From Self Hosted to SaaSOur Journey (LEC107648)

Kathy SavilleDirector of Instructional TechnologySaint Mary’s College, Notre Dame

Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana

Founded 1844

Premier Women’s

Catholic College

1,500 Undergrad

100 Graduate

Blackboard’s History at Saint Mary’s

Began in 2006 – Self-Hosted

1 production server

2 virtual servers - pre-prod and staging

0 full-time personnel to manage Bb

Every course offered automatically

available in Bb

Over 80% of courses use Blackboard

Self-Managing Blackboard - too Time-Consuming

Personnel

Director of Instructional Technology –

GUI admin & Instructional Design

Director of Administrative Computing – DBA

Director of Networking and Systems –

Backend Manager

Server problems took days to research and repair

Building Block Management

Core – Group A, B, C, others… took hours!

RestartsRestartsRestarts

!!!

Will moving to SaaS solve

our current operational problems?

Our Challenges

Production server going off contract

Maintain “up time” of 99.99999%

Personnel

Time

Researching SaaS

Attend BbWorld SaaS sessions

Participated in SaaS webinars

Talked with our Sales Representative

Develop & present a plan to our CIO

Question for You…

When will your school move to SaaS?

Currently on SaaS

Moving by August 2017

Moving by January 2018

Moving by July 2018

No Current Plans to Move to SaaS

Our Plan from Self Hosting to SaaS

Time lineStart

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

Move to SaaS by January 2017

Full Database migration – test > then the “real thing”

Spring 2017 - courses loaded and taught in SaaS

Use the Original Experience

Use 2012 theme

Backup plan – Move by March 2017 – Spring Break

Note #1 – What is the Backup Plan?

If your plan to moving to SaaS is not

going to work out in the planned

time frame, what is your backup plan?

It is important to have a PLAN “B”

June 9th – Pre-contract Meeting with Blackboard

June 10th – 17th – Contract review

June 29th – Contract signed!

Timeline

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

Pre Contract Meeting

Saint Mary’s

CIO

GUI & Instructional Design

DBA

Backend Admin

Programmer

Blackboard

Sales Representative

SaaS Representative

Solutions Engineer

VP

Discussion included: Proposed Project Plans (Blackboard’s and my own) Building Blocks Answers to our Questions

Pre Contract Meeting

Blackboard’s Solution Engineer

Took the list of our 106 building blocks and one-by-one

identified which ones would:

Work in SaaS

Which were no longer needed (obsolete)

Which are currently in development for SaaS

Which he had no information on but…

If I could provide .war files, he would load & test for us

My 15 Questions

1. Confirming we are

moving to SaaS Plus

(FDO)Flexible Deployment Option

2. Once the contract is

signed, may we have

the code for Content

& Communities?

3. In SaaS, is there a

limit on the number of

Building Blocks?

4. Will we be able to continue our

Banner integation process… flatflile,

batch, updated twice a day using

cURL scripts?

5. Weeding the server. Can we get

batch archives of courses and

move them to an in-house storage

area?Banner

My 15 Questions

6. Single sign-on

through our portal

7. GUI Access in SaaS 8. Approve Project Plan

9. Details for:

- Project kickoff

- Migration

- Preparation

- Testing

10. Option to teach pilot courses

before complete SaaS cut-over

My 15 Questions

11. May we keep our

Blackboard url?

12. Which version of

Learn Original will

we run in SaaS?

13. The “Look” of

Blackboard will not

change in SaaS

(theme)?

14. How to access the SaaS production

and test environments?

15. What am I forgetting?

SaaS URLS

9.1 ????

Using your notecard…

what questions would you add

for your system?

Note #2 - Project Plan (Excel spreadsheet)

Task Description Assigned to Date Due Completed Notes

Pre Contract

Site Provisioning &

Project Kick-Off

Building Blocks

Test Migration

Test Tools &

Functions -

Instructor/Student

Migrate Courses

ReTest Tools &

Functions…

July 11th – 1st meeting with Bb Project Manager

July 26th – SaaS environments created (production & test)

July 28th – DBA created backups for test migration and made available to Bb SaaS team

Timeline

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

Note #3 – Be Patient

Migration will take some time

Stay in communication with your

Bb PM (project manager)

While you wait, create a spreadsheet

of your current building blocks

including version # & status

Create a list of roles & their privileges

Note #4 – Working with your PM

Migrating to SaaS is a task that will take

time from your schedule

Work with your Bb PM (project manager) and

communicate with him/her often

Test tools and functions in your system

Admin roles

Instructor roles

Students roles

Communicate any issues you find with

the PM and/or Bb Support

September 12th – Test migration done. Start testing tools and functions with admin, instructor, student roles.

September 15th – Review all building blocks, many new ones!

September 20th – Discuss building blocks with Bb PM

Timeline

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

September 26th – GUI – “Show All” in Users and Courses does not work. Told the PM, ticket with Support, listed as a known issue.

October 14th – Kaltura built their SaaS B2…doesn’t work! They assigned someone (brand new to their company) to work on it. Blackboard Support worked with Kaltura & was committed to getting this working for us.

Timeline – Hiccups Begin

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

Note #5 – 3rd Party B2s

Work with your Bb PM as to which

building blocks may still not work in

SaaS.

Any 3rd party B2 that do not have a SaaS

option, you will want to contact them &

request an ETA for when it will be ready.

Get it in writing! (Trust me on this one)

November 8th – Thanks to Bb Support, Kaltura B2 is fixed.November 18th – Continue testing, restarts, Q4 2016, etc.November 29th – Started my blog

http://kjsaville.blogspot.com/ - Note: I am not a great blogger!

Timeline – Starting the Blog

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

December 8th – Meeting with our Bb PM & cURL programmer.Confirming everything is a good for move to SaaS January 6, 2017.Bb will take care of our SSL certificates.

December 20th – Fall 2016 courses archived from our self-hosted server and sent to Bb PM for upload to SaaS.

December 22nd – Email to Faculty about our move to the Cloud!Opportunity for more “testers” on the SaaS system

Timeline – Coming to the End

Start

June 2016SaaS

January 2017

Note #6 – Communicate with your Faculty

Keep your users “in the loop”

Moving Blackboard to the

Cloud sounds exciting!

Allow your faculty to get their

hands on the SaaS systems

soon as you are ready

Listen to any information they

share with you.

We were supposed to flip the switch at 8:30 AM but our campus network went down so the switch was flipped at 8:40 AM

Our cURL scripts broke. They were working in during testing. A ticket with Bb Support and the issue was quickly resolved!

Timeline – January 6, 2017

Start

June 2016

LiveOn

SaaS

January 6th until January 16th (first day of classes), faculty worked in the SaaS environment.

This provided us an additional test of the system with more users.

Our annual workshop for teaching online courses was conducted

January 9 – 11, 2017 allowing additional testing of Blackboard’s

tools and functions.

Issues found…

January 10th

Math Editor error – configuration issue

Fixed within 24 hours

User account creation, no long able to check against Bb User

Database

This requires a change in our process

January 12th

Course copy taking over 24 hours

Issue was discovered by Bb Support, was fixed by 6:20 PM

that evening

Issues found…continued

January 13th

Course Content throwing errors

Our system was accidently included in an update for those on

Continuous Delivery by mistake

Recurring “bug” - My Media module kept disappearing

provided a long weekend before the start of classes

Fixed by Bb Support. Kaltura Support, no helpful responses!

Note #7 – Classifying Issues

I. Annoying –Not desirable but manageable

II. Pain Points –“Not functioning as designed” but do have an acceptable work-around

III. Deal Breakers –Says it all!

Issue - February 6, 2017 5th week of the semester

Blackboard running slow

& slower, & s l o w e r!

Cause – 2 files in our

2012 theme

Had to use a Bb default

theme until the SaaS

team could create a fix.

Fixed during

Spring Break

Note #8 - When the Cloud Clogs

AWS (Amazon Web Services) may go out.

If that happens, check Blackboard’s Status website

http://status.blackboard.com

Blackboard SaaS Options – Important Help Site

SaaS CD (continuous delivery)

SaaS FDO (flexible deployment option)

https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes/Learn_SaaS_Release_Schedule#cd_schedule

Site also lists the versioning information

Example:

3200 = Q2 2017for Flexible Deployment Option

for Continuous Delivery

Pop Quiz - Versioning

What is another name for Learn

version 3200.8.0?

Q2 2017, build 8

Version for CD or FDO?

CD continuous delivery

Note #9 - Important Resources to Know & Use

o Supportmanagers@blackboard.com

o http://status.blackboard.com

o https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes/Learn_SaaS_Release_Schedule#cd_schedule

o http://kjsaville.blogspot.com/

o https://community.blackboard.com/groups/saas-virtual-user-group

o tinyurl.com/2017bbsaas

Email

&

Links

Note #10 – You are NOT Alone!

SaaS Virtual Group – community site

https://community.blackboard.com/groups/saas

-virtual-user-group

Meet weekly at 1:00 PM ET

via Collaborate

Every other week at 9:00 PM ET via

Collaborate for the Australia users

tinyurl.com/2017bbsaas

Thank you for the honor of

your time and attention

Kathy Saville

ksaville@saintmarys.edu

@IDGoddess

http://kjsaville.blogspot.com

Don’t forget

to rate this

session in the

BbWorld app.