On behalf of BbCore (the Blackboard governance committee), I am writing to let you know that on the weekend of November 15th, Blackboard will have Service Pack 13 (SP13) applied. A detailed schedule is below.

SP13 has been available in a test system for a couple of months now and has undergone testing by campus personnel. If you have not yet seen SP13, you are invited to do so by using a browser to connect to https://ut.courses.maine.edu. Log in with your usual UMS username and password.

SP13 is primarily a maintenance service pack that includes a minimal set of new features.  Among some of the new features that you will find are: enhanced exporting of test questions, and a test access log.

The detailed schedule is:

     Friday, November 15th 5pm - Blackboard is taken down. Backups of the system commence.

     Saturday, November 16th - Upgrade process begins

     Sunday November 17th - Upgrade process completes. System testing begins.

     Monday November 18th - 8am - Blackboard returns to service

Please mark these dates on your calendars, as you will have no access to Blackboard during this upgrade.

If you have further questions, please contact your campus help desk.  Replies to this email will not be responded to. You can also see more information online at http://support.courses.maine.edu/