Illuminate November 2025 Release
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 November 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary
New canonical data model for Ally
Accessibility data is key for institutions to guide decisions and support inclusive digital environments, identify faculties and courses that need improvement in accessibility, evaluate the adoption of accessibility tools and have support to comply with AX regulations and laws.
Now, Ally score data is available in Illuminate in the new canonical data model CDM_ALY. Its refresh rate is every 12 hours. CDM_ALY is available for institutions with Blackboard as their LMS. Please note that this initial release does not yet map Ally data to other Blackboard data models, such as CDM_LMS.
Ally data is available in Snowflake, where administrators can create custom queries to report on various aspects of the accessibility performance at your institution.
Tables and data details are in the Data Dictionary. You can use these queries published in the GitHub queries repository to start exploring Ally data:
| Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Status | Entry | Source | Description |
| 2025-10-24 | Added | CDM_ALY | Ally | A new canonical data model for Ally. |
Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 November 2025
Updated Features, Administrator
Improvements in first time user experience and user management
To improve the first-time user experience of Illuminate Reporting, administrators can now create and configure new users prior to the user’s first login. This ensures that new users can access appropriate reports and data on their first access.
From the License Management tab in Settings, use the new Create User option to enter the exact username and identity provider for an existing Blackboard user, and then configure their Illuminate permissions. The user will appear in the user list. You need to assign the user an Illuminate role in Blackboard Administrator panel or by adding the user to the correspondent SAML group.
Image 1: New user creation menu
Other improvements
This release also includes several improvements to user list and permissions management:
- User deletion: Administrator can delete viewer users in the user list, freeing up a user seat in your license. Be sure to remove the user’s roles in Blackboard or SAML to fully revoke access to Illuminate. Deletion of Administrators and Authors is not yet supported.
- Live Institutional Hierarchy permissions: Hierarchy Nodes permissions, previously updated through a nightly process, are now refreshed in real time.
- License identification: Your Illuminate license type (Core or Premium) is now visible in the License Management tab in Settings.
- User roles and identity provider: The user list now displays each user’s assigned roles and corresponding identity provider.
- Full list sorting: All columns in the user list are now sortable for easier navigation and management.
Image 2: Improved user list in License Management tab in Settings
