Blog from March, 2014

From approximately 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, March 20, the login server used by Desire2Learn will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance. Though Desire2Learn itself will remain online throughout, new logins to the system will not be possible during the maintenance period.

This maintenance period will allow for the installation of necessary system updates on the login server. No updates or changes to Desire2Learn will be made.

If you are logged in to Desire2Learn prior to the start of the maintenance period and remain logged in, your use of Desire2Learn will be unaffected by the maintenance. You will be able to continue to use Desire2Learn. Only new logins to Desire2Learn will be prevented during the half hour of maintenance.

The Office of Enrollment Management has announced the Millersville University homepage at www.millersville.edu will change at the end of the day today, Monday, March 17. The changes will affect how you can reach Desire2Learn from the homepage:

• The "Portal Logins" box in the left column becomes a list at the bottom in the newly redesigned page.
• The "Current Student" and "Faculty & Staff" links move out of the gold bar to become smaller links at the very top of the page.

Preview the changes. [PDF]

The official notice from the Office of Enrollment Management, emailed to the campus community on Friday, March 14:

Important notice to all users of Millersville.edu

Beginning at the end of the business day on Monday, March 17, Millersville.edu will receive a light update to enhance the user experience for our site visitors. This update will largely affect the home page, with minor cascading effects on interior site pages.

Please take time to review what has changed at http://mville.us/website-updates carefully, as these updates will impact how and where you will access various areas of the site and services, such as portal logins.

If you have any questions or require further assistance, please contact the Help Desk: 717-871-2371 or email help@millersville.edu

EDIT (Dec 3, 2014): The Help Desk's phone number is now x7777 (717-871-7777).

Update at 12:40 p.m. Eastern

Desire2Learn have issued the following update:

Resolved - SaaS/NOC Operations have stated the all clear on alerts and sites should be available again.

Original Post

The Desire2Learn system is available once more. Desire2Learn have not yet sent an announcement detailing the resolution of the problem, but the system is working.

Information Technologies will update this post once we have more information.

Update at 12:40 p.m. Eastern

Desire2Learn have issued the following update:

Resolved - SaaS/NOC Operations have stated the all clear on alerts and sites should be available again.

Update at 12:13 p.m. Eastern

The Desire2Learn system is available once more. Desire2Learn have not yet sent an announcement detailing the resolution of the problem, but the system is working.

Update at 11:50 a.m. Eastern

SaaS Ops on route to Data Centre while working in tandem with Vendor and we hope to have an update and or Resolution as soon as possible.

Original Post

Desire2Learn issued a bulletin at 11:03 Eastern:

Incident: The D2L Network Operations Center (NOC) advises that an infrastructure event in your SaaS facility is impacting access for all clients.
End User Impact: Inability to access Learning Environment
Status: SaaS Operations are fully engaged and working on this issue with the Vendor and we hope to have resolution as soon as possible.
We sincerely apologize for the impact this disruption may cause your organization. We will follow up with further updates as they become available, or within the next hour.
Regards,
Desire2Learn Customer Service & Support

Millersville University Information Technologies will provide updated information as we receive it from Desire2Learn.

SaaS stands for Software as a Service, the off-site hosting of a computing environment by an outside company.

McGraw-Hill Campus (Connect) will be unavailable from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, March 10. McGraw-Hill have issued a bulletin:

As part of our commitment to providing you with the best possible user experience, we're making some behind-the-scenes enhancements to McGraw-Hill Connect.

In order to roll-out these updates, Connect will be temporarily unavailable on 3/10 from 5:00 AM – 7:00 AM Eastern. We know that downtime can be disruptive, so we've scheduled the maintenance window during a time of historically low usage to minimize the impact on our users.

Thanks very much for your patience as we work to enhance your Connect experience.

The Desire2Learn system will remain available during the Campus/Connect downtime. Only the McGraw-Hill widgets and tools, available from within the Desire2Learn system, will be affected.

Due to scheduled, monthly maintenance, Desire2Learn will be unavailable from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, March 9. No patches or upgrades to Desire2Learn are planned for this maintenance period. Instead, this monthly, scheduled downtime allows Desire2Learn's data center to perform necessary computer and network hardware upgrades.

Support staff at Desire2Learn's data center have corrected the problem that prevented the uploading of files and the sending of email. The Desire2Learn system is working normally again.

A problem with equipment at the Desire2Learn data center currently prevents files from being uploaded into, and email from being sent from within, the Desire2Learn system. Technical support staff at the data center are working to correct the problem as quickly as possible.