Ultilearn Down

It was bloody snowing earlier! :open_mouth: No rising temperatures here :sweat_smile:

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And as for a serious reply. There was an email sent out earlier to all stating they are working with 3rd party suppliers and it’s expected to be ‘fixed’ early next week. I say ‘fixed’ as it’ll work as good (bad) as it did before :wink:

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I wait expectantly then!

Has ultilearn ever really been “up”?
Whoever sold us this saw us coming big time.

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It may only be a week (I actually think it maybe closer to 2) of continuous outage (so far) but the accumulative unavailability well exceeds a month, all be it from a number of intermittent outages. At what point will HQ allow an alternative interim arrangement, Sqn CFAV could for example administer a manual process so cadets aren’t repeatedly let down by being unable to take their exams until RAFAC Learn is available ?

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Ultilearn has been out for all manner of reasons since day one, so to base this on the current failure to supply a service is wrong. It is normal business practice to have service agreements which require immediate action, we don’t have one of these I assume. If you had a 3rd party system down for a week at work, someone would have been getting antsy after a day, but we don’t have anyone in a senior position who gives a monkeys. Why is it only the people who actually care are the volunteers? Because they see the negative impact of the intransigence in those salaried individuals, but are powerless to do anything.

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Many years ago I was at a conference at Cranwell and we were asked if we would like to see, and cast our techie eyes over, a new system that was being considered/bought. Most of the attendees were in IT day jobs.
It was Ultilearn.
There was certainly a wow factor for us all, good demo by the salesmen. Lots of questions asked - can it do X, Y, Z, etc, interface with Bader, tried and tested, etc etc?
“Of course it can, not a problem”.
You could see the £ signs rolling round in their eyes lol.

Back in 2011 ish, HQAC we’re looking at an IT Training System and Ultilearn was mentioned. At the time, pretty much everyone else in the RAF and elsewhere in the Forces was using ‘Moodle’ very successfully. Strangely to those in the training world, HQAC chose not to go with a system which the rest of the RAF knew and trusted!

In my last job in the late 90s we were using a DOS based system for data collection which had to be faffed around with to do the analysis using SAS, which was bloody expensive for the few modules we needed. I was part of a specialist industry panel and at one of our meetings we had two systems presented that could do collection, some basic analysis and were windows based. They were being used by a few people I was on good terms with and they were very enthusiastic. I picked up the lit for both and at work we started the process. When we involved business systems they were insistent on seeing both products working in a similar environment and meeting both companies before anything else was discussed, as part of due diligence.
I arranged visits to the people I knew and asked that their systems people were there as well to talk to our people. After these both suppliers were invited for meetings with systems. After this we discussed both looking and pros and cons. We then had 2 further meetings with the company we picked with our dept management and senior systems management so it could be demonstrated and what after sales services they provided s part of the annual license, which was updates, technical support (email or phone) and 24 hour onsite visit response to problems that couldn’t be resolved. It took 2 years from start to finish, which included remodelling of our facilities. We never had any major problems with it, that weren’t due to internal issues. It’s still being used. It was a really interesting process to be part of.

I’m not convinced the same process were followed or agreements as part of acquiring Ultilearn, as you say £ signs rolling. It makes you wonder given Moodle was being used by the RAF, why someone in the RAF didn’t say no, we have something that works and we understand it. Or was that far too simple and not enough brownie points for HQAC? Why do HQAC want to do their own thing all the time, when they haven’t got enough support or money.

The school I now work in invested heavily for a couple years in online systems, pre pandemic, which came into their own when the pandemic hit. TEAMS featured heavily for lessons over the lockdowns and other pandemic non attendances, I only caught he back end but apart from the usual internet gremlins worked well enough. The teachers use TEAMS for some after school lessons rather than stay at school. The other things are used for homework, absence cover and do a lot of tests which can have a time to complete allotted. I really wish we could limit our ‘exams’ to say 20 minutes.

You’ll all be excited and thrilled to know Ultilearn is back.
200

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And… it’s down again.

I think I broke it trying to run a report.

thats-a-paddlin-32223564

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If you get the cloudflare error whilst waiting for actions in Ultilearn, this is where the MOD Cloudflare service is cutting the connection where Ultilearn is being slow to respond. We have a request in with the Cloudflare team to adjust this timeout.

Idk if my issue is this, but the Child Protection module is taking an age to change slides, to the extent where I closed the module and abandoned my progress.
Similarly, I completed “Responsible for Information - General User 2022” (I’m guessing this is the right Responsible for Information, there are two on UltiLearn for some reason…) but when the Civil Service Learning pop up said you may close this page, which I did, UltiLearn didn’t do anything and stayed open as though the Civil Service Learning pop up was still open? Upon looking in the Results section there was no marker of “Complete - Satisfied” or similar as I’d expect, and just shows Attempt Number 1 and a “-” under Status. If anyone could advise that would be grand.
Are there any courses which are actually working functionally that I can do right now?

:rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl: are you new or something?

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6 years in sadly… But eh, I can but hope…
In other news, its actually got worse… The ultilearn landing site isn’t even formatting properly currently, so it renders it even more useless for the time being…
I know VSDT are working really hard and that this probably isn’t their fault, but I can’t say I’m not a little bit cheesed off…

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My Ultilearn also looks dreadful, but is technically correctly functioning currently.

There are significant issues with the way Ultilearn is running courses, recording results and generating reports. Users are strongly advised to not use Ultilearn unless it is completely necessary, as it is likely their results will not record as they should, and users will lose all of their progress.

Mine says this at the side. Think it’s said that for while though.

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its said that for as long as i care to remember… Nonetheless, exams still need to be taken and mandatory training still needs to be passed… Without UltiLearn there is no new CFAVs/Staff Cadets…

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Tried the ACTO 10 module and passed the knowledge check at the end with 100%, closed module when instructed but appears as though UltiLearn hasn’t clocked that I’ve passed it… Nothing under Status at all, just the same “-” i mentioned earlier, so I’m not convinced it’s technically correctly functioning either…

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