Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Open Letter Re: Behind the Blackboard

Hi Blackboard Support,

Today, without warning, you changed Behind the Blackboard. Clients dislike surprises. We like knowing how things work. Give us access to the new thing before we have to deal with it. That way we become familiar with it.

Even if you do not give advance viewing of the service, then advance warning the change would happen today so I can plan around it happening. I had a phone call with one of your employees yesterday. That would have been a good time to tell me. It is a web site, so you could put on your web site to expect the change.

The main problem is I cannot login to this site. My current user id and client id are not accepted. The math problem to foil bot does not accept the correct answers. Others found the password provided did not work. This roll out seems less than ready for production use. I emailed the address on the support page for help.

Thanks,

Ezra

UPDATE 2011-06-10: Apparently there was an email sent on May 27th, about 12 days before change. It looks like many customers just like me did not see the email. Also, this is about the time a coworker’s email address changed to foo@blackboard. In the lists discussing this mess, another client got noemailonrecord101@company.inc.

I guess the old system is not available because apparently we have to tell Blackboard the people who to add to our client id? (Nevermind that because we are a system there are about 40 client ids.)

UPDATE 2011-06-14: I got into the site. Now my default list of tickets belongs to the first client id in the set of our consortium. Since the merger of the WebCT and Blackboard support almost five years ago, I have been working tickets in the client id for the system office. Maybe one day this will work?

Ezra S F

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5 responses to “Open Letter Re: Behind the Blackboard”

  1. Ezra S F Avatar
    Ezra S F

    Of course, if Behind the Blackboard would more consistently email me, then I probably would only go into it just to create or close cases not every day to see if there is an update.

    Reply
  2. Scott Kodai Avatar
    Scott Kodai

    Worked just fine for me. Activated new account, got the email confirmation, logged in. Easy.

    Reply
  3. Ezra S F Avatar
    Ezra S F

    Maybe so many people are affected by this 7 hours later no one has responded to the email Behind the Blackboard said to message about the problem?

    Reply
  4. Peter Love Avatar
    Peter Love

    I’ve got the same problem – my current user id and client id are not accepted.

    And no response from the email address they say to email.

    Reply
    1. Ezra S F Avatar
      Ezra S F

      It took about 7.5 hours to get the response. It was a form letter telling me how to do the activation. So mostly useless because I had told them I tried to do the activation and encountered the problem of my current user id and/or client id not being recognized. The one useful part was confirmation the ones I used were correct.

      Reply

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