Aug

6

CE/Vista and Banner Integration

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

This is the second time I have worked on making Vista integration work with Banner. The first was 2005 in Vista 3.0.3 at Valdosta State. The production here at GeorgiaVIEW was set up by Harold, Jill, and Amy years ago and integrated into the install scripts or part of the cloned databases.

So now I am working on getting it to work in Vista 8. The IMS imports worked the first time like a charm. When I turned to using the Luminis adapter, the person records worked fine but the group contexts failed in Vista 8 and worked fine in Vista 3. So the “siapi.sh luminis import restrict” works fine.

Command-line

We have 41 institutions in Vista 3 currently. So imports are automated to some degree to preserve the sanity of Jill (and to a lesser degree Amy and myself). Rather than put in the UI all the settings, we have a properties file defining the location, glcid, sourcedid.source and sourcedid.id for each institution. This allows us to easily pass the values when importing at the command-line.

My first approach was to leave the settings identical to what I used to create persons and group records with IMS. This essentially uses the glcid of the institution and sourcedid of the institution. This is what resulted in the person records working and groups not. Fail.

I realized my error in logic must be the lack of a division-to-group relationship as the error described the groups cannot be related to an institution. So I changed the properties to use the division values for the sourcedid. Fail.

So I went looking in “Guide to Integration with the SunGard Luminis Data Integration Suite” for what I ought to use at the command-line. I didn’t find a solution. Just the same command-line lacking even the glcid and sourcedid.
:(

XML

Giving up on the command-line approach for now, I added the relationship element to the XML so the group would become a child of one of the divisions I created with IMS. It sorta worked! The groups all imported but the course failed with the exact same error the groups formerly succeeded. To add insult to injury, simply running the import again on the exact same file had the courses import.

Mistakes

A mistake I made was reading the documentation: “Guide to Integration with the SunGard Luminis Data Integration Suite”.

Sungard Libraries:

  1. Page 8 says imq.jar and mbclient.jar do not come with CE/Vista and must be obtained from Sungard. All three of us thought in Vista 3.x these were automatically placed so we didn’t need to place them. Best I can tell, these were installed by Vista. I found $WEBCTDOMAIN/customconfig/startup.properties references both files in CUSTOM_CLASSPATH and setEnv.sh references CUSTOM_CLASSPATH. (This document has notes for what CE customers need to do and no note about CE users needing to go get them from Sungard.)
  2. Those who believe the last note would keep reading and find on Page 9 instructions to deposit the files in $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverlibs/. Assuming I am wrong about item #1, the startup.properties expects them in $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverlibs/luminis/ and would not find them where the document says to put them.

Aug

4

Off the Twitter Timeline: Icons

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Off the Twitter Timeline | 2 Comments

I laughed at reading this one.

Dear Blackboard: If you include icons in your interface, they should f’ing well be clickable. Everyone but you knows this. jazzmodeus

I thought this might refer to the new item icons. Jason works for Emory (doing instructional design) and taking classes at Florida State. Both use Academic Suite. So its probably not what I thought….

In Blackboard CE/Vista, the “course list” [1] can show icons to alert about new things to do. These can be about waiting assessments, discussion, mail, etc. If users click on the icon, then they can see the items causing the notice. At least, when left at the defaults.

One of the schools we host discovered when students entered a tool by clicking on these icon, the subsequent activity would not be tracked. The work around was to turn off the link rather than the icons entirely.

We agreed with the school and labored to convince Blackboard this was a major security problem. Unfortunately, the people who post the support bulletins have yet to post something about this problem. Its not a major item unless you are the student being accused of cheating because your activity doesn’t show appropriately.

[1] course list - This name bugs me….

  • The name is a hold over from when instruction took place in courses. In this system they take place in sections. So why not section list?
  • MyWebCT is dumb. MyBlackboard is dumber. “My” is 2004-ish portal cutesy, personalization name buzzword. Similarly, “e” and “i” are similarly dumb.

Jul

29

Off the Twitter Timeline: Clunky WebCT

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Off the Twitter Timeline | Leave a Comment

Summize provides a great way to troll for what people are saying. Beyond just searching for a term, it provides RSS feeds for terms. I follow several, such Blackboard and WebCT. The WebCT one netted me the following tweet:

annoyed with how clunky webct can be at times - it had to have been designed circa 2000 - amandakern

WebCT products, whether CE or Vista, have always been clunky. Ease of use has always been a problem with the products. Any improvements Vista made were offset by so many more tools and options to make it the net effect more clunky. I’ve seen some sales people and Dr. Cs whip through the navigation like it is easy to use Vista. Practice makes perfect. Too bad the developers can’t be perfect.

Whenever I see schools pick a product, I think the ones who have Ease of use on their list probably have been using WebCT legacy products for years as opposed to Blackboard products. They and their faculty are scarred enough they cannot afford to get it wrong on ease of use again.

Jul

29

IMS Data Going to Wrong Place

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

I should know better than to trust documentation over my own intuition. Or to change based on what others tell me.

I followed:

Log in to Vista Enterprise as a Server Administrator or Institution Administrator.
NOTE: To set glcid, you must log in as a Server Administrator.

From the Administration tab, click the Utilities tab.
Click Settings.

Under System Integration, click System Integration API IMS….

Enter values to configure settings. See the table that follows, Standard and IMS Adapter
details on each value.

Click Save Values. The Settings screen appears and the settings are configured.

Standard and IMS Adapter Settings
The following table describes the parameters you can set using the administration user interface.
Setting Description
GlcId

• Stands for global learning context identifier.
• Set by Server Administrator only.
• Required to run IMS and Standard adapter
commands.
• Identifies the institution in which the adapter
command runs
• Automatically assigned by Vista Enterprise
upon creation of an institution

Of course, it doesn’t say which Glcid, right? After all, every learning context has a Glcid. Since, at the time I only had one institution (before I created the 54 others), I set the Glcid to the one for that institution. Should it be the Glcid for the server or domain learning context? If so, then couldn’t Blackboard just pre-populate it at the time of install? Why do I need to put it there?

At the same time, I didn’t believe it necessary because I had seen IMS imports work without the Glcid set at the server learning context. They worked because the command used to run the IMS import has the glcid.

The result? My imports went into the the institution with the Glcid set at the server learning context, despite the defining in the command I ran to use a different Glcid. Removing the Glcid from the server learning context settings allowed the command to work as I thought it should.

So much for a pristine, clean database.

Jul

28

IMS Import Error When Node Is Down

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Work, unix | Leave a Comment

This is what I got when a node was down while I attempted to do an IMS import in Blackboard CE/Vista.

Failed to upload files, exiting.
Cause could include invalid permission on file/directory,
invalid file/directory or
repository related problems

The keywords permission, file, and directory in this would have sent me anywhere but to the right place. The keyword repository made me suspicious the node had a worse issue than just bad permissions. So I looked for the most recent WebCTServer log and found it to be a week old. Verifying the last messages in the log confirmed it had been down for a week.
:(

To see anything in the log questioning whether or not the node was running would have saved me lots of time this morning.

Added to my .bashrc a couple lines to provide a visual indicator how many are running.

JAVA_RUNNING=`ps -ef | grep [j]ava | grep -c [v]ista`
echo “  — No. Vista processess running = $JAVA_RUNNING”

Better might even be to have it evaluate whether less than one or more than two (or three) are running. If so, then put something obvious the world is falling. Maybe later. Took me just a couple minutes to write and test what I have. The rest will come after I decide what I really want. :)

Also, it wasn’t running because a coworker had run into a situation where the fifth node would not start. She thought maybe it was because the number of connection Oracle would accept was not high enough. I suggested a simple test would be to shut down a node and see if the problem one suddenly works. I happened to be working with the one she shut down for the test. It happens she had just started a script to bring them up when I asked.

Jul

22

Less Is More

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

Mashable has an interesting article about why Twitter persists despite frequent performance issues: “Less is more. Simplicity is power.” By providing little more than an API, upon which numerous others have built tools, it doesn’t so directly compete with other services.

I wonder if perhaps this is the right approach for a learning system? One size no longer fits all. Blackboard Vista is chock full of dozenss of tools and hundreds of settings. This made their products a behemoth to administrate. A lighter system where only the tools people wish to use could help.

On the flip side, a project like GeorgiaVIEW serves thousands of faculty members. All the tools in Blackboard Vista are not enough to satisfy all of the faculty. They want us to integrate with dozens of third party tools, namely the one which will make their class work. An easy API to write against would ultimately mean we would have more tools than we struggle to administrate today.

I guess this is my rejection of the Personal Learning Environment. As great as it is for students and the faculty, the IT who have to support them will fail to support them.

Jul

17

Bbworld ‘08

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | 1 Comment

My cameras (yeah, two of the three) have lots of pictures. Expect some this weekend. Hopefully they will be paced to last the week rather than an insane dump all at once. Watch my Flickr.

Yet again, I failed to blog at BbWorld. Probably I would had wifi been available in the sessions. Instead, I paid more attention and tookk notes. Hopefully this weekend I’ll compose some thoughts. Certainly, the repercussions of what I have learned this week will occupy my thoughts for months to come as it gets rehashed over and over in meetings. So… No rush.

Also, as a recruiting trip, it has been a dismal failure so far. I do have a couple sessings later today which might yeild something.

Jul

1

Blackboard’s Direct Help

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

I just noticed an item in Behind the Blackboard for “Direct Help”. This seems to be a way Blackboard is attempting to help students and parents find assistance by directing them to institutions. I probably missed the propaganda about this initiative. Though I do understand the problem and why it ought to be solved. People end up at Blackboard’s site asking for assistance with administrative items (passwords, changes to settings, etc.). Things the school ought to resolve… Not Blackboard.

Notre Dame, California State University - Chico, or California State University - Sacramento were schools I know but not easily found by me in the search. The ones I did were Georgia Southern University, Valdosta State University, University System of Georigia, and University of Western Ontario. None of those had it set up yet.

Sounds like I am in good company.

To set it up, one either gives them a link to use as a redirect or create a web page to provide information. Does anyone know of examples where someone has set it up?

Jun

30

Try Again

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

The worst response technical support can give me is to suggest I try something I have already tried without success. An explanation why this suggestion is going to work this time when the previous attempt(s) did not work would help. Otherwise, why would I expect it to work this time when it didn’t last time? The response to…

Perhaps you can explain why this will work now when we explained in the first note that we have already tried this and found BbVista would not start?

was

I’m conferring with our development team about how it will work now vs. earlier when it did not. Thanks.

This wasn’t our usual support person. This is, I think, someone covering our cases and thought to get us to close the ticket easily. You know reach Ticket Inbox Zero. Someone who doesn’t realize I blog about stuff like this because… Well… It annoys me.

Jun

16

Firefox 3

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

The generic globe logo used when Firefox is compiled without the official branding
Image via Wikipedia

Apparently the official launch of Firefox 3 is tomorrow. So we get to look forward to 4+ months of students and faculty members asking why Blackboard Vista doesn’t recognize Fx 3 as supported. Every week’s call with Blackboard will have the conversation:

Us: Is it supported yet?
Bb: Not yet. We are working on it.
Us: When will it be supported?
Bb: We can’t tell you yet, but we will let you know when it is.

I bet Mozilla starts pushing it through auto-updates either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. So it will be everywhere soon enough. Ugh.

Personally, I look forward to the upgrade as it will hopefully resolve a major issue for me: Firefox 2 regularly consumes in excess of 250 MB of RAM and becomes sluggish.

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