End of Support for Visualization and Admin Console Building Blocks




 
End of Support for Visualization and Admin Console Building Blocks

Date Published: Jul 23,2020 Category: Product:Reporting_Learn; Version:X9_1   Article No.: 000052945

Product:  Blackboard Learn

 
Information: As a part of our commitment to delivering a Learning Management System of the highest quality, feature areas are periodically evaluated to determine their suitability to support our clients’ academic goals. During a recent evaluation, we have made the decision to end support for the following: 
  • Visualization Building Block
  • Admin Console Building Block

The end of support for these Building Blocks is effective immediately as of July 23, 2020.

The Admin Console Building Block provided administrators a way to review server performance metrics; the Visualization Building Block enabled the reporting infrastructure used by the Admin Console feature. In SaaS and Managed Hosting, Blackboard uses other monitoring tools for server performance, so these tools aren’t used and are disallowed in those deployment configurations.

Many administrators of self-hosted Learn environments are already using monitoring tools other than the Admin Console. While Blackboard is ending support for these Building Blocks, they will not stop working immediately—rather, Blackboard will no longer be maintaining the tools or accepting support requests related to them. As a best security practice, however, we recommend that unsupported technologies are disabled or removed from the Learn application, so we recommend these Building Blocks are removed. Instead, administrators should consider any number of other server monitoring tools available. Just a few examples include Flight Recorder, various generic database tools, jconsole, jmx, and various log analyzer tools. And if you’re not already on your path to SaaS, where these Building Blocks are unnecessary, we encourage you to begin your planning process.