A number of sporadic problems with sending email from Blackboard to students have been reported in the last few days.

[ UPDATE: These issues have now been fixed as of Friday 4/4/08 1:30 PM.

The network team has fixed the email problem that was blocking the delivery of email from Blackboard. All the emails that were waiting to be sent will now be delivered, but it will take a couple of hours because there were several thousand of them. ]

Symptom

When sending email to All Users (Control Panel > Send Email > All Users), some of the students, or even you, do not get the email.

This has happened to several faculty in the last week, but is very irregular: it happens only in some courses and only to some students. If you are using the Send Email feature in Blackboard, be sure to check with students that the emails are arriving.

Cause

This sporadic email non-delivery is caused by our email spam filter system. It is not a Blackboard specific issue; it sometimes happens to other network applications, too. The spam filter was updated and tightened last Fall in response to complaints about increased email spam, but one of the side effects is that it sometimes blocks legitimate mail. The issue has been taken up again this week by the OIS Network staff who are looking into it.

Workaround

In the meantime, there are two workarounds: 1) use regular email, 2) instead of sending the email to the whole class (”All Users”) at once, send it in small batches to selected users only: Control Panel > Send Email > Single/Select Users and choose just a handful of names each time.

Also, you may want to post an Announcement in your Blackboard course as another way of communicating with your class.

I get an error message about SSL not being licensed.

If you get an error message when you try to login that “SSL is not licensed,” it will look like this:

This is a rare and sporadic error, and happens when the URL address accidently uses the prefix HTTPS instead of HTTP.

1. You should edit the address to just use the prefix HTTP.
2. Also, delete any bookmarks or favorites that point to the HTTPS one.

It never lets me login the first time: I have to do it twice.

This happens when you have set a Favorite in Internet Explorer to the Blackboard Login page instead of the first Blackboard portal page. Blackboard and IE disagree about cookie security, so it makes you do it twice.

Delete that favorite and make one to the first portal page instead, the page you start at when you go to blackboard.ups.edu.

(Yes, this is annoying since you have to click the Login button on this portal page just to get to the real login screen, but it’s better than retyping your name and password every time.)

How do I change my password?

To change your password, click the Personal Information link on Tools box on the upper left side on the main My Blackboard screen.

Then choose the Change Password option. Remember that this password is separate from and is not coordinated with your network password. It can be anything you want and does not expire.

I forgot my password!

On the login page below the Username and Password form boxes:

1. Click the link that says Forgot password?
2. Fill out one of the forms and a link will be emailed to you allowing you to change the password.

• Q: I tried that but never got an email!
  
  
  • A: The email link to set a new password will go to the email address you entered in Blackboard when you created your account. If you don’t receive the email, it may have be sent to another email account (did you create your account with your UPS email address or another personal email account?), or an invalid account (did you spell it correctly?).

Contact the Blackboard administrator via the Help Desk to fix this for you.