Information Technology Services

Blackboard Courses

Outage category: Blackboard

Location: Online

Status: Open

Resolved Alert:

Initial Symptoms

There were a few scattered reports of students not being added to their Blackboard classes

Root Cause Analysis

Cause

Fall 2019 is the first time we are using a new method to enroll students in Blackboard – unlike the previous method the data source key from the Banner enrollment must always stay the same. It also appears Blackboard made a slight change to the way they process Banner course enrollment files. While trying to update the enrollment file to meet this change, all enrollments (student and faculty) for Fall courses were inadvertently disabled.

Resolution

We immediately fixed and uploaded a new enrollments file, but it takes around one hour to process. Once the file finished processing, all students and instructors could see and access courses again.

Prevention

Update method for enrolling students in Blackboard from Banner.