Products & Services

We’ve been talking about ANGEL 8.0 for a while now—since before the merger with Blackboard—and now it’s here.  Yesterday we announced the general availability of ANGEL 8.0.  So, what’s the big deal (when you’ve been told it’s a small update)? There are some big benefits for ANGEL clients who upgrade to ANGEL 8.0.  First, this is the only fully supported ANGEL release with service packs to be planned through the end of life of ANGEL in October 2014.  These service packs will provide continued support of product issues that arise.  ANGEL 7.4 moves to Operational Support in October 2012 at which time no further service packs will be planned, though security vulnerabilities will continue to be resolved on both code lines. The biggest part of big in ANGEL 8.0 is the support for Safari and Chrome.  This is something ANGEL clients have been requesting for a long time.  You can now better support your end users by allowing them more flexibility in browser options. All this, along with enhancements to Discussion Forums, Assessment navigation, Gradebook settings, content exchange, and others, make ANGEL 8.0 a welcomed release and another example of Blackboard’s delivering on its plans for the ANGEL community. Finally, with batch export functionality in ANGEL 8.0, it is a release on the path toward Blackboard Learn 9.1.  As Ray Henderson mentioned in a letter to the community, we have more ANGEL clients inquiring about Release 9.1.  You can see how ANGEL is influencing Release 9.1 in our Feature Showcase, or if you are ready to test content migration, think about joining the ANGEL Content Conversion PDP. Now for the small of it.  We know ANGEL clients don’t want to worry about change management—not now when you’re busy evaluating options for the future.  So, all of the enhancements mentioned above are balanced with change management in mind.  The move from ANGEL 7.4 to ANGEL 8.0 won’t require training for your faculty but will bring you many big benefits! Want to learn more about ANGEL 8.0?  Check out the updated ANGEL webpage for product and webinar information and links to register for ANGEL Community programs.