By Jenna Shackelford
Gardner-Webb’s Technology Services has identified and resolved a glitch affecting graduating seniors’ ability to access Blackboard, email and folders through WebbConnect. Measures are in place to prevent the glitch from occurring again.
Greg Humphries, Associate VP for Technology Services, explained that “the problem was us trying to make things run quicker and better which is something that is always changing for technology services.” When new students are admitted into the university, it takes 12 hours before their WebbConnect accounts are created and they can access the site.
“The programmer was working on decreasing that time when he grabbed an older piece of code,” said Humphries. That piece of code is what caused the problems in the system.
Technology Services has now made sure that there is only one piece of code being used in their procedure so the problems will not arise again with the automated system. “Going forward, we have cleaned up old code, so that the latest and greatest code is located and being used,” Humphries said.
Additionally, the programmer has been temporarily running the system manually, so Technology Services can be certain there are no issues with the automated system before utilizing it again. The automated system was expected to be running again Tuesday.
The glitch, which occurred Sept. 1, was reported Sept. 2 by a graduating senior. By Monday, several seniors reported issues accessing Blackboard, email and folders through WebbConnect. Humphries noticed that seniors seemed to be the common denominator among the people affected, and requested a list from the registrar of students who applied for graduation.
Technology Services went through the list to determine who was having issues. Not all of the 300 students who applied for graduation saw the effects of the glitch.
Although the situation has been resolved, Technology Services would like to remind students to complete work orders through WebbConnect should they notice any more issues. Students can also call (704) 406-4647 to request a work order be submitted.
If students want to check the status of any of Gardner-Webb’s major systems, they may visit gardner-webb.info, where all the information is kept up to date by Technology Services. The system glitch that affected seniors over the weekend will not be listed because it was not a system-wide glitch.
