Blackboard routinely performs maintenance and infrastructure changes on environments for the following reasons:
To ensure supported configurations
To improve performance
To harden security
This infrastructure upgrade is planned for all Blackboard environments to strengthen the platform while minimizing disruption to institutions. While most maintenance can be done without downtime that impacts user access, this upgrade will require limited downtime. The planned downtime for this upgrade is approximately two hours.
Note: FedRAMP Moderate environments in GovCloud are NOT impacted by this announcement; all environments in GovCloud were upgraded to this infrastructure in 2025.
The sections below outline the planned schedule. If the plan changes, this support article will be updated.
Blackboard SaaS Staging
Starting May 25th, we will begin the infrastructure upgrade on all Blackboard SaaS STAGING environments. We expect upgrade activities to take approximately TWO (2) HOURS. During this upgrade, STAGING environments will not be available and cannot be accessed. A splash page indicating the site is under maintenance will be displayed.
Blackboard SaaS Production
Between June 15 and Dec 15, 2026, we will perform the infrastructure upgrades on all Blackboard SaaS PRODUCTION environments. This will take approximately TWO (2) HOURs of downtime. During this upgrade, PRODUCTION environments will not be available and cannot be accessed. A splash page indicating the site is under maintenance will be displayed. Blackboard will perform this upgrade during typical off hours (overnight) based on the hosting region.
The upgrade will happen in cohorts. All Administrators will receive a notification with their upgrade date by the end of May. If this date is acceptable, no further action is required. We recommend communicating the maintenance window to users.
Maintenance Date Notification
Administrators can modify the maintenance date once administrators receive their notification. This is done in the production environment itself: Administrator Panel > Tools and Utilities > System Configuration > Downtime Maintenance Schedule. The administrator can select a date between June 15 and Dec 15, 2026.
A confirmation email is sent when the maintenance date is changed. The maintenance schedule can be adjusted up to 7 days before the currently selected time.
For customers licensing Blackboard SaaS LITE, we will notify administrators with the planned maintenance date. These dates cannot be modified.
Action Needed:
Please review this article detailing the IP addresses that need to be added to the Approved List to allow traffic from Blackboard Learn SaaS Environments (outbound) by region
https://support.anthology.com/s/article/IP-Addresses-to-Add-to-the-Approved-List-for-Blackboard-Lea…
Test Steps for Staging and Production
Once the upgrade is complete, administrators will receive an email that the infrastructure upgrade is completed and will also see a notification in the admin panel. We encourage clients to log in to their updated environments and perform the following routine checks (listed below):
Test definition
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Success criteria
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Help Link
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Log in to Learn as an administrator, search and select one course
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The list of courses is displayed correctly, and you can access to one of them
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Review the students enrolled by viewing the Roster tool in the course you selected
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The list of students is displayed correctly
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Go to the Discussions Tab
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The list of discussion is displayed correctly
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Go to the Gradebook Tab
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The information on gradebook is displayed correctly
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Go to the Content Tab
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The information on content is displayed correctly, including PDF, images and MS Word documents
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Create a new course for testing
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A new test course is created correctly
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Create a new course content including a PDF File
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A new course content is created correctly
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Delete the course for testing
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The test course was deleted correctly
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Please execute any other testing you consider important
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