Mark Millard

[Mark Millard]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for posting so I can clarify our use of the Zoom web conferencing tool this semester for you an other students in the MEM EPD612 course.  We were only able to purchase a Zoom enterprise account with a very limited number of hosts for the current pilot of Zoom.  So we are unable to offer host accounts for student use.  The use of Zoom, at least for the current pilot in EPD612, is really only meant for the scheduled web conference.

That being said, you are welcome to get the free limited Zoom service on your own as you have done and use that for any ad-hoc team meetings, but you would be limited to what you have noted in your post.  What we have made available to students for their team meetings is the use of Google Hangouts Meet through our officially support UW-Madison G-Suite enterprise account.  Because this service is available through our supported UW enterprise account, you will not have those connection limitations as with Zoom.

The instructors for scheduling meetings with that tool are posted in your EPD612 course site in the Team section.  I am also including those instructions here:  Instructions for Using Google Meet for Team Meetings

Hope that helps.

Best,
~Mark

[Mark Millard]

Hi All,

I just wanted to pass along an update that I received from your UW campus Blackboard Ultra service lead regarding the reported outages that were occurring in Nov/Dec 2018. They seem fairly confident that a bug that they found and fixed, may have been the cause of the outages and service issues.  Please do let me know if any further issues are experienced once the Spring 2019 semester begins so that we can report back.

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From: Peter Mann
Date: Thursday, January 3, 2019 at 3:24 PM
To: Mark Millard
Cc: EPD Online Support, James Mckay, Dan Voeks
Subject: Re: Connection and audio problems reported with Blackboard Ultra
 
Good afternoon and Happy New Year, Mark!

Our contacts at Blackboard confirmed the successful deployment of a maintenance update to Collaborate Ultra that occurred on Thursday, December 20th. The update included a fix to a condition whereby a session server would crash when sessions were migrated to a new session server due to load balancing.  It is my understanding that this was the cause of the events when moderators and participants were suddenly disconnected and reconnected during the course of a session, which happened on several occasions.

While this is good news, we have no practical way to test whether the problematic behavior will reoccur, that is until the winter break is over. And, as is such, the ticket was closed with Blackboard Support, though it would be a simple process to re-open and escalate if events should dictate these actions.

Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or if you find that the issue has not been fixed.

 

Kind regards,
Peter

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[Mark Millard]

Hi Kevin, Wayne and others:

I wanted to update you all on this issue. We reported these issues to the UW campus service lead (and to Blackboard).  We get quicker uptake when we go through our campus service leads.  Here is a response our service leads got back from Blackboard late last week.  Note that they are continuing to press Blackboard on a quicker resolution to their current server load balancing setup, which is troubling at best.  But at the very least, the following may explain what you’re experiencing?

 

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Blackboard noted that some sessions were migrated from one server to another server during those peak usage times. Users would have been all disconnected and reconnected automatically. This occurred because of load balancing the servers. In this case another session had grown to a large size which necessitating moving other sessions to another server, including some of the those mentioned. It’s something they are aware is disruptive to sessions when it occurs. Their roadmap for next year does include work to move a session seamlessly in the future, meaning users won’t even notice the change of server, but they noted that this is a big project.

——————–

 

I hope that you don’t have to, but please keep us in the loop if you continue to have issues so that we can pass these on.

Thanks,
~Mark
EPD Online Support Team

 

[Mark Millard]

Thank you for letting us know!  I will forward these on, and add them to the support cases that I just reported this afternoon.

 

~Mark
EPD Online Support Team

[Mark Millard]

Thanks Kevin.  Yes, that is clear to me, and I’m make sure to pass this on that it certainly appears to be a system issue, not individual users or connections.

My call to action, was primarily for any instructors / students in our other courses or programs who have experienced similar issues.  I am working on reporting the two issues we’ve received, from you and Wayne’, but the more testimonials I can pass along the better, and can quicken the response I get from Campus and/or Blackboard.

Best,
~Mark

[Mark Millard]

Kevin and Wayne,

Thank you both for reporting these issues with Blackboard Ultra.  I agree that this is unacceptable, and I am forwarding your issues to both UW campus service leads, as well as Blackboard Ultra support.  Hopefully they can have an answer to address these connecting issues.

For any others instructors or students that are experiencing issues, could you please post to this discussion forum thread so that I can collect the details and also forward these on to service leads and Blackboard support.

Thanks,
~Mark

EPD Online Support Team

[Mark Millard]

Hi Chris, This is the info I’ll need to report to Blackboard.

Thanks,
~Mark

[Mark Millard]

Just to follow-up.  As of 1:18 CT, Canvas LMS is back online.

~Mark

[Mark Millard]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for posting and for the detailed follow-up.  Sorry to hear you’re having issues with the playback of the web conference video recordings.  I’m happy to hear that you at least found a short-term workaround, so that is good.  It certainly sounds like there is an issue with those recordings.

I will report this to Blackboard Ultra support and hopefully find a permanent resolution.

So that I can try to replicate the issue, can you post and let me know if you also tried accessing with any other web browsers, and let me know whether you had the same issues with those.  Also, please let me know which operating systems for both your computer and mobile device.  This is something that Blackboard will ask me.

Thanks,
~Mark

EPD Tech Support Team

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