Blackboard Schedule

The UO Blackboard course information system is normally available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, with a few exceptions. See the schedule below, Blackboard News, and IS Status website for information.

Emergency response to Blackboard outages is available by calling Library Systems, at 346-3049, during times the Knight Library is open. You can also file a trouble ticket at blackboard@ithelp.uoregon.edu.

Consulting for students in the use of Blackboard is available through the Library Learning Commons during times the Knight Library is open.

Consulting for faculty in the use of Blackboard is available at CMET Consulting (Room 19). Second level technical support is available by email at most times, although full time staff are typically on site 8:00 AM - 5 PM Monday-Friday.

Downtime Schedule

There's never a good time to have a major service like Blackboard down for necessary maintenance. We try our best to juggle competing needs and pick times that minimize disruption for the entire UO community. Check this page for our official Blackboard downtime schedule. We update the schedule approximately quarterly, and attempt to list all scheduled downtime for the next six to twelve months.

Blackboard at UO is currently unavailable every Tuesday morning, 5 am - 5:15 am. In addition, the application servers are restarted every morning at about 4:14 am, resulting in a very brief (typically under 5 minutes) service interruption at that time.

We also reserve one Saturday each month for preventive maintenance and upgrades, and additional downtime during winter and spring breaks. If we need to actually use this reserved downtime, we will announce detailed plans as much in advance as possible on the Blackboard news blog. The date each month is chosen when possible to correspond to the Information Services system maintenance weekend. On months when we need to use this reserved time, Blackboard is typically down starting at 8 am.

The Blackboard system also depends on various other systems that may themselves have scheduled downtime. For example, Information Services reserves 4 am - 7 am each Monday morning for network downtime. Although this downtime is rarely actually used, Blackboard would be unavailable whenever the network was down. Similarly, Information Services reserves Tuesday 6 am - 8 am for occasional shell.uoregon.edu, mail system, and web services downtime.

2009 Calendar

Check back in October for the rest of academic year 2009.

Date	Note	Planned downtime schedule
Apr. 11, 2009	during spring term	Reserved for emergency updates only
May 9, 2009	middle of spring term	Tentative; no user visible changes
June 13, 2009	after spring term finals; before grades are due	Reserved for emergency updates only
July 11, 2009	after week 3	Tentative; no user visible changes
Aug. 22, 2009	after 8 week term	major upgrade: Blackboard 9
Sept. 12, 2009	during Sept exp'ce, Law fall	Hardware upgrade. Hot fix. No major user visible changes Note: old 2005-06 coursesites removed during week of Sept. 14-18
Oct 10, 2009	early fall term	Reserved for emergency updates only
Nov. 14, 2009	middle of fall term	Tentative. Possible service pack (v 9 sp 2) or hot fix upgrade. No major user visible changes
Dec 28-29, 2009 (Mon-Tues)	winter break	Software upgrade likely. Possible Blackboard 9.1 upgrade.
Jan. 9, 2010	early winter term	Reserved for emergency updates only
Feb. 13, 2010	middle of winter term	Tentative; no major user-visible changes
Mar. 25, 2010 (Thur)	spring break	Possible Bb Service Pack or database maintenance. Minimal user visible changes.

Knight Library is scheduled to be closed several days during 2009-10. Blackboard will be available except as noted above, but other library services will not: Jun 14, 2009; Jul 4; Aug 15/16, 22/23, 29/30; Sep 5-7, 12/13, 19/20; Nov 26; Dec 12/13, 19/20, 25-27; Jan 1, 2010; Mar 20/21; Jun12/13.

Planning for downtime

As we put together the downtime schedule, we consult with the Blackboard Advisory Committee, the staff in Information Services, and a wide variety of other interested parties. Some principles governing our plans include:

minimize overall downtime.
avoid downtime during peak usage periods, including the first week of the term, and last week of a term through the day grades are due.
avoid downtime during the busiest times of a typical week, which approximately include 8am-1am Sun-Fri and 1pm-1am Sat.
avoid user-visible functionality or interface changes during a term, and avoid major interface changes in the middle of an academic year.
maintain the core blackboard system at near-current version. When major versions are released, we generally try to wait until the first patch release, but attempt to stay no more than 9 months behind current major version.
announce scheduled downtime as much in advance as possible, typically at least one full term in advance.

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 09/13/2009