Some features have been temporarily disabled

Known Issue
· Adam Massey

Blackboard are carefully monitoring Collaborate as more institutions increase their use. They are projecting an unprecedented increase in its use and, out of an abundance of caution, they have made the decision to disable/amend features that can impact on overall system stability. They are:

  • Timer – a countdown timer that helps with classroom time management.
  • Chat typing indicator – a visual indicator that someone is typing but have not yet completed their thought. Note The chat feature itself will still be available.
  • Netstats indicator – a visual indicator of connection quality next to each user.
  • Reducing the number of video thumbnails – down from 4 to 2. This is the maximum number of thumbnails visible in the grid view.

They continue to monitor the performance, and may take similar actions for other capabilities if required.

More detailed information is available from Blackboard.

One thought on “Some features have been temporarily disabled”

  1. An update from Blackboard:

    We have done further investigation to determine what would be needed to reactivate the existing features. Unfortunately, this work revealed that the third party component that’s powering those features can’t be made scalable at all to the level of user concurrency we’re seeing (90 times pre-covid levels). As a result, we will have to rebuild the features from the ground up, without using a third party component. This new project is getting added to the 2021 roadmap and its targeted date will depend on priorities for other 2021 features too.

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