[Closed] Intermittent issue loading Re/Play videos

Some people are experiencing intermittent issues when trying to view Re/Play videos, receiving an error message stating “The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format cannot be supported.” This has been reported to the supplier of the Re/Play service, who has replicated the issue and is investigating the root cause. They hope to have resolved this soon.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

[Closed] Blackboard access disruption for some Internet Service Providers

Blackboard has performed maintenance work this morning to improve the reliability and robustness of their network. For some Internet Service Providers (ISPs), this work is taking time to propagate through their networks, resulting in some people having difficulty in accessing Blackboard globally. The issue should resolve itself in time. In the meantime, if you are having difficulty accessing Blackboard, you may be able to resolve this by using a different ISP; for example, you could:

  • use a mobile phone as a hotspot
  • use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
  • move to a different location (such as on campus) to connect to a different network.

[Closed] Persistent Blackboard access disruption

The Blackboard access issue from yesterday, which was fixed by Blackboard at source, is persisting for some users today – notably, people attempting to access Blackboard on campus. IT Services is investigating why this is the case, supported by Blackboard. In the meantime, you may be able to access Blackboard using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or by using a mobile phone as a hotspot.

If you are still encountering problems on your own device, you can attempt to resolve them by flushing your DNS, using the instructions found on the IT Services status page.

[Resolved] Intermittent Blackboard access disruption

From around 8 am today, a global Domain Name Server issue disrupted access to Blackboard (and linked) services for some users, while others were unaffected. Whether or not you were affected was due to the route taken through the Internet from your computer to the Blackboard servers. Blackboard put a fix in place soon after the incident was observed, but due to the nature of the issue, this has taken some time to propagate to all users. Blackboard has informed us that a normal service should be restored for all users by 5 pm today.

[Resolved] Students not receiving submission receipts (and other Blackboard issues)

Between around 12.00 and 1.15 today, a global Domain Name Server issue affected the blackboard.com domain, meaning that some services that need to access this domain were unable to. These included accessing Turnitin and Qwickly Attendance through Blackboard, and there was also a delay in submission receipts arriving (due to domain checks in mail servers). This issue has now been resolved, and all services should be working normally.

Access to the University’s Blackboard environment was unaffected.

Changes to sender address used for Blackboard announcement emails

A change has occurred to the address that announcement emails in Blackboard are sent from. Previously, email announcements were sent from “no-reply@bristol.ac.uk <donotreply@blackboard.com>”. This has changed to include the email address of the announcement creator, eg “an.other@bristol.ac.uk <no-reply@bristol.ac.uk>”. If you have any email filters set up to detect these emails, they may need to be updated.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this change.