Archive for February, 2009
Public Announcement Nugget in WAOL ANGEL is off for repairs
This is only for colleges who are using the Public Announcement nugget in their own domain on WAOL ANGEL.
We have removed that nugget temporarily from WAOL ANGEL because we have discovered that colleges still have the ability to edit each other’s announcements. We’ll fix it and turn it back on as soon as we can.
WAOL Council Meeting; February 23rd recording
Click here for access to a list of all Council meeting recordings and slideshows. This latest recording also includes the first meeting of the ANGEL Admin Workgroup Meeting.
Support Escalation Path
Below is the Technical Support Escalation Path (link to a word doc is also included at the end of the post). Please take a look at these procedures and use them when requesting support when Angel is not working properly. Please also pass this along to others on your campus.
Washington Online is revamping its relationship with Presidium Learning. As of 2-18-09 we have new personnel and a larger management team that are working with us to create a new Angel support portal. The new portal will be 100% Angel focused and will provide the waol office direct access to everything Presidium technicians are doing. We still have a lot of work ahead of us on this project but it will provide all of us a better level of support than we have seen in the past.
Escalation Path (For when Angel is not working properly)
1. Call Presidium Tech Support 1-866-425-8412 (Toll free)
a. Additional information coming soon on the new Angel Support Portal we are creating
2. Required information you need on hand to provide technical support personnel:
a. Waol ID number
b. Course name
c. Username
d. The path taken to where the error is occurring
e. A copy of the error message
f. Name of browser and version
g. MAC or PC and version
3. If Presidium is not able to assist you then please escalate (email) to Jesse Sims or Mark Carbon
a. Include the ticket number assigned to your case when you called Presidium
b. Include all of the information in number 2 (above)
c. jsims@lowercolumbia.edu
d. mcarbon@sbctc.edu
4. All of this information is required before a ticket is opened in the Angel Support Center. The technician needs to be able to replicate the problem so they can turn around and fix it.
5. For information on how to use Angel: https://www.waol.org/faculty_and_staff/angelSupport.aspx
WAOL Messages Seen As SPAM
College instructors are telling WAOL that they are not receiving all our messages. We do send out messages with large numbers of faculty email addresses in the blind copy, so the messages are possibly identified as spam at the colleges. One instructor showed us a message (she works out of state) that identified our email as a known phishing scam. (And none of us are getting rich on it!)
We are working on other ways to communicate with large numbers of people from multiple institutions, but in the meantime, could you white list emails from the State Board email account?
ANGEL Time-Out Issues
Last week many users of WAOL ANGEL frequently timed out and received an error message: “There was an error processing your request.”
ANGEL found that the error was caused by an asp.net page timeout of 5 minutes that is related to ANGEL discussion forums. WAOL has adjusted the ANGELSESSION_TIMEOUT as a temporary fix. ANGEL is working on a permanent fix, and they will apply it when it is ready.
Please let us know if any of your users continue to see this problem.
If you do hear of this problem—or any problem with WAOL ANGEL– please send the user to WAOL or Presidium with specific information. The more information we have, the faster we can get to a solution.
If you are reporting a problem, please include the user, the classroom, the time of day, the area of the classroom where it occurred, the browser used, and anything else that might be useful.
Intent to Teach Form Deadline: February 18
The deadline for WAOL-owned, shared courses is close-of-business Wednesday, February 18th.
Spring classrooms will be created on Thursday, the 19th.
Spring Classrooms
Mark Carbon will be creating spring classrooms in Angel and Blackboard starting Feb. 6th for all Intent-to-Teach (ITT) forms that have been approved by your college.
If you are teaching in Angel:
In addition to your ANGEL classroom, we are creating a Blackboard classroom for you. The Blackboard classroom has a message telling students to go login to Angel. This is in case you have a student that by-passes our website and goes directly to Blackboard.
Note: The student user ID in ANGEL does not include waol before the student ID. In ANGEL students just enter their student ID number.
If you are teaching in Blackboard for Spring:
In addition to your Blackboard classroom, you will be given an Angel classroom that all your students will be enrolled into. Log into your Angel classroom and post a message telling students you will be teaching in Blackboard this quarter.
Post the URL http://waol.blackboard.com and these login instructions:
RETURNING STUDENTS – To Login:
- UserID = waol + your student ID number
- Password = the same password you used last quarter
NEW STUDENTS – To Login:
- UserID = waol + your student ID number
- Password = first 5 letters of your last name (no spaces or punctuation) Password example: Johnson=johns, Lee=lee, O’Reilly=oreil
For Spring the waol.org site will be changed to feature ANGEL as WAOL’s course management system rather than Blackboard. We will still have the Blackboard login links for the few classrooms that will be in Blackboard for Spring.
Faculty still using Blackboard are required to update the Angel classroom to send their students to Blackboard.
Instructions on how to copy your course into ANGEL and how to post messages in ANGEL can be found here: http://www.waol.org/faculty_and_staff/ANGELSupport.aspx
ANGEL issue Tuesday, February 3
We enabled SSL for WAOL ANGEL yesterday morning; however, this caused the college ANGEL domains to also require SSL, which hasn’t been setup for them. To fix that problem, we disabled SSL.
We are now researching how we can use SSL with our multiple custom domains. Apparently, ANGEL is not using SSL with other clients who have multiple domains. It might be possible when we have all of our school domains setup.
Sorry for any confusion.
New Billing Process for Tech Fees
The billing process will change a bit, and we will not be billing out the technology fees until the end of the quarter after the ANGEL audit periods (ANGEL audit dates for Winter 2009: March 5th – 11th).
After March 11, Brook Bane will send out tech fees for what your college will owe WAOL for students still enrolled in winter 09 quarter courses.
As for the instruction fees, those are still based on the WAOL 10th day count so any students enrolled in a WAOL system-owned shared course after January 22nd (WAOL 10th day) will be included in the hiring college’s instruction count. So those invoices will still need to be sent to the WAOL office for approval to be paid.
For any enrollments in a college-owned shared course the process will be the same as in the past, a list will be sent to those colleges who had participating enrollments in their courses and they will be responsible for billing the participating colleges for those enrollments.
Note: The instruction fee is a pass-through fee. Instruction fees will be paid out to teaching colleges after the enrolling colleges pay. We need to have funds come in before we can pay out.
Spring Book Order Deadline is Friday, February 14th
It’s time to submit course materials for the WAOL Spring Quarter.So, if you haven’t yet submitted your Spring Book Order please do so ASAP.
Click on this link for steps to entering your Book Order
The deadline for the Spring book order report is scheduled to close at midnight on Friday, February 14th.
