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About Qwickly

Qwickly is a productivity platform for Blackboard Learn. With the Qwickly module, instructors can make courses available, send emails, post announcements, and post content to multiple courses at once. Qwickly connects students together, facilitating group interaction. Qwickly also allows institutions to connect cloud storage partners to Blackboard. Instructors and students can add documents from DropBox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, link to files, and add files to content areas and assignments.

More on how students use Qwickly

More on how instructors use Qwickly

Watch a video about Qwickly

The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.


Video: Installing and Activating Qwickly for K-12 shows you how to configure Qwickly.

Availability and deployment

The Qwickly Building Block is available in the extensions library. You can also download and install Qwickly directly from their website. If your Blackboard Learn instance is self-hosted, you must enable the building block after you download it. Qwickly provides the license key, which you can enter to start using the Qwickly Cloud service. Managed Hosting customers should open a Behind the Blackboard ticket to do a rolling restart of all the app servers to get the full update once Qwickly is installed. Qwickly is bundled with Blackboard Learn SaaS deployments and available to use in the Original Experience.

Configure Qwickly

To begin, install and enable the Qwickly Building Block in your Blackboard Learn environment.

More resources are available at the Qwickly website

  1. In the Administrator Panel, go to Building Blocks > Installed Tools.
  2. Find Qwickly in the list, and select Settings from its menu. It will prompt you to create a Qwickly ID. The Qwickly ID is a unique identifier for each institution or school. If you don't already have a Qwickly ID, select I don't have a Qwickly ID! to generate one.
  3. Use the Qwickly ID to initiate the license.
  4. Once you have initiated the Qwickly license, configure Qwickly on the following page. If you need to configure Qwickly settings after initially enabling it, go to Qwickly Settings in the Tools menu on the Administrator Panel.

    Watch a video on configuring Qwickly settings.

  5. In Qwickly settings, select the tools you want to include, set your semester code, and select Submit.

    You must configure the tool before using it. If you are upgrading the tool, you must still go in to Qwickly settings after installation and save the settings, even if nothing has changed.

    • Qwickly+Cloud: To initiate the cloud connectors, go the Support tab and request the cloud connectors for each service. This will typically take 24 hours.
    • Semester Code: An optional string of text that targets specific sets of courses. For instance, if you want Qwickly to only apply to courses with course IDs that start with 2013SU, enter that into the Semester Code block. Semester codes can come at the beginning, end, or even in the middle of the course ID. If you leave Semester Code blank, Qwickly's tools will apply to all courses.
    • Qwickly Tools: Select the tools available. Available tools will be seen by faculty and students. Students only see Submit Assignment, Email Instructor, and Email Group Members.

  6. To initiate cloud connectors such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive, go to the Support tab and select the cloud connectors to initiate. It typically takes 24 hours to complete the request due to the hosting providers approval process.

Add a Qwickly module

  1. In the Communities menu on the Administrator Panel, select Tabs and Modules > Modules.
  2. Locate the Qwickly module and select Edit Properties in its menu.
  3. On this page you can:
    • Make the module available to the appropriate users. Typically, you just have to make it available at the system level.
    • Clear the Allow Asynchronous Loading option. This option allows the module to load after other elements on the page, even if it loads out of order.
  4. When you're finished, select Submit.
  5. Deploy the Qwickly module as you would any other module on your Home tab.

    Blackboard recommends deploying Qwickly in the top left position of your home tab.

Watch a video to learn more about deploying Qwickly as a module

Add a Qwickly tool

You can deploy Qwickly as a tool on the main tab of Blackboard. You may want to use this option if your Blackboard Learn environment doesn't use communities.

  1. On the Administrator Panel, go to Tabs and Modules > Tool Panel.
  2. Select Add Tool.
  3. Type a title for the tooland select Qwickly from the tool select menu.
  4. Choose the tool availability.
  5. When you're finished, select Submit.

Watch a video to learn more about deploying Qwickly as a tool

Add a Qwickly course tool

  1. In the Tools and Utilities menu on the Administrator Panel, go to Tools.
  2. Find Qwickly in the list, and turn on all of the options for courses. Apply the changes for New and Existing Courses.
  3. Select Submit.

You can check to see if the tool is available in a course by entering a content area (such as Course Documents) and selecting Build Content > Upload Cloud Content.

Watch a video to learn more about turning on Qwickly tools in courses

Web services

Qwickly uses a number of Blackboard web services, which must be turned on for Qwickly to work correctly. If you encounter an error that includes a message with a .WS, chances are that the web services for that item are not available to Qwickly. These errors would look similar to the following:

  • operation Announcement.WS.createCourseAnnouncements is invalid
  • [WSFW005] Attempt to use a tool-only method (CourseMembership.WS.getCourseRoles) when authenticated as a user

Use the error message you receive to target the specific web service you need to turn on.

Turn on web services

  1. On the Administrator Panel, go to Web Services under the Integrations section.
  2. Locate the Web Service Name that corresponds to the error message you received. In the above examples, these are Announcement.WS and CourseMembership.WS.
  3. Open the menu for the desired Web Service. Select Operations.
  4. Locate the operation that corresponds to the error message you received and make sure the restrictions are set to Permit Any Authorized Access. In the above examples, the operations are createCourseAnnouncements and getCourseRoles.
Common Questions