Important information for account migration

Please note that if you are migrating data from one Blackboard Basic deployment to another the Blackboard content PK1 IDs will change. The Turnitin integration uses these IDs to link TII classes, assignments, users, paper submissions and grades to their Blackboard equivalent courses, assignments, users, gradebook columns, attempts and grades. The Turnitin Basic integration is not designed to work after the Blackboard PK1 IDs are changed.

If you create a clone of your current deployment and use this as the basis of the new Blackboard environment, the links to Turnitin will remain intact and function correctly because the PK1 IDs for the users, courses and assignments will be the same. However if you are exporting courses from the existing deployment and importing these to the new server installation the primary key IDs will change and therefore the links to the Turnitin service will be broken.

Regardless of which method you use when moving to a new Blackboard Basic integration deployment, instructors can continue to access Turnitin submissions and originality reports from the old deployment directly via the www.turnitin.com website. Therefore there is no risk of losing access to your Turnitin data.

In fact you may not need to migrate your data as it will remain accessible via the Turnitin website. You can simply setup your new Blackboard instance, install the latest Blackboard Basic plugin and start afresh with new users, courses and assignments. Please note if you do wish to start afresh you would need to make sure the new deployment is linked to a new Turnitin institutional account ID number. If necessary you could create a sub account to facilitate this.

If you do need to migrate your data we would advise that you seek assistance from your IT team to see if you can use the clone method to create the new deployment without breaking the Turnitin links.

If the above approaches do not fit with your goals or purposes, please let us know what your specific objectives and requirements are for the migration. We could then investigate if there are alternative solutions.

Once your new LMS environment is up and running, and all data migrations have been completed, you can set up your Blackboard Basic Turnitin plugin in your new Blackboard LMS.

If you have exported/imported and not cloned

  1. You will need a new TII account. Please request one from your account manager (you could use a sub account of your existing TII account).

  2. Then enable the Blackboard Basic Integration and configure your shared secret key in the TII Account Administration configuration panel, online.

  3. In the Blackboard Basic plugin configuration page you should configure the Account ID and Shared Secret Key you set up in the previous step.

  4. Set the Web Services URL to your new Blackboard LMS base URL followed by the Plugin Web Services URL.

    Follow the guidance given by the plugin on the configuration page, replacing <URL to Blackboard> with the fully-qualified domain name of the system.

If you have cloned

  1. Install the Blackboard Basic plugin in your new LMS.

  2. Configure your existing TII account and Shared Secret key. (same as in you old blackboard LMS)

  3. Set the Web Services URL to your new Blackboard LMS base URL followed by the Plugin Web Services URL.

    Follow the guidance given by the plugin on the configuration page, replacing <URL to Blackboard> with the fully-qualified domain name of the system.

  4. STOP USING YOUR OLD LMS INSTANCE for Turnitin Blackboard Basic assignments. This can cause PK1 conflicts in the data mappings which are held within the Turnitin database.