OIT has identified a problem with sending bulk emails to more then 100 users through courses/communities in Blackboard. The problem appears to allow a user to send an email to more then 100 users, but in reality, the emails are not being successfully sent through the system. This is because OIT has recently enabled a personal email setting that restricts any UMBC user from sending email to more than 100 users. Also, Blackboard recently changed its own email delivery system by eliminating a setting that “chunked” bulk emails to mini-distributions of 25 users or less.
After consulting with Blackboard, OIT could eliminate the 100+ personal email filter (which does help fight internally generated spam), or wait to upgrade to the latest version of Blackboard, which will allow us to manually set the mini-distribution “chunks” to a number below OIT’s maximum personal email distribution setting. In keeping with past practice, OIT will upgrade during the winter semester, to ensure the least amount of interruption and unforeseen issues during the fall and spring semesters.
In the meantime, instructors and community managers can workaround this problem by using the “Advanced Group Management” tool, to divide large Bb sites into groups smaller then 100 users and email to those groups independently. You can accomplish this by following the directions on the advanced group management help sheet.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and we expect to resolve the issue during the winter session when we do our normal major upgrades. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Bob Armstrong (rarmstro@umbc.edu or 5-3885) or John Fritz (fritz@umbc.edu or 5-6596), or send email to blackboard@umbc.edu.