On Sunday 29th December, between 01:00 and 07:00 Anthology (Blackboard) will perform routine maintenance on our Blackboard environment. This activity will require downtime, users will be unable to access Blackboard during this period and may see a “503 Service Temporary Unavailable” error message.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
[Resolved] Turnitin delays in the generation of similarity reports
On Monday, 9 December at 11:38 AM, Turnitin resolved the issue causing delays in the generation of Turnitin similarity reports.
Students were not affected by this issue and were able to submit their work. The incident did not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Xerte upgrade 17th December
IT Services will be upgrading Xerte to version 3.13 between 8am and 1pm on Tuesday 17th December. During this time, Xerte resources will be unavailable to staff and students. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.
This upgrade brings security updates and improved functionality, including:
- New page types including Audio Recorder and Compare Images
- Enhancements to existing functionality
- Editor enhancement
You can read the full set of upgrade features and enhancements on the 3.13 release notes page.
We will update the blog when Xerte is available again. If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
[Closed] Turnitin delays in the generation of similarity reports
We have been informed that users may currently experience some delays in the generation of Turnitin similarity reports. However, students can continue to submit their work, as this incident does not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.
The supplier is actively working to restore the service to optimal performance, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We will provide updates as we have them.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
[RESOLVED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard
Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 on December 3.
Original post: https://blackboard.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2024/12/03/open-issues-accessing-other-tools-via-blackboard/
[CLOSED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard
Update: Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 today.
There is a global issue creating intermittent issues with accessing other tools and services through Blackboard. This is affecting, for example, access to Re/Play, Turnitin and Marks Extract. The Blackboard engineers have identified the issue and are working on fixing it. We will provide an update on this blog as soon as we have one.
If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Lecture Recording Issue – Friday 15th November 2024
We are aware of an issue affecting the automatic recording of some lectures on Friday 15 November 2024. While most scheduled recordings were successfully processed, some sessions were not recorded due to the recording ‘red light’ not activating.
To avoid disruptions, we recommend checking that the red light activates at the start of your session. If it doesn’t, you can use the Record Now feature to manually start the recording. Instructions for using Record Now are available on our Lecture Capture pages. Manually started recordings will appear in your ‘My Re/Play’ area and can be added to your Blackboard course space in several ways.
If you have been affected by a recording not being captured, and a recording from a previous year could serve as a useful substitute for your students, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for assistance in sharing it.
We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our team is actively working with the supplier to investigate and resolve the issue.
[CLOSED] No access to complex release conditions in Blackboard Ultra
(21/11/24)This issue was addressed in a patch from Blackboard. Full functionality has now been returned to Blackboard Ultra’s Release Conditions.
Access to complex, multiple-rule release conditions in Blackboard Ultra courses is currently unavailable. This is preventing the establishment of new rules and the review and verification of existing rules. We understand the potential impact of this and the concern it may cause.
Alongside Blackboard, we’re urgently investigating the cause of this issue and seeking a resolution as soon as possible. We will provide updates here when they are available.
If you have any concerns or questions about this, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
[Closed] Slow document conversion when submitting to Blackboard Ultra
(Update: 21.11.24: This issue has now been addressed by Blackboard and normal service has resumed)
We have been made aware that the document preview interface for submitting a Blackboard Ultra assignment is currently taking longer than usual to load. Please note that this does not affect students’ ability to submit their files.
If, when uploading a file, a student encounters delays in the document preview loading, or the message “The conversion needs more time. Please try again later,” they can proceed with the submission without waiting for the conversion to complete, provided they are confident they have attached the correct file.
After submission, they should return to the submission point and click the download icon to verify that their work has been uploaded correctly. If everything appears as intended, they can consider their work submitted and record their receipt number as usual.
This issue is currently affecting multiple universities. We have reported it to Blackboard and will provide updates once it has been resolved.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
SafeAssign Maintenance, Tuesday 19 November
On Tuesday, 19 November, between 11:00 and 13:00, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.
During this time, the service will be completely unavailable, and any submissions will need to be resubmitted after the maintenance. This upgrade is critical for improving system performance and ensuring more efficient plagiarism detection for Blackboard.
If you have any questions about this update, please refer to the Blackboard support, or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.