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Service status

CURRENT ISSUES 

No current issues.

Long-Term Issues

VMWARE HORIZON VIRTUAL DESKTOP RETIRED

  • As at 24 March 2021 there was an irrecoverable issue with the Virtual Desktop platform that has been used by some staff to access college services.
  • This system has been flagged for retirement as there are other methods for accessing college services such as email, file shares and systems (e.g. use the VPN or M365 directly).
  • Staff should be able to access the necessary services via the VPN - view the various methods for remote access.
  • If you cannot use the VPN or the VPN does not provide access to the services you require, please contact the Service Desk.

UPCOMING PLANNED MAINTENANCE

PLANNED MAINTENANCE - PEBBLEPAD downtime - MONDAY 28 JUNE 07.00AM - 08.00AM

  • This is an update about Pebble Pad's upcoming release (version 2021.4) on Monday 28 June between 07.00 am - 08.00 am.
  •  The realise time is at 07.00 am with 10 minutes downtime and 1 hour at risk period. 
  • Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. 

PLANNED MAINTENANCE - change to email quarantine system

  • All in-bound email via the M365 email system is first scanned for malicious software and viruses by a mail sanitisation system.
  • Email containing malware is blocked and other suspicious mail may be put into quarantine.
  • For quarantined email, a notification is sent to the user to inspect the email and decide what to do with it.
  • We are changing the sanitisation/quarantine system over the coming weeks (from 15th April) and staff may receive notifications of quarantine from the new system.
  • Notifications will be received from quarantine@ess.uk.barracudanetworks.com

PLANNED MAINTENANCE - Weekly every TUESDAY Morning between 06.00 am and 10.00 am

  • Tuesday mornings between 6.00am and 10.00am is the ‘at risk’ period where we undertake general maintenance and updates.
  • During this period services are considered at risk and might be unavailable for short periods. Other scheduled maintenance will be noted below.
  • Please Note: if any maintenance is expected to have an impact on students or staff, it will be noted below.

    RESOLVED and COMPLETED

    Resolved UNPLANNED PARTIAL SERVICE DISRUPTION - PANOPTO - THURSDAY 10 JUNE 2021

    • Panopto is currently experiencing a partial service disruption with version 91 of Chrome/Edge browsers.
    • This is because in the latest update to Chrome/Edge, Google made a change to one of their cookie settings.
    • When logging into Moodle and opening a Panopto folder or session embed, you might be prompted to sign in again or you will see a “Refuse to connect” error message.
    • We advise you to please use an alternative browser option in the meantime such as Firefox or Safari.
    • Panopto is working on fixing this issue and will post regular updates in their Service Status page.

    Resolved - UNPLANNED DOWNTIME - TURNITIN - TUESDAY 08 JUNE 2021 11:15AM ONWARDS

    • TurnitinUK are currently experiencing a service disruption and  users may find they are unable to access the service and are shown a 503 error when attempting to access the login page or main site.
    • If you are trying to submit an exam please send it to  with the course code and your full name and username, or contact your departmental administrator.

    COMPLETED - PLANNED MAINTENANCE - S DRIVE (A.K.A. MOSELLE) AND EDIT-ON PRO ENVIRONMENTS - THURSDAY 03 JUNE 2021 5PM - 7PM

    • Following the issues in the Gordon Square data centre, critical maintenance work is required on the S Drive (a.k.a. Moselle) and EditOn Pro environments
    • These systems will be unavailable between 5pm and 7pm, today, Thursday 03 June 2021
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause

    RESOLVED - UNPLANNED DOWNTIME - VARIOUS SERVICES - MONDAY 31 MAY 2021 - Thursday 03 June 2021

    • Updated 15:59 Wednesday 02 June 2021 - replacement parts have been installed and most systems are now functioning normally or being brought back online. The list of impacted services is now as follows:
      • Departmental shared drives - these will be gradually brought on line over the course of today and tomorrow (03 June 2021).
      • All other services should be functioning normally by tomorrow, assuming no equipment damage.
    • Update 09:38 Wednesday 02 June 2021 - replacement parts are due on site today, however, it is unlikely that the situation will be fully resolved before 5pm. The list of impacted services remains as it was, although work is being undertaken to improve network connectivity in Gordon Square.
    • We are currently experiencing unplanned downtime impacting a number of services due to an outage in one of the College's data centres
    • A partial list of impacted services, here follows:
      • Departmental shared drives
      • Network and internet connectivity in the Gordon Square building
      • Any public-facing web presence running on the "www7" subdomain
      • Some areas of www.bbk.ac.uk may be running more slowly than normal
      • My Birkbeck is running at reduced speed in some circumstances
      • Access to some Library systems such as a-z ejournals, databases, Discover (articles and more) and Vufind (our Library catalogue). 
    • We are working on this urgently, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

    completed - PLANNED MAINTENANCE - MOODLE MANAGEMENT HOST MAINTENANCE - WEDNESDAY 26 MAY

    • The work will start at 4am and we expect a 15-20 minute interruption.
    • Birkbeck Moodle site will remain online and accessible during this time. We don't expect any end-user interruption for the log-shipping downtime.
    • We expect that emails sent from the Moodle system during the downtime will be queued and resent when the service comes back online again.

    resolved - MOODLE UNAVAILABLE - SATURDAY 22 MAY 2021

    • We are currently experiencing problems with our Moodle service.
    • This issue is being investigated and we hope to restore services shortly.
    • Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

    RESOLVED - UNPLANNED DOWNTIME - SITE-WIDE AND COURSE SEARCHES ON WWW.BBK.AC.UK - 3.30PM O 4:45PM FRIDAY 14 MAY 2021 ONWARDS

    • Currently the search systems that allow users to search our online prospectus and website are unavailable due to an unplanned outage
    • The issue has been raised with our service providers, Squiz
    • In the meantime you can still browse our full range of courses under the "Browse courses" heading: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause

    resolved - COLLABORATE INTERMITTENT ISSUES WITH AUDIO - THURSDAY 13 MAY 2021

    • We have encountered some intermittent issues with audio on Thursday 13 May 2021. 
    • It didn't impact all sessions, just a minority of them. Users impacted couldn't hear audio. 
    • Blackboard has prioritized this and are working diligently to fix it, in the meantime the advice to users impacted is to remain in the session as the issue can disappear when their audio re-initializes in the back-end.

    completed - MOODLE PLANNED DOWNTIME TUESDAY 11 MAY BETWEEN 08.00 AM - 12.00 NOON

    • Moodle will be unavailable on Tuesday 11 May in the morning between 08.00 am and 12.00 noon for planned maintenance.
    • This will not affect the availability of Panopto. The Panopto plugin is available to use at all times. 

    UNPLANNED - TELEPHONE SYSTEM RESTART AT 06.30PM THURSDAY 6 MAY

    • Due to an unexpected fault with the phone system, we will need to restart the phone service at 18:30 this evening.
    • This will result in any active phone calls being cut off.
    • The restart should take up to 5 minutes.
    • I would like to apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause.

    resolved - UNPLANNED - MICROSOFT TEAMS/CHAT ISSUES TUEsday 27 APRIL 2021

    • Some users may not have been able to access Teams or experienced degraded performance with some Teams features such as 
      • Can't send or receive messages
      • Can't join meetings
      • Some channels may not be visible
      • Can't join channels 
      • Can't join chats
    • Microsoft have now resolved this issue
    • If you are still experiencing problems - please restart your Teams client 
    • Cause: A recent configuration change made by Microsoft resulted in specific feature settings to include an incorrect value, resulting in impact to the service.

    completed - PLANNED MAINTENANCE - STAFF PROFILES AND RESEARCH TRACK - WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL 2021

    • Academic staff profiles will not be editable in My Birkbeck for Staff on April 21st and Research Track will also be unavailable for editing.
    • The staff profiles will still be visible on the public site.
    • This is essential maintenance to allow us to prepare for an important new feature on both systems.
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

    resolved - BUSINESS WORLD ABSENCE & EXPENSES MODULES TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE - MONDAY 12 APRIL 

    • Currently these two modules are unavailable to staff using Business World. 
    • This issue has now been resolve. 

    Resolved - UNPLANNED DOWNTIME - SYSTEM FOR CREATING AND EDITING NEWS ITEMS - WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2021

    • We are currently experiencing an issue where news items cannot be created or edited in the corporate CMS
    • This does not appear to impact the display of existing news items
    • We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as we can
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused

    Completed - PLANNED MAINTENANCE - AREAS OF PUBLIC-FACING WEB PRESENCE - TUESDAY 30 MARCH BETWEEN 07.00 AM AND 08.00 AM

    • On Tuesday morning between 07.00am and 08.00am some areas of our public-facing web presence will be unavailable due to essential maintenance
    • The downtime will be kept as short as reasonably possible
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

    COMPLETED - PLANNED MAINTENANCE - EVENTS SYSTEM - MONDAY 29 MARCH ALL DAY

    • We will be making changes to the Events system on Monday 29th March. 
    • Events will be unavailable for the day both on the events page and in My Birkbeck. 
    • The new version of Events will be live on Tuesday 30th March.
    • We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

    resolved - microsoft 365 outage - monday between 07.00 pm -10.00 pm

    • This outage mainly affected users login into Teams and certain functions in Teams.
    • According to Microsoft's latest status update, it seems that most of the impact has been mitigated.
    • Please check the Microsoft status page for the latest updates. 

    resolved - MOODLE PLANNED DOWNTIME TUESDAY 16 MARCH BETWEEN 08.00 AM - 12.00 NOON

    • Moodle was unavailable on Tuesday 16 March in the morning between 08.00 am and 12.00 noon for planned maintenance.
    • This did not affect the availability of Panopto. The Panopto plugin was available to use at all times. 

    resolved - MOODLE UNAVAILABLE - SATURDAY 13 MARCH

    • We are currently experiencing problems with our Moodle service.
    • This issue is being investigated and we hope to restore services shortly.
    • Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

       

    Completed- PLANNED MAINTENANCE - WWW.BBK.AC.UK AND ONLINE PROSPECTUS - 5PM THURSDAY 04 MARCH 2021 UNTIL NOON WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH 2021

    • Starting a 5pm on Thursday 04 March 2021 and running until around noon Wednesday 10 March 2021 this website, including the online prospectus will be undergoing significant, necessary maintenance.
    • We are working hard to maintain an uninterrupted and high quality user experience on this platform but during this time the site may run slightly more slowly than usual at times
    • On the morning of Tuesday 09 March, starting at around 6am and running for most of the day, the site may look and function slightly differently while in maintenance mode
    • We will work through the maintenance as quickly as possible
    • Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause

    completed - MOODLE PLANNED DOWNTIME TUESDAY 2 MARCH EARLY MORNING

    • Moodle was unavailable on Tuesday 2 March early in the morning for planned maintenance.
    • This did not affect the availability of Panopto. The Panopto plugin is available to use at all times.