After a lengthy Request for Proposals process, the University of Wisconsin System has issued a letter of intent to negotiate a web conferencing contract with Zoom, with the goal of having Zoom web conference services in place for all University of Wisconsin System institutions by Fall 2021.

Recordings made with Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Blackboard Collaborate Original, or Elluminate will become unavailable after 06/30/2021 unless they have been downloaded from Blackboard's servers and saved locally or exported to another video hosting service (such as Kaltura). 

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings made through Canvas and set to "Public" are automatically copied to Kaltura a day or two after creation in accordance with the University of Wisconsin System Media Management Process. 

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings made outside of Canvas or set to "Private" can be downloaded as individual recordings. There is no bulk process for downloading these recordings.  

University of Wisconsin System users will not be able to run Blackboard Collaborate Ultra sessions after June 30, 2021. On many campuses, this is in the middle of the Summer 2021 term.

Fortunately, every campus in the University of Wisconsin System has other web conference options which have already been tested, integrated with Canvas, and widely deployed. 

Some campuses have their own contracts with 3rd party web conference providers (WebEx, BlueJeans, or Zoom, for example), and may continue to use those services. 

All campuses have access to Microsoft Teams Meetings through their Office 356 contract. We encourage users to use Microsoft Teams Meetings as the web conference provider from the beginning of Summer 2021, rather than transition away from Blackboard Collaborate Ultra in the middle of the term. 

Here are some guides to using Microsoft Teams Meetings:

As mentioned above, the University of Wisconsin System is deploying Zoom in time for Fall 2021. See Zoom - Service Overview.