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See the latest changes for Blackboard Web Community Manager.
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Web Community Manager 2020 Release 6 (2.44)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 6 (2.44) includes:
- New and Classic Page Editing update
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
New Page Editing
Classic Page Editing will be removed from sites and replaced with our New Page Editing with the July release, currently slated for July 28, 2020. This date is tentative and could change, so be sure to watch our release notes for updated information as we have it! There's nothing you'll need to do to enable it, the transition will happen automatically with the update. Please contact support if you have any questions!
New Site Manager design
Our Site Manager interface is getting a face-lift! We're excited to launch a new Site Manager Ultra design! All the administrative tools, reports, and content apps remain the same, but we've updated the look and feel to be more user-friendly. It's a big change, we know, so we're giving you lots of time to get ready for it. You can choose to move to the new Ultra interface or keep the current interface until the July 2020.
Ready to try it out? Navigate to System Settings in Site Manager and select Enable Site Manager Ultra Styling!
Design ready template information
Our Design Ready Templates require updates when defects are found, accessibility guidelines change, new WCM features change, etc. We've made it easier for you to keep track of updates with our subscription service. When an update has been applied to a Design Ready Template that you have subscribed to, you receive an email with the release information. You can review the release information before clicking the "Update" button for the template.
Bug fixes and enhancements
- Files in sections deleted from the recycle bin were still available
- Thumbnail images being flagged as null
- Optimized performance
Technical Requirements
Here are the Web Community Manager End-User Technical Requirements and the Blackboard Privacy Policy updated to reflect the Blackboard brand.
Refresh Your Cache
It's always a good practice to clear your browser cache on a regular basis. Refresh your Cache shows you how to clear your cache in any browser.
Resources and Materials
As always, you can find resources and materials related to this release as well as to the many features and functions on the Help site. Core Resources, Hot Help Topics, Apps Showroom, Training and Creative—we’ve got the information you need to succeed with your Web Community Manager website.
Web Community Manager 2020 Release 5 (2.43)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 5 (2.43) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2020 Release 4 (2.42)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 4 (2.42) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2020 Release 3 (2.41)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 3 (2.41) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Activate Your Free Crisis Subsite For Consolidated Coronavirus Communications
As your partner in education we have a responsibility to give you the best resources for communicating with your community about updates regarding the Coronavirus. To help you create one location to share information, we are offering you a crisis subsite at no charge until the outbreak is resolved.
We recommend you populate this subsite with important information on Coronavirus, including school schedule changes, best practices for cleanliness, and state and local guidelines. This will allow you to keep your community informed while managing all the content in one location. To help you get started, here's an example of what a crisis site might look like.
Crisis template download steps
- Navigate to Configure in Site Manager
- Select Templates
- Under available templates select Standard
- Select Download & Preview next to Crisis Management
- Select I’m done when the popup of the template shows
- Select More and select License
- Select the Inactive button to the left of the template name
Subsite activation steps
- Navigate to Sites in Site Manager
- Add the Crisis template to New Subsite
- Select the Inactive button to the left of the site name
We expect you'll see increased traffic on these pages and recommend these best practices when building out your content:
- Avoid using record-based apps like the Headlines & Features or Blog apps. These apps open the content in separate, non-cached pages, which may slow page performance.
- Keep your content simple. Limit images, rotating galleries, videos, and embedded documents and stick with just text. When your site is likely to receive unusually heavy traffic, it’s better to use available resources to serve relatively simple content to very large numbers of visitors.
- Create a friendly URL (e.g. /coronavirus), but always directly hyperlink to your subsite when directing people there from other channels.
- If your template is resource-intensive (e.g. it makes use of Mega Menus in the Channel Bar, Media Rotator, etc.), performance may be impacted. You might consider discussing alternatives with your account team and/or Creative Services.
Blackboard is dedicated to working with you and your district to ensure you’re able to get critical information out to your students, their families, and the community in a timely manner. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at [email protected] for assistance.
As your partner in education we have a responsibility to give you the best resources for communicating with your community about updates regarding the Coronavirus. To help you create one location to share information, we are offering you a crisis subsite at no charge until the outbreak is resolved.
We recommend you populate this subsite with important information on Coronavirus, including school schedule changes, best practices for cleanliness, and state and local guidelines. This will allow you to keep your community informed while managing all the content in one location. To help you get started, here's an example of what a crisis site might look like.
Crisis template download steps
- Navigate to Configure in Site Manager
- Select Templates
- Under available templates select Standard
- Select Download & Preview next to Crisis Management
- Select I’m done when the popup of the template shows
- Select More and select License
Subsite activation steps
- Navigate to Sites in Site Manager
- Add the Crisis template to New Subsite
- Select the Inactive button to the left of the site name
We expect you'll see increased traffic on these pages and recommend these best practices when building out your content:
- Avoid using record-based apps like the Headlines & Features or Blog apps. These apps open the content in separate, non-cached pages, which may slow page performance.
- Keep your content simple. Limit images, rotating galleries, videos, and embedded documents and stick with just text. When your site is likely to receive unusually heavy traffic, it’s better to use available resources to serve relatively simple content to very large numbers of visitors.
- Create a friendly URL (e.g. /coronavirus), but always directly hyperlink to your subsite when directing people there from other channels.
- If your template is resource-intensive (e.g. it makes use of Mega Menus in the Channel Bar, Media Rotator, etc.), performance may be impacted. You might consider discussing alternatives with your account team and/or Creative Services.
Blackboard is dedicated to working with you and your district to ensure you’re able to get critical information out to your students, their families, and the community in a timely manner. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at [email protected] for assistance.
Web Community Manager 2020 Release 2 (2.40)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 2 (2.40) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2020 Release 1 (2.39)
Here's what the 2020 Product Release 1 (2.39) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 8 (2.38)
Here's what the 2019 Product Release 8 (2.38) includes:
- New Site Manager design
- Design ready template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 7 (2.37)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 7 (2.37) includes:
- Design ready template information
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 6 (2.36)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 6 (2.36) includes:
- New in-app messaging feature
- Bug fixes
Design Ready Templates Updates
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 5 (2.35)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 5 (2.35) includes:
- Minor enhancements
- Security improvements
- Bug fixes
Minor enhancements
- increased the stability of Google calendar sync
- security improvements
Bug fixes
- Google calendar
- fixed the repair icon so it displays working until the repair is complete.
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 4 (2.34)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 4 (2.34) includes:
- Minor enhancements
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 3 (2.33)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 3 (2.33) includes:
- Design template updates
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 2 (2.32)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 2 (2.32) includes:
- New page editing on the homepage
- Updated features
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2019 Release 1 (2.31)
Here is what the 2019 Product Release 1 (2.31) includes:
- New page editing on the homepage
- Enhanced page editing
- Bug fixes
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 9 (2.30)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 9 (2.30) includes:
- Updated features
- Bug fixes
Design Ready Templates Updates
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.23) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 8 (2.29)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 8 (2.29) includes:
- New features
- Updated issues
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 7 (2.28)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 7 (2.28) includes:
- Updated features
- Resolved issues
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 6 (2.27)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 6 (2.27) includes:
- Bug fixes and resolved issues
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.19.4) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally 1.19.4 release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.19) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally 1.19 release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.17) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 5 (2.26)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 5 (2.26) includes:
- Headlines & Features app improvement
- Bug fixes and resolved issues
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 4 (2.25)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 4 (2.25) includes:
- Calendar improvement
- Accessibility improvements
- Bug fixes and resolved issues
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.16.2) contains bug fixes and other improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally 1.16.2 release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 3 (2.24)
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 3 (2.24) includes:
- Calendar updates
- Table app improvements
- Bug fixes and resolved issues
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 2 (2.23)
Continuous Delivery 2.23 | Release to Production April 2018
New Features, Updated features
Here is what the 2018 Product Release 2 (2.23) includes.
- Disable self registration
- Improvements to social media sharing
- Updates to SAML certificates
- Updates to Blackboard Ally widget
- Closed caption file option with the Premium Video App
- CERC help content migration to help.blackboard.com
Web Community Manager 2018 Release 1 (2.22)
Continuous Delivery 2.22 | Release to Production February 2018
New Features, Updated features
Here is what the 2018 Release 1 (2.22) includes.
- Continuous integration with Blackboard Ally
- Calendar upgrades
- Resolved issues
Ally 1.12 | Release to production 20 December, 2017
Web Community Manager (WCM) integration
The Ally integration for Web Community Manager (WCM) is now available. WCM is distinct from Ally’s other integrations, as WCM is a content management system that is mostly used by K-12 schools and districts in the US.
In the first release of the Ally - Web Community Manager integration, Ally provides the ability to check the pages and embedded media in a WCM instance for accessibility issues, and generates an accessibility report similar to the LMS institutional report. Instructor feedback and alternative formats are on the roadmap for future releases.
More on Ally in Web Community Manager
WYSIWYG content reporting
Ally 1.12 introduces the ability to check content created in the LMS (through the text/WYSIWYG editor) for accessibility issues, and includes this data in the institutional report.
This allows Ally to review a significantly larger part of the LMS content, and is a first step towards providing alternative formats and instructor feedback for this content.
This feature is currently only available for Instructure Canvas. Blackboard Learn, Moodle, and Blackboard Open LMS require additional APIs and/or push notifications to support this feature. Those teams are working hard on this additional functionality, and we are hoping to enable WYSIWYG content reporting for Blackboard Learn, Moodle, and Blackboard Open LMS as soon as possible.
Additional language support
Ally is now available in these languages.
- German
- Italian
- Turkish
Availability in these languages includes the Ally interface, as well as the alternative formats (including the audio format).
Ally 1.12 was originally going to include the ability to post alternative descriptions for images provided through the instructor feedback back into the LMS, and we have been working with all of you to make the required API permission updates. However, not all institutions have been able to make these permission changes in time. Therefore, the feature has not been enabled yet, as we didn’t want to introduce any risk over the holidays. The current plan is to enable this feature during the first week of January.
Web Community Manager 2017 Release 5 (2.21)
Here is what the 2017 Product Release 5 (2.21) includes.
- Blackboard Ally for Web Community Manager
- Resolved issues
Web Community Manager 2017 Release 4 (2.20)
- New Sign-in With Google Login
- Cloud Storage Dropbox Integration
- Page Editing Experience Enhancements
- Dashboard Personalization Enhancements
- Paging For Apps With Many Records Enhancements
- Added support for SAML for Active Directory Federation Services ADFS4.0
Web Community Manager 2017 Release 3 (2.19)
- Legacy WYSIWYG Editor Upgrade
- Cloud Storage Integration
- New Image Editor
- Page Editing Experience Enhancements
- Dashboard Enhancements
- On-screen Alerts Enhancements
- Section Recycle Bin Enhancements
- New PassKeys
Web Community Manager 2017 Release 2 (2.18)
- Update to Google Custom Search
- New page editing experience now available
- Integrated Dashboard supports student accounts and includes all assignments by class
- User Management lets you see where a user can edit
- New PassKeys have been added to the library: Bb Classroom, SkyCentral Community Engagement Engine
- New Section Recycle Bin to house deleted sections until permanently deleted or restored
- Email addresses in the Staff Directory app and About Teacher app will be obfuscated to protect them from being harvested by bots
- File Library App enhanced to link to the file from the title and now opens PDFs in the browser
- A link to download the file has been added to the Document Viewer app
- LDAP Group Cross Reference supports searching for Group DNs
