Migration Methods

Thinking of moving your Blackboard Learn environment to Managed Hosting or SaaS? You have two options:

• Course-based migration: This method is recommended if you want to migrate only certain courses, not bring over legacy content/data, or otherwise "start from scratch" with a clear installation of Blackboard Learn. This option also has more flexibility in terms of downtime because you can choose when to move certain groups of courses to the new environment.
• Full system migration: This method is recommended if you require a high-level of continuity between your old and new systems. It is also recommended if you want to retain all of your settings, brand customizations, etc. With this option, your entire Blackboard Learn environment is migrated in one go.

You will receive a single data migration with either method, supported by Blackboard staff, as part of the licensing and adoption of the Managed Hosting or SaaS offering of Blackboard Learn.

Course-based migration

For course-based migration, Blackboard staff will help you form a plan to archive the courses you want to migrate from your existing Blackboard Learn instance. We will restore those archived courses to the new environment.

• Course-based migration is recommended if you want to take the opportunity of moving to Managed Hosting or SaaS deployment option to clean up your implementation and start fresh.

  Migration of historical data in building blocks may not be retained or may require additional planning.

• Course-based migration is the only option if you are migrating from other Blackboard-provided learning management systems (LMS), such as ANGEL or Vista/CE, to Blackboard Learn SaaS.
• Course-based migration may also support third-party LMS platforms that support the Common Cartridge spec. This will be evaluated on a system-by-system basis.

When planning a course migration, you may be able to minimize impact with careful planning, moving the majority of courses before they begin or after they have finished, and by considering the associated term dates.

Full system migration

Full system migration is more complex and time-consuming than course-based migration. However, all of your legacy data will come across. For full system migration, Blackboard will provide guidance for how to export your database and file system. After you provide the exported database and file system to Blackboard, our staff conducts the necessary conversions to the data and file system structure to restore the data and files to the new environment.

• Full system migration is recommended if you require a high-level of continuity between your old and new systems. It is also recommended if you want to retain all of your settings, brand customizations, etc.

• Blackboard will endeavor to also migrate data for Blackboard-developed building blocks (e.g. SafeAssign) as well as third-party Premier Partner building blocks (e.g. McGraw-Hill Connect, etc.).

  Full data migration may not be possible for all Building Blocks.

• Full system migration is not supported for clients migrating from ANGEL, Vista/CE, or a third-party LMS.

With a full system migration, the entire Blackboard Learn environment is moved to the new environment during a single migration window.