During the last 10 days there have been periods where the Turnitin service has been unavailable. As a matter of precaution if you have submissions where students are asked to submit directly to Turnitin please advise them to allow extra time to complete submission. We will update this blog when we are aware that Turnitin is not working and provide subsequent updates.

If you have any questions please email bb-help@bristol.ac.uk.

Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

On Thursday 17th May between 5.15pm and 7.15pm work is being undertaken on the University storage systems. This work will impact the Blackboard service.

Please note that during this period we cannot guarantee that Blackboard will be available for use, so you should not plan to use Blackboard during this time.

If you have any questions please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: May 14th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

Turnitin UK are reporting intermittent problems with their service today. They are working on resolving the problem. If your students have submissions which use Turnitin please advise them to allow some extra time in case of problems.

We will update this blog when we get an update.

Posted: May 8th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

If you use a tool in Blackboard that uses a Java plug-in (e.g. Multiple file upload in the content system) you will receive a pop up box asking you to confirm the securitycertificate. Please tick the box that says always trust content from this supplier and click run.

The TEL team are working with our Technical support colleagues to apply a fix to Blackboard to stop this occurring. Once this has been applied and tested we will update this blog.

Posted: April 16th, 2012 under Service announcements, Uncategorized.
Comments: none

If you have any submissions going to Turnitin on or with a deadline close to the 3rd March – please make your students aware of the following -

TurnitinUK service may be intermittently unavailable during a scheduled maintenance period on Saturday, March 3, from 3 to 7 PM GMT

If you have any questions please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: February 27th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

The update to the building blocks has been completed and the tools are available again for use.

The following has been fixed by the update -

Posted: February 21st, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

We have received new versions of the Campus Pack tools which fix a number of problems with performance particularly in Internet Explorer. BB-Help are planning to install these new versions today. This will mean the tools will be unavailable from 3.45 until 4.45 this afternoon.

If you are aware of any activity where it is essential that these tools are available between these times please email bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: February 21st, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

We have successfully renewed the licence key.

All Blogs, Wikis and podcasts in the Blackboard system should now be working normally.

Thank you for your patience

Posted: February 20th, 2012 under Service announcements, Uncategorized.
Comments: none

We are applying the new license key required for these tools this morning.  During this process the tools will be unavilable for a short period.  Full functionality will be restored by noon. Any data currently stored within these tools will not be affected.

If you have any further questions please email bb-help@bristol.ac.uk.

Posted: February 20th, 2012 under Service announcements, Uncategorized.
Comments: none

As part of our ongoing work to improve the Blackboard service during February we will be undertaking work on our test environment. This means that it will be unavailable for periods of time with no notice. In the event that you need to gain access to data on this server and find it is unavailable please wait for a couple of hours and try again.

This environment is designed to be used primarily by ESU e-Learning staff and our technical support team for testing of new features and trouble shooting any issues that arise with the software or integrations with other systems at the university. This should not therefore be relied upon to be a back up of information to replace the local archive process. All courses should still be archived by individual academics or school support teams.

If you do use this service to gain access to information please note that as in previous years we will be clearing all of the data during the Easter break in preparation for our work over the summer. Please ensure that you download the data or take archives of any courses you think you may need.

If you have any questions or need any guidance with the archive process in Blackboard please email your request to bb-help@bristol.ac.uk.

Posted: January 30th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none