instructors and other stand alone Collaborate Administrators/Supervisors may take a more significant role in the transition process, if your institution has a decentralized approach and a large number of users, sessions, and recordings.”

More information about reports

Communication

Create a communication plan to alert these individuals:

  • Instructors who use Collaborate Original inside of a Learning Management System (LMS) integration
  • Users who use Collaborate Original outside of an LMS integration for meetings, project teams, virtual offices, scheduled webinars, etc.

Consider targeted communications and follow up with users who have recently used a Collaborate Original session or accessed a Collaborate Original recording.

This should be done far enough in advance so that instructors have time to download their recordings from the current semester or past semesters, redesign their instructional session activities for the new Collaborate Ultra workflows, and practice with the new tools prior to the next semester starting.

Please note that Collaborate Original links will be broken and recordings unavailable once your region reaches the EOS date.

End of Support (EOS) Resources

You have access to the original VCR recording files. To play these files, you first need to convert them into Unplugged standalone recording by using the Publish application. Since Publish and the “Unplugged” recording require Java 8 runtime to be installed, we suggest using Publish to convert the VCR recording files into MP4 file, which can be played back anywhere.

Use Blackboard Collaborate Publish to create standalone recordings

Enable Collaborate Ultra

Similar to Collaborate Original, you can utilize Collaborate Ultra inside or outside of an LMS integration.

Prepare your users for Collaborate Ultra

You also need to plan and support your Collaborate users with using the new Collaborate Ultra tool.