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JQ Johnson
Director, Center for Educational Technologies
jqj@uoregon.edu
To allow time for upgrades, the UO Libraries have developed a new schedule for Blackboard system downtime for the next year. The schedule aligns Blackboard's downtime with Banner's, providing adequate downtime for necessary system upgrades but avoiding downtime and upgrades during periods that will seriously impact our Blackboard user community.
Our plan is to reserve the morning of one Saturday every month--typically the second Saturday of the month--for system downtime. This schedule is almost identical with the Computing Center's schedule for Banner maintenance. Such Saturday downtime periods will not be taken every month, and they will be limited to 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Except in emergency situations, at least one month of advance notice will be given for all scheduled downtime.
In addition, the system will continue to be down every Monday morning from 6 a.m. until 8 a.m. for data backup and minor system upgrades, and will be down briefly (for approximately two minutes) every day at about 4 a.m.
The downtime and upgrade schedule for the rest of 2005 includes:
| Date | Planned Downtime Schedule |
| July 9, 2005 | RedHat AS 3.0; additional minor upgrades |
| August 13, 2003 | major version upgrade: Blackboard 6.3 |
| September 10, 2005 | additional 6.3 updates |
| October 8, 2005 | tentative: 6.3 service pack 1 |
| November 12, 2005 | tentatively scheduled; no major user-visible changes |
| December 17, 2005 (third Sunday) | tentative: upgrade to Blackboard 7.0 |
The most significant upgrades currently planned are at the end of summer, when we upgrade to Blackboard 6.3 (also known as "Application Pack 3") and during winter vacation, when we upgrade to version 7.
Blackboard 6.3 is a major upgrade, the most substantial we've had since 2003. Significant new features include:
Documentation for 6.3 is expected to be available in early July from the Blackboard support website at http://behind.blackboard.com/
Meanwhile, faculty interested in taking advantage of the new features of Blackboard 6.3 can go to http://libweb.uoregon.edu/cet/blackboard/news/ or contact JQ Johnson at jqj@uoregon.edu for more information.