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Release Notes

Illuminate October 2025 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 October 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Updated Features

New Columns

Date (YYYY-MM-DD)Status Entry Source Description 
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.PERSON_COURSE.ACTIVE PERSON, COURSEA value of '1' indicates the person is active, and '0' means inactive. The field is determined based on the availability indicator and row status of the course user
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.PERSON_COURSE.STUDENT_IND PERSON, COURSEA value of 'True' indicates the person is a student in the course and 'False' means they are not. This is determined based on the course role being 'S' and the person not being either a Preview or Support user 
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.COURSE.FIRST_COURSE_WEEK COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY The start date of the first week in which the course was accessed by any user 
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.COURSE.LAST_COURSE_WEEK COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY The start date of the last week in which the course was accessed by any user 
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.COURSE.FIRST_COURSE_TIME COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY The earliest date and time when the course was accessed by any user 
2025-10-06AddedCDM_LMS.COURSE.LAST_COURSE_TIME COURSE, COURSE_ACTIVITY The most recent date and time when the course was accessed by any user 

Blackboard source tables available in Snowflake for Illuminate Premium clients in Europe region 

We continue expanding the availability of Blackboard source tables to more regions. 191 source tables from Blackboard’s Open Database Schema are now available for Illuminate Premium clients in Europe. Deployment to US region will follow in later releases. The transactional database for Blackboard is normally only available to Direct Data Access customers.

These entities are available in Snowflake as views in a new LEARN schema within the existing Illuminate database. This data is refreshed every 4 hours.  

Europe region migration to Multi-tenant architecture 

Instances hosted in Europe region are migrated to Multi-tenant architecture, which is a more reliable data connection method. Migration in US region will follow in later releases.  

You can check whether your instance is multi-tenant by viewing CDM_LMS in Snowflake. Multi-tenant instances have data organized in views while single-tenant instances have data organized in tables.

Database view for a multi-tenant instance

As part of this change, the primary key (ID) field for all rows in all views is updated to be unique across all tenants, therefore any queries that reference specific IDs will need to be updated. 


Illuminate August 2025 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 8 September 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Reporting, Updated Features

Data Q&A available in Singapore AWS region 

Data Q&A is now available for clients hosted in the Singapore AWS region, which covers institutions not only in Singapore, but also in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and more.  

Using Data Q&A, viewers can ask questions based on available topics and receive an answer in the form of multiple visualizations, as well as a text-based summary generated by AI. 

Image 1: Data Q&A feature in Illuminate

Data Q&A dashboard

Key considerations

  • Institutional Authentication is required to use Data Q&A. If you don’t have this authentication in your Illuminate instance, you can request it through a support ticket at no additional cost.
  • To turn on Data Q&A, go to Settings, then Global Settings, and select Opt-in to generative AI capabilities.
  • For now, Data Q&A is available to users with access to all institutional data.  
    • By default, Administrators and Developers have this permission and can use Data Q&A.
    • You can grant Data Q&A access to Authors and Viewers users by editing the user in the settings menu and adding the “All reports - Data unrestricted” or “Data unrestricted” permission in the Reports permissions section. 

Illuminate June 2025 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 11 June 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary, Developer, New Features, Reporting, Updated Features

Our June 2025 release of Illuminate includes:

Blackboard source tables available in Snowflake for Illuminate Premium clients in Canada, Sydney, and Singapore

The transactional database for Blackboard is normally only available to Direct Data Access customers. 191 source tables from Blackboard’s Open Database Schema are now available to Illuminate Premium clients in Canada, Sydney, and Singapore. Deployment to the EU and the USA will follow in later releases. 

These entities are available in Snowflake as views in a new LEARN schema within the existing Illuminate database. These tables are refreshed every 4 hours. Other canonical data models have an overnight refresh rate.

Note that these are not documented in the data dictionary, but existing documentation is available on our help pages. The new 191 tables included in Illuminate are documented in an Excel file. 

Image 1. A query with LEARN schema source tables in Snowflake.

Snowflake, with LEARN tables on the left and SQL on the right

Video Studio data mapped with Blackboard

The existing canonical data model for Mapping (CDM_MAP) was updated to map users and courses between Video Studio (CDM_MEDIA) and Blackboard (CDM_LMS) canonical data modes. Two columns were added to CDM_MAP: 

  • MEDIA_CONTAINER_ID in the CDM.MAP_COURSE table
  • MEDIA_PERSON_ID in the CDM.MAP_PERSON table 

Entities are documented in the data dictionary.

This release also includes the following bug fixes:

Learning

  • Fixed an issue with Student Summary where some visuals were filtered based on course start date instead of activity date. Minor improvements were also released.
  • Fixed an issue with Social & Collaborative Engagement which excluded inactive students due to date filtering based on last access instead of course creation date.

Leading

  • Fixed an issue with Learning Tools Adoption where some tool types were not included.

Teaching

  • Fixed an issue with Course Summary where the Student Engagement and Performance tab included data from non-student roles.

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 11 June 2025 
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2025-06-10AddedCDM_MAP.PERSON.MEDIA_PERSON_IDAnthology IlluminateForeign key that references the primary key of the CDM_MEDIA.PERSON entity.
2025-06-10AddedCDM_MAP.COURSE.MEDIA_CONTAINER_IDAnthology IlluminateForeign key that references the primary key of the CDM_MEDIA.CONTAINER entity.

Illuminate May 2025 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 26 May 2025
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

Our May 2025 release includes:

New canonical data model for Video Studio (CDM_MEDIA)

Video Studio is a Premium Blackboard capability that allows instructors to create accessible and engaging video content for their courses. 

Now, Video Studio data is available in Illuminate. Developers can explore Video Studio data in Snowflake to analyze this tool's usage and adoption in their institutions. 

We added a new canonical data model for Video Studio (CDM_MEDIA). The canonical data model contains 6 tables: 

  • ACTIVITY: User interactions with videos such as load, playback, pause, and resume, as well as the duration of the action.
  • CONTAINER: Information about where videos are allocated.
  • INSTANCE: Video Studio instance, one per Blackboard tenant.
  • MEDIA: Video information such as duration, size, type, and creation date.
  • PERSON: User identifier for both owners and viewers of videos.
  • SESSION_ACTIVITY: Aggregation of all the actions from the ACTIVITY table per user session, giving an overview of the duration played back in each unique session. 

Tables and data details are in the data dictionary. We published a Video Studio query in our queries repository in GitHub. You can use this query as a base to start exploring Video Studio data. 

This change is retroactive. Historical data for Video Studio is available. 

Image 1. A Video Studio query in Snowflake is searching the MEDIA table. 

The MEDIA table of Video Studio in Snowflake

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 26 May 2025 
CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2025-05-26AddedCDM_MEDIAVideo StudioA new canonical data model for Video Studio data.

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 14 April 2025
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

 

Blackboard SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2025-04-14ModifiedCDM_TLM-ULTRA_EVENTS-EVENT_TYPEBLACKBOARD_DATA.CDM_TLM.ULTRA_EVENTS.EVENT_TYPEAdded new event types in the CDM_TLM_ULTRA_EVENTS table. The event types that are now included are PANEL CLOSED, PAGE VIEW, and CHANGE. The existing CLICK event now captures all user interactions with any clickable element.

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 July 2024
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2024-06-21 AddedCDM_CRMAnthology ReachA new canonical sub-model for CRM data, to be populated with data from Anthology Reach CRM in a later release.

Blackboard Data Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 July 2024
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2024-06-21AddedCDM_CRMAnthology ReachA new canonical sub-model for CRM data, to be populated with data from Anthology Reach CRM in a later release.

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 30 April 2024
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

 

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2024-04-17 AddedCDM_LMS-COURSE_ITEM-AI_STATUS LEARN. AI_STATE A new column in the CDM_LMS-COURSE_ITEM table with an indicator that defines the AI Design Assistant use.
The PERSON_ID field needs to be populated with the ID of the user who accepted the AI-generated content

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 26 March 2024
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

 

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2024-02-27 ChangedCDM_LMS.GRADE LEARN.GRADE The logic was updated, ensuring that all calculated grades are now available in the Canonical Data Model. 

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 January 2024
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

 

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD)StatusEntrySourceDescription
2024-01-19AddedCDM_LMS-PERSON-JOB_TITLELEARN.USERS.JOB_TITLEA new column in the CDM_LMS_PERSON table with the job of the person was added.
2024-01-19AddedCDM_LMS-PERSON-DEPARTMENTLEARN.USERS.DEPARTMENTA new column in the CDM_LMS_PERSON table with the department the person is part of was added.
2024-01-19AddedCDM_LMS-PERSON-COMPANYLEARN.USERS.COMPANYA new column in the CDM_LMS_PERSON table with the company the person is part of was added.
2023-12-21AddedDATA_SRC_BATCHUIDDATA_SOURCEA new element to the stage attribute of the PERSON and COURSE tables was added to include the BATCH_UID from the DATA_SOURCE table.

Illuminate Developer Canonical Data Model changes

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 November 2023
Developer, CDM Changes, Data Dictionary

 

Blackboard Learn SaaS CD Releases
Date (YYYY-MM-DD) Status Entry Source Description

2023-10-25

Added CDM_LMS.ATTEMPT

LEARN.ATTEMPT

A new table that displays information about attempts on course items, such as assignments, blogs, or wikis.

2023-10-25

Changed

CDM_LMS.GRADE

LEARN.ATTEMPT

Updated with calculations from LEARN.ATTEMPT table.


 

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