COLLEGE OF EXTENDED EDUCATION

Bb 5 Issues

1) Login fails on the first attempt for existing users. Known issue. Bb stated that "the encryption for the user account is processed differently now". As one instructor accurately remarked, "It's like going up to your new home and finding that the front door is broken".

2) TutorNet Chat not functioning even though started. Now works with some browsers. Bb would only acknowledge IE5 on a PC. Seems to work on IE 5.5 as well. Doesn't work on a Mac at all. Appears not to work with the AOL 5 browser.

Update: Derek, the Bb TutorNet developer says these problems are fixed in 5.0.1

3) Some Staff Information and Student Homepage graphics did not migrate. Known issue. They reappear when we start up the 4.0 server on the same box!

4) Some internal navigation targets full frame. (i.e. Clicking on "Top" will take you to the top level, but full frame in the browser window). Mac/Netscape issue.

5) Simple search is not working. Advanced search works to locate courses.

6) Email addresses for existing users do not appear in the roster list. Can't find a fix. Simple thing that really confuses students. Bb suggested that it was the privacy setting, but we had already checked that. Not the cause.

7) User directory under My Institution will not return any results for existing users, only newly created accounts. Can be corrected if user sets their Privacy Option to "Make information available to public" (which is the default for new users). Should be one or the other option but not both.

8) Copy Course does not work.

- Any uploaded files from the previous site will have additional links added which have to be manually removed.

Bb is aware of the problem and chalked it up to "dead links" in copied course, which seems to refer to old links that were added to an existing site but then removed at some point. They show up magically in Bb 5.

- Apparently you can store over an existing site with the same Course ID with no warning!!! Huge, huge problem. We were advised to "not use the copy course tool until further notice".

- Some files do not migrate with the copy. It is not obvious why only certain files are affected. One course site with approx. 100 similar files was copied and about a half dozen didn't copy. Uploaded manually.

- Modifying certain copied files returns an error. Not sure what the circumstances are yet.

9) You cannot make certain files invisible (unavailable). Seems to only affect certain migrated files. Also got one report of a failure when trying to make a folder invisible. Returns an error message:

Receipt: Failure

The action you attempted did not succeed:

can't execute:

UPDATE files_registries

SET registry_value=?

WHERE files_pk1 = ?

AND files_sos_id_pk2 = ?

AND registry_key=?

ARGS: Y 14258 1 controls

DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Unknown column 'Y' in 'field list' at /usr/local/blackboard/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/CI.pm line 324.

You can make folders invisible, but there is no indication in the control panel that they are invisible. Bug? Previously the item would gray out to indicate that it was unavailable.

10) Admin privileges for students do not work in Discussion Board.

11) Virtual Chat archives vanished from v4 course sites. Migration issue. Many instructors like to keep these for reference in future semesters.

12) If user is listed as TA, courses they are associated with will not show up in their courses area. Not sure about other levels. Haven't had time to check them. The work around has been to give the TA instructor privileges.

13) Forgot Your Password? tool does not work. Does not actually update the student's password!

14) Quiz tool malfunctioning if you are using Mac to build quizzes. (Can't make available). This is an intermittent problem.

15) Some quiz results in the gradebook will not allow access. Returns server error message. This happens if the quiz was taken pre-migration.

16) Migrated Groups do not have Send Email enabled. Has to be manually enabled.

17) Quizzes do not land in a folder any longer but just land in the area. If this isn't a bug it should be. Very confusing for students and faculty.

18) From within a course site if you select List All you will get an error. You probably wouldn't want to approach adding users this way but it should not return an error.

Receipt: Failure

The action you attempted did not succeed:

dbh_selectall_arrayref SELECT U.lastname, U.firstname, U.user_id, U.email, CU.role, CU.pk1, CU.sos_id_pk2

FROM users U LEFT JOIN course_users CU

ON ( U.pk1 = CU.users_pk1

AND U.sos_id_pk2 = CU.users_sos_id_pk2

AND CU.crsmain_pk1 = 8

AND CU.crsmain_sos_id_pk2 = 1)

WHERE CU.crsmain_pk1 IS NULL

AND CU.crsmain_sos_id_pk2 IS NULL

AND U.row_status = 0

AND CU.row_status IS NULL

AND U.user_id NOT LIKE 'Bb_BB50_Portal_User_Type_#%'

AND U.user_id != 'administrator'

AND U.user_id != 'guest' ORDER BY U.lastname, U.firstname, , DBD::mysql::db selectall_arrayref failed: The table 'SQL20ba7d_0' is full at /usr/local/blackboard/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/CI.pm line 440.

Told that this is fixed on our server but I have not had time to check.

19) Quick Enroll/UnEnroll only shows up for System Admin users, and therefore seems useless. Can't find documentation on this "feature". Would be useful for faculty and students to remove themselves from courses they do not what to have listed any longer.

Update: Bb reports that this is functioning as designed.

20) Frame size malfunctions sometimes on some browsers (i.e. The large top frame stays in place when it is supposed to minimize. Have not had enough time to narrow this one down.

21) Online manuals were converted to PDF and the HTML versions (that students and instructors were used to) vanished. Now we are told that HTML versions will be added in 5.0.1.

22) Encountered one pre-migration quiz that would not open for a student. Returns this error:

Receipt: Failure

The action you attempted did not succeed:

dbh_single_row STM: SELECT pk1,sos_id_pk2

FROM gradebook_grades

WHERE row_status = 0 AND crsusrs_pk1 = ? AND crsusrs_sos_id_pk2 = ?

AND gb_main_pk1 = ? AND gb_main_sos_id_pk2 = ?

ARGS: 12038 1

Err: execute called with 2 bind variables when 4 are needed at /usr/local/blackboard/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/sun4-solaris/DBI.pm line 911.

23) One report of failure for an uploaded document. Waiting for more details. Experienced user. Had a few more of these reports but no details. With successive tries it will work.

24) New course sites default to Instructor Enroll rather than Self Enroll, which is a reverse of the previous versions. An error? We have to manually set new sites to Self Enroll, which is a bit of a drag.

Update: Bb reports that this is functioning as designed.

25) One report of a PDF upload that would not show the scroll bars unless the instructor marked the upload as an "embedded file". This is again a change from previous versions that appears to be an error. This may be a specific browser issue as I have not been able to repeat the problem.

26) Guest Access has been turned off at the Admin level (as was advised by the Bb 5 release notes) but Guest Access can still be enabled at the course level. Bug?

27) When Guest Access was enabled at the system level (before we turned it off), the Guest account (Blackboard5) showed up as enrolled in about 20-30 courses when you clicked Preview at the login page. Odd.

28) Import/Export of courses does not work. Known issue.

29) Occasionally a 1/2" white bar will appear along the top frame. Refresh to correct. Haven't had a chance to narrow down the circumstances. Seems to involve using the browser back button to return to a previous page.

30) Hitting Return/Enter after inputting login information on the login page does not work to submit when using a Mac/Netscape. Does work on a PC.

Update: Bb reports that this is a browser limitation and yet in most other areas of the software using the Enter/Return key will work with this system.

31) Course Availability Dates do not seem to work correctly. Instructor set the availability to August 15, 2000 - December 15, 2000 and it locked all her currently enrolled students out. Delivers an access denied message.

32) Already had one complaint about the minimized content area in Bb5. Besides the top frame business, there is a 1-inch blank space above the content area that is completely wasted. Update: continue to get complaints about this. So much for the importance of content.

33) MySQL is apparently placing an unusually high drain on the CPU.

-Day One: were told it was a problem in Bb5 having to do with a cron job that runs every 15 minutes and that our server has been tweaked to fix this. Didn't help.

- Day Two: were told that it was the fact that we were running v4 on the same box. Killed v4. No change in performance.

- Day Three: were told that it was a memory problem. Memory ordered (went from 800MB to 2GB). Hope they're right this time. Update: Memory installed, seems to be running faster. Server Admin reports that memory no longer seems to be a problem, but that the CPU load still looks high.

34) When logged in as a system admin the Enroll button does not show up for courses in the Course Catalog, but it does when you use the Advanced Search (simple search does not work at all). Bug?

35) Gradebook entries are not in alphabetical order. Things like this drive faculty crazy. Bug? Seems to be. Getting calls on this daily.

Update: Bb reports that this will be fixed in 5.0.1.

36) Announcements only show for 1 day by default. It needs to be 1-week minimum. Prediction: Bb will hear about this constantly until it's changed. I could write a one-page editorial on this alone.

Update: Instructors continue to call about this. The "work around" is to mark all announcements as Permanent and then un-mark them when you no longer want them displayed in the main content frame.

37) Report of one student who appears on the "All Users" list in the Send Email Tool but not on the "Select Users".

38) Starting to get AOL issues again. Difficulty logging on and staying connected. Does Bb 5 work with AOL 5?

Update: Bb reports that "they do not test on AOL". Later confirmed with Derek that TutorNet has a problem with AOL involving authentication. Supposedly fixed in 5.0.1. Also got word from comm-q that there may be issues involving AOL and connections to campus servers. Nothing definitive yet though.

"There seems to be a problem with the AOL software and our network. We are not exactly sure of what the issue is. We have made some changes to the FIDI backbone this morning and will be testing it in the development room later today. The other reason might be the traffic on our internet connection is filling up quickly.

What we want to tell customers is that there is an issue with the software and that we are working on the problem, but do not have a solution at this point."

39) Bb5 goes haywire:

-Was in a course site and clicked the Courses tab. Top frame graphics were

broken. Tried to enter a different course I am enrolled in and the login

page showed up in the left frame (where the navigation buttons usually are).

For the heck of it I entered my login information again. The navigation

buttons then started to appear, but all did not load. 3 or 4 buttons were

left blank. Netscape stopped loading. Then the login page appeared in the

right content frame. For the heck of it I logged in there too. Announcements

then loaded. Tried going back to the Courses tab and was sent to the login

page. Tried logging in but was continually rejected.

-Quit the browser and started over. Same things started happening. Broken

graphics links everywhere and I was sent back to the login page whenever I

tried to login to one of the courses I am enrolled in.

-Top frame graphics were either broken or not showing correctly (i.e. only

the bottom half were showing with no way to adjust the view). Refresh sent

me back to the login page.

-Clicked on Announcements and the login page appears in the right frame.

-Clicked on Courses tab and was sent to the login page. Finally just gave

up.

-Similar report from a faculty member who was logged on during the same time period.

40) Whenever you click on Announcements, the announcements will load but you will see "Javascript error: into Location for details." in the bottom browser information area. Mac/Netscape only?

41) Gradebook entries that were manually added in previous courses did not migrate. Have to be manually added.

42) Gradebook entries are rearranging themselves each time you access them. Getting calls on this daily.

43) Database Back-up tool has been removed from the System Admin area. While we can of course still back-up our database, this is a tool that we miss. Why would it be removed?

44) Student Homepages no longer a Communication selection. Pedagogical issue.

Update: this has turned out to be a real hassle. Students and faculty don't know where the homepages are and once you find out where they are hidden they are difficult to use.

45) Edit Homepage does not add line breaks to text pasted from a Word processor. If you want something other than a block paragraph you have to add HTML tags. Bug?

46) One case reported where a text document did not migrate. Double-checked, and indeed the HTML was there (pasted into the file) in the previous site, but was missing from the Bb5 site. Update: reports that there are about 6 of these instances in his course site. Comparing the previous site to the new, it does appear that some data did not migrate (text files, graphics).

47) 2 reports of areas with heavy page weight taking much longer to load (or not opening at all) with v5. For instance, Course Documents has a great many files and folders which take a long time to open (in one case 4-5 minutes). Users report that it was slow with v4 but not as slow as it is with v5. Hard to document, of course.

48) Instructor found two files in his dropbox in the am. Came back in the afternoon and they were not there. No one else has access to his dropbox.

49) An unusually high number of people are reporting that their passwords do not work for them after they worked for a period of time. We know that the Forget Password utility does not work, but this is different. If it were just a few I would chalk it up to user error, but it's a great many and I know it is not as simple as having forgotten their password. When I reset the password it works for them again.

50) Had a case where I looked up a user to get their username, then went to add them to a course site but the account would not come up in the search when using either their username or last name. Double and triple checked the account information and it still would not come up when I did a search using add existing user. Finally, I logged in as the student and clicked the Enroll button to be added to the course.

Update: this has happened a few more times. No rhyme or reason. Search in the admin control panel (for accounts or courses) will return a listing but at a later time will not.

51) Subsections on the Front Page of Course Catalog do not wrap.

52) Send Email > Select User is not in alphabetical order.

53) /user/local/blackboard/docs/lib/session/ filled up with files and eventually filled the disk space to the point where Bb stopped functioning. When Chris cleared these files, the server again responded. No word yet from Bb on the cause. Sent them the error log.

HARDWARE ISSUE

On the first three days of the fall semester 5.0 ran like molasses. The CPU loading for mysql was very high. It sometimes took five minutes for a student to get through login to his or her class.

On day 1, Blackboard said there was a problem with a script and they had fixed it. On day 2 they said that it was because we were running version 4 on the same server (different port). We shut that down and it caused a 2-3% increase in speed. On day 3 they said that we did not have enough memory, we should have 2 GB. The 5.0 installation instructions call for 512 MB, we had 768 MB installed. We spent about $7,000 upgrading to 2 GB and this has seemed to help, though the jury is still out as to whether it was the memory upgrade, the reduction in the number of simultaneous users, or both, which caused the performance improvement.

Marc Van Horne 5-5764

Roger Carter 5-7661

September 8, 2000