Ultra - Folders inside of Folders there are limitations

In building content in Ultra I am finding there is a limit in being able to layer folders in folders.  I am having to rethink and redesign organizing content.

Building Content in Ultra Course View

Comparing functions in Ultra to what I am used to seeing in the original experience I am wishing for the following:

• No easy navigation from document to document in a folder
• In the text editor being able to:
• align text
• create/use a table
• adjust the size of an image
• Textbooks - I tried to the Content Market but I could not get anything to work (I may be missing a step)
• Course banner - some of our faculty like to "jazz" up the course with a cool banner on the opening of their course
• My faculty like the themes option so those will be missed.

There is no Contact tool so it would be great if the Profile for those with instructor roles would include the following on their profile in a class

• Work number
• Cell number
• Twitter account
• Office Hours

I submitted an Idea in the Bb Community site.  
Here is the link if anyone wants to agree or add to my suggestion.
 https://community.blackboard.com/ideas/2608-profiles-in-ultra-course-design

I am finding the course to look very "text heavy".  I am not seeing any options for images to peek users interest in the course.

Building a Course in Ultra

In our original courses, each course menu includes college-specific information including:

• Link to our Library's Copyright Policy
• Link to our Library's Research Guides (libguides)
• Link to our list of Blackboard video tutorials for both instructors and students
• Link to Blackboard Help.

In Ultra, these are showing separately under Course Content.

1. I am going to group the 2 library resources into a folder called Library Resources - can drag/drop right into the folder, no action menu and click moved needed

2. Delete the link to the tutorials since they are all only for the original experience 

3. Delete the link to Help.  

First thing I like about Ultra is there is a question mark icon "?" icon located at the bottom right corner of the screen which guides me to a web page with resource information for that area of Ultra.  

Hooray!

Happy 2018! One year on SaaS and Going Strong, Now, on to Ultra!

We have now operated on SaaS using the 2012 theme and all courses using the original experience for one year now.
We successfully updated to Q2 2017 (3200) in May of 2017 and Q4 2017 (3300) in December 2017.

Now comes the next step exploring the Ultra Experience and Ultra course types.

We are happy to participate in a Blackboard Program call UPP (Ultra Product Partnership).  We are provided a server with the Ultra experience and we can add courses, instructors, and students.

We were provided a 2-hour training session via Collaborate on some of the functions in Ultra.

First impression by our 4 faculty who are going to pilot this for us is they "LOVE' the look of Ultra.

Stay tuned for updates.

Upgraded to Q2 2017 CU1 Saas 3200.0.1 FDO

Overnight our production system was upgraded to Q2 2017 CU1 which in 3200.0.1.

No slow downs, roles appear to be keeping the right permissions.  rubrics are still available. 

This is great since Summer Sessions begin Monday.

My only concern and I will continue to question this... the only way I know what 3200.0.1 means is to do a search on Behind the Blackboard.

The FDO page on help.blackboard.com,

https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/About_Learn_SaaS_Deployment/Learn_SaaS_Plus_and_Advantage_Options/Flexible_Deployment_Option

is an appropriate overview but does not give me the details I need to understand what exactly what version I had.

I keep hoping for the "Code Book" ! 

May 12, 2017 - Last day of the semester

We are finishing our first semester on SaaS.  I am happy to say our move to SaaS has been a success!  

Yes, there were hiccups (custom theme and 2 3rd-party buildings not being as ready as they should have been).  AWS went down twice.  

Theme issue was resolved and should not be a problem for new SaaS clients.  Kaltura and EvaluationKIT B2s were fixed by Blackboard.

My "take-aways" from this first semester were: 

1. Appreciation for our faculty as they supported this move to SaaS with worked with me through the "hiccups".  

2. Ease of working with Bb Support in resolving issues.  Support's commitment to supporting us when we need them was and is outstanding!

FDO - Flexible Deployment Option - Be mindful, it is not as flexible as you may think.

If you review the following link from Bb Help
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Release_Notes/Learn_SaaS_Release_Schedule#fdo_schedule

you will notice the flexible deployment schedule for 3200 (Q2 2017) has 3 scheduled dates only:

• 18 May 2017, 5:00 PM EST
• 25 May 2017, 5:00 PM EST
• 8 June 2017, 5:00 PM EST

This presents a dilemma for me because our summer course, our ONLINE summer courses begin May 22, 2017.  When is the best time for us to upgrade?

I am comforted that 3200 is already loaded on my Test server and has already been released to those on CD (continuous delivery).  Hopefully all the problems with the version have been found and then corrected before we move.