Description
Who's Online allows system administrators to view who is currently on the system. It is a useful tool to monitor user activity on the system in real-time. Who's Online is both a portal module and a system extension where the portal module displays a list of the total number of users for various time periods. It also links to the system extension that displays a page of details on who is on the system.
A more technical description...
Who's Online will display who is currently using the Blackboard system. This is done by reporting on the session table that Blackboard keeps for Blackboard session management through the Building Blocks API. Sessions in any web application are stateless, meaning that we don't know what is really happening between web transactions, so the reported information is collected over a three hour period (the maximum time Blackboard keeps sessions active) and marks who has accessed the Blackboard system within that period of time.
Actual usage of the system does vary, however. As an example, a student can be actively using the Blackboard system by performing multiple transactions in a short time span (perhaps they are quickly navigating through the Blackboard system) or they may be reading various pages served by Blackboard where the elapsed time between transactions is much larger because they have to read them. This is why there may be big gaps in how often user transactions occur.
Users who have logged off of the system will not be displayed so if you see someone that has last accessed the system 2 hours ago, there's a good chance they shut down their computer and didn't log out or they navigated to another site and are just not actively using Blackboard right now. For many reasons, the maximum number of sessions are displayed through the Who's Online system extension so you can get an overall idea of utilization but you, as a system administrator, can determine what is relevant.
Compatibility
This system extension will work with Learning System alone where the system extension is available in the administrator control panel under Tools. If you also have Community System, system administrators can add the Who's Online portal module.
It works with all versions of Learning System 6.0 and above.
Installation
Install this system extension as a Building Block in the Administrator Control Panel. If you have Blackboard Community System, this system extension also installs a portal module that is available to the role "Other" by default. This can be changed through the "Properties" button in the Manage Modules area of Community System.
If you have Virtual Installs on your system, you can turn on support for this by selecting the "Contents" button in the Manage Modules area of Community System.
Version History
The latest version is 1.2.6 and is available from the Building Blocks catalog from http://buildingblocks.blackboard.com
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Notes
This system extension and accompanying portal module is only available to system administrators because it is resource intensive when gathering the list of user sessions. In Learning System with Community System 7.2, it is recommended that you make the portal module load asynchronously as it does take some time to produce the portal module output.
If your system is load-balanced, it will display user sessions per server prior to Learning System 6.3. If you are on 6.3 or above, it will display complete system user sessions on all servers.
Support
Seneca College cannot officially support this Building Block but every effort is made to ensure it works with newer versions of Blackboard Learning System because we use this building block on our production system. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Santo.Nucifora@senecac.on.ca
I will try to keep this page current as new versions of Blackboard Learning System come up but there may be a time when the underlying architecture changes and this Building Block will no longer work. That is beyond our control. If this should happen, this page will reflect the end-of-life.
At this point, there will not be any new enhancements to the Who's Online Building Block.
 | Originally posted by Santo Nucifora
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