Blackboard quarterly maintenance (EMail)

[Admin]

Dear faculty, staff, and students (all Blackboard users),

As with every quarter, Blackboard quarterly maintenance is once again upon us. For winter break, we are scheduling the maintenance for December 19 and 20. Therefore,
for 48 hours from December 19th (starting 12:00AM), Blackboard will be inaccessible.

To facilitate our effort in providing the best Blackboard environment, we would like to recommend that all faculty to keep a back-up personal archive of each course you
taught from 2 quarters ago and older before our maintenance period. Here are the instructions on how to archive a course into a zip file:
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ehelp/blackboard/faculty/step/courseoptions/exportarchivecourse. htm.
The URL page provides the information regarding “Export Course” and “Archive Course”. To have a full personal archive, you should proceed to the “Archive Course” steps.

Once finished with the “Archive Course” steps, please feel free to let me know which course(s) you would like me to delete from Blackboard. To have me proceed with this request, please fill out the course request form that can be accessed from this URL link: http://www.csupomona.edu/~iit/learning/blackboard/bb_crf.shtml. Please do not forget to specify your request by selecting “Delete Course” on the first dropdown menu.
I have received some questions about why we recommend the faculty to delete the unused courses that were offered from two quarters ago and before. It results in faster course backups, simplified management, and better overall performance.

If you need to access the students’ records and the materials from a course that has been deleted, you will have two options:
1. Restore it from the offline backup tape. It will take four business days to complete this request
2. Restore it from your personal archive. For this option, you must bring your personal archive (a zip file), in a flash drive or CD-ROM to me. It will take 24 hours to process this request after I receive the archive file from you.

Each option has its advantages and disadvantages. For the first option, you don’t have to worry about searching for and bringing the archive file from your personal computer because we will retrieve it from the quarterly backup tape. However, it will take about four business days to restore a course with this option. The second option is faster. However, you will need to provide your personal archive file to me before I can proceed.

Please feel free contact me for any further questions, concerns, or comments. Have a great Christmas holiday!

Pauline Salim
Studio Six (98-C6-13)
x6429