Mobile Authentication improvements

Dear Students and Staff

We are happy to announce the following improvements to the Blackboard mobile app:

  1. You will now login to Blackboard using the Blackboard Mobile app, which means the login boxes will be the proper size (no more zooming in on your phone, just type in your username and password)

  2. The app can remember your login (removing the need to login on your phone over and over again).  One small caveat, if you are using a mobile device that you share with others (ie a tablet) you should disable this – click Settings, Privacy, Remember password

  3. Push notifications which alert you when … will work more effectively.  When you get a mobile notification and click on it – you will be taken to the app, and directed to the part of Blackboard that generated the notification (until now clicking on a notification took you to the main menu of Blackboard.)

If you are able to edit Blackboard courses or organisations you will now be able to add announcements and items to your course using your mobile.

Announcements – Simply click “Add”, give it a subject and description, then click “Post” to submit it to the course.

Items – exactly the same as Announcements but you can also click attach to add files (you have lots of options of where to get things to attach – your phone, dropbox, google drive etc.  It copes with most files and will convert unusual things (Google docs etc) into a pdf.

 

How to add your Blackboard calendar to Google calendar

You can add your Blackboard calendar to Google as follows:

  1. Click on your name in the top right of Blackboard
  2. Click on the calendar icon
  3. In the bottom left of the Calendar you will see a link called “Get External calendar link”. Click on this
  4. Copy the link (Ctrl + C  or Cmd + C for Mac)
  5. Open your Google calendar
  6. Under “Other calendars” on the left click the drop down arrow
  7. Choose “Add by URL” and paste in the link (Ctrl + V or Cmd + V for Mac), then click “Add Calendar”
  8. Please note the calendar name may appear initially as a long URL (web address) , but this will then change to University of Bristol.
  9. You may wish to change the Calendar name “University of Bristol” e.g. to Blackboard . To do this click the dropdown to the right of the calendar and select Calendar settings, then edit the name and Save.

Please note that any editing of events has to be done in Blackboard.