This page contains features and updates currently on Learn SaaS Test/Stage and Production environments. Visit Archived SaaS Release Notes to see features and updates in older versions.
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Blackboard Chatbot for Learn
We’re excited to announce the first availability of Blackboard Chatbot in Learn. Blackboard Chatbot is a free tool offered in Blackboard Learn that will be automatically available to SaaS clients in North America who have enabled the Ultra Base Navigation. It launches on November 5, with the 3900.0.0 Learn SaaS production release.
Seamlessly integrated into Ultra Base Navigation and Original and Ultra courses, Blackboard Chatbot provides always-on support. It returns answers to students' commonly asked Learn questions and issues directly from Blackboard Help. For this initial release, Blackboard Chatbot is available only in English.
To access Blackboard Chatbot, select the help icon in the bottom right. Then select Chat Support to open the Chatbot panel. Students can ask Blackboard Chatbot their questions or select from a pre-populated list. Chatbot uses machine learning to better serve your learners over time.
Blackboard Chatbot will be on by default, but administrators can manage its availability.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.28+4af3c58) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 27, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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Based on user feedback, we’ve removed the blue background from course-related icons in the large icon update for Ultra Course View and base navigation.
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In the Original Course View, some students could access private journal entries written by other students. Also, additional students couldn't post after the first student responded to the journal prompt. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When Learn SaaS environments were updated, Original course and organization menus reverted to the default and customizations had to be reapplied. We’ve fixed the issue.
Content editor updates
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:
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A single menu to add content that automatically recognizes file types
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Optimized experience for all devices and screen sizes
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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
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The ability to paste content from Word, Excel, and websites with basic formatting and easily remove extra HTML
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The ability to paste a link in the editor and automatically embed videos and previews
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The ability to display formatted computer code snippets
Blog performance
To improve performance for very large classes, we’ve removed the option to filter the blog participant list to display only non-participants in Original Course View.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments
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:
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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.
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The calculated grade snapshot information didn't update correctly in courses that use the Telemetry B2. We've fixed the issue.
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Learn environments ran out of memory when archiving courses with large volumes of activity accumulator records. We've fixed the issue.
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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.
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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
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.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.24+879e1a1) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 22, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, emailed announcements didn't include the announcement title in the subject line. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, students received an incorrect password error when a test used a password with certain character patterns. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View with Ally enabled, administrators couldn’t remove replaced files included in a course copy from the new course’s content collection. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't view a course document after visiting an LTI link in a learning module that uses sequential availability. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t view a test submission when SafeAssign was enabled and Respondus LockDown browser was required. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t add LTI deep linked content to their courses if SameSite cookie support was enabled in their browser. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t access the users enrolled in their course through third-party applications that use the course membership REST API. We’ve fixed the issue.
- At some institutions that use SIS integrations for notifications, a small number of user accounts were locked when notification traffic was heavy. We’ve fixed the issue.
Looking for older release notes?
Check out the Blackboard Learn Release Notes Archive for more information on past releases.
