Hot Topics

Scott Randle asked as a new Blackboard Administrator how does a new administrator get what he needs to know to success.  Many suggestions were offered including:

·         Blackboard Training

·         Listservs

·         Users Groups

Individual Reports

Travis - All is well

Tigon – All is well

Randy – Added the Assessment Patch this past Saturday and no issues
Monday delete 1,300 2-year-old sections and this cause Garbage Collection to oddly for a few days

***Randy will also email to Mary and she will distribute SQL script for the Oracle database.

Pete – reference Randy’s work on data reporting including counts, activities, concurrent sessions, etc. for 30 months.  He is using PowerScript to track past history of student and tool use.

Paula – All is well, no problems, no headaches

Matt – continuing talking with Seneca and Grand Rapids Community College about presenting on November 19, 2009 on Project Astro

Marianne – continuing work with Managed Hosting

Karen – Concerns with Garbage Collection failing, Restore Backup files cannot be restored.  All appear to be related to database issues.  They have received Content Search Index scripts but still having issues so they are running new oracle updates, new scripts and creating new indexes.  They hope to have resolution to these issues in a week.

Jamie – asked about the new “Save All” scripts.  Both Randy and David said they ran fine.  Down time should be no more than 30 minutes.  Jamie will probably run it this weekend.

David – Offered clarification that the config.html file in the 8.0.3 manual is wrong, correct file is :

<sub-deployment><name>InboundQueue.ConnectionFactory</name><target></sub-deployment> (not WebCTVistaCluster)

David also reported the patch Randy provided is working well

Wants to know why people are moving to 64-bit Java.  Do you need to run a 64_bit OS to run this and the consistence is yes.

Bryant – minor issues, more later

Brett – asking for any information on Windows 64-bet on nodes.  He will report back on this later

Tim – working with Karen on database issues and reports they are still battling SafeAssign issues

Mary – continues to work with Blackboard on persistent users and believes more nodes are needed.  They tried debugging the system but it only crashed the system.  The work around is to take down the node and redeploy.  She does not want to have to reboot every week.  Restoring the cluster doesn’t help

Mary also asked about backups.  She is creating backups for all sections.

Iowa State backs up once a week

UMass Online backs up once a week

Several commented to have the faculty click to create a backup before doing major work in the course.

David asked about a message that came from Blackboard Managed Hosting which stated:

“All -

CourseSites will need to be taken offline shortly for emergency maintenance. We realize this is short notice and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Bb will work to bring the system back online as soon as possible.

Updates will be published at the following location: http://managedhosting.blackboard.com

Regards,

Jason Minkoff
Director, Managed Hosting Support
Blackboard Inc.”

Matt commented this was a generic message that was sent to clients who at one time may have had a hosted course on Blackboard.  It is not a message to be concerned about.

Randy will also email to Mary and she will distribute SQL script for the Oracle database.