Overview
RS-5 provides implementation, support and customization services for the Blackboard Analytics modules as well as the related reporting tools, Pyramid and Reporting Services. Our team are former Blackboard (iStrategy) founders and employees, who together, designed, developed and implemented the Blackboard (iStrategy) Student/FA, Finance and HR modules for over 200 schools.
As experts in iStrategy and Blackboard® Analytics, RS-5 is uniquely positioned to support your information management needs in Higher Education. We collaborate with institutions to define their criteria for success and then identify the best approach to meet goals quickly and efficiently. The result – minimal wasted time, wasted money or risk for our clients! We provide strong technical know-how combined with a keen functional awareness to help Institutions leverage their analytics assets and achieve measurable results.
Ask us about our annual support program that includes intensive training sessions, office hours and help desk.
Service Examples
BBA Server and SQL environment upgrade
If you would like to update your physical or virtual servers and Microsoft SQL Server version to take advantage of improved performance and enhanced functionality, we can work with you to build a plan and execute.
Server environment and Load (ETL) health check
If load cycles are taking too long (3+ hours), we can review current server resource allocation and analyze recent load statistics to identify bottlenecks and make recommendations to improve performance.
ETL load performance tuning
ETL Run-time Analysis and implementation of one or more tuning approaches to improve end-to-end execution time (e.g. Foreign Key Management, OLAP Partitioning, Execution Order Consolidation, advanced indexing)
Pyramid, SSRS and other reporting tools training and support
Complete support, development and training for all reporting tools used against the Blackboard Analytics modules
Pyramid Upgrades from all versions to 6.x or 2018.x
There are many key features available with version 6 and the newest Pyramid release, 2018, for clients to take advantage of enhanced capability.
Single Sign on for Pyramid and Reporting Services
To enable alternative authentication models to Pyramid content (e.g. put Pyramid reports on an existing campus portal but not require a second login/map using a proxy Pyramid user)
Cloud system and on-premise integration modules (i.e. TargetX, Slate, PowerFaids, ExamSoft)
RS-5 has extensive experiences implementing alternate data source into Blackboard Analytics including cloud and on premise applications including TargetX, Slate, PowerFaids, Raiser’s Edge
Data model enhancements
Examples include:
- Admissions funnel expansion to include prospects and related events and inquires
- Registration/Enrollment Comparative models that builds history for snapshots of actual values for key set of dimensions. The delivered model only reports the current dimension values for enrollments as of a certain date
- Enhanced Cohort Reporting Model for tracking Cohorts of Admitted Students through Graduation and understanding Program and Plan change over time.
- Survey reporting to analyze Student response changes over time and Institution versus All respondents change over time
- Competency testing reporting analysis
ETL Enhancements
Examples include:
- Expanded data sourcing to include file and API-based content.
- Additional transaction reporting options with a Operational Data Store
Higher ED Administration utility support
Extensive experience maintaining and extending the Blackboard Analytics HE Admin administration application.
Training and support programs
Includes intensive product introduction, use case training sessions, regular office hours and help desk