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.
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.54+54663c8) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 22, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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Some Learn environments that use the Partner Cloud Building Block had problems with content sync. We've fixed the issue.
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.18+41e3877) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 20, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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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.
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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
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:
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We've integrated Xythos Service Packs 20 and 21, which introduce internal improvements to the content system.
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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
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 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
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
API updates
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.
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.
Details & Actions items load together
With this release, items in the Details & Actions section of the Ultra Course View will now load in a single wave. This change will prevent students and instructors from selecting the wrong item as the page loads.
Embed Office 365 documents
In this release, students and instructors can embed Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well as Microsoft Stream videos from SharePoint into the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. This option is only available with enterprise versions of Office 365.
Gradebook student list view improvements
This release introduces several improvements and new functionality for student list view in the Ultra gradebook.
- Instructors can send messages and add accommodations for a student within both the student list view and the grade details view
- Instructors can set up activity stream alerts about student inactivity and grade thresholds for themselves and their students. If their course contains enough activity and grading data, they can also see a detailed visualization of class performance.
Maintenance items
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.
Large icon updates
In this release, you’ll see new large icons in the Ultra experience. We made these changes to our icons to improve accessibility and differentiation for all users.
- Like the small icon update earlier this year, the new icons have a thicker stroke to improve accessibility.
- The new icons are more distinctive to avoid confusion between similar icons and to better support quick scanning.
Show seconds in quiz timer
With this release, students will know how much time they have left down to the last second when they take a quiz in the Ultra Course View. The quiz timer will change from minutes to seconds when less than 1 minute remains.
Show/hide overall grade column
With this release, instructors can choose whether to show or hide overall grades to their students in the Ultra 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.35+878ad8e) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 6, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't join Collaborate sessions with their course links. We've fixed the issue.
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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.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Addition to client Production release
The scheduled Production release of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.33+a603588) during off-hours on Thursday, October 1, 2020 includes an additional update.
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In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't join Collaborate sessions with their course links. 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.
Changes to deleted file retention period
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.
Expanded access to Ally in Ultra documents
Now, in the Ultra Course View, instructors and students can download Ally alternative formats for course documents in the expanded view. With Ally enabled at their institutions, instructors and students see the Ally icon in the top menu, next to the conversations icon. They can choose the alternative format that best suits their needs.
Maintenance items
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 3800.19.0: Delay for release to Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3800.19.0 release to Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for September 8, 2020, until September 11, 2020. The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Looking for older release notes?
Check out the Blackboard Learn Release Notes Archive for more information on past releases.
