Known Issues related to the Assignment Annotation Tool
Is anyone else experiencing difficulties with the Assignment Annotation tool? A number of our modern language instructors report problems providing feedback using the tool within BrightSpace. These problems date back to January 2023. This video shows the problems in action.
Evidently, there are a SIGNIFICANT number of "Known Issues" related to this tool.
An update to the 3rd party software that makes annotation possible was released in June 2023. This was supposed to have fixed some of these issues, however, a significant number still remain.
I know the issue has been escalated, but can we get some guidance from D2L re a timeline to resolve. This is a PRIORITY FEATURE for many instructors!
The following are listed as "Known Issues" with the annotation tool as well as related posts from the Community and PIE:
Instructor Assignment Annotations in non-English disappearing
Annotations made in a language other than English disappears when the file is downloaded
French Characters Not Saving in Assignment Annotations
Error loading submission on Assignments annotation tool
Assignment file viewer not displaying PDF properly
Assignments - Annotatable Files doesn't include PDF
Brightspace pdf marking annotation not great on iPad
Assignment annotation lagging issue with ipads (D9729)
Assignments - Assignment submission cannot open in PDF Annotations viewer
* Note: this issue was closed by D2L as "non-reproducible." Please view this video to see me reproducing it on an iPad.
Answers
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Hi Mike,
Thanks for putting this post together and for bringing it to my attention.
To give you some background, the Assignment Annotations tool is powered by a 3rd party tool and many of the defects shown here were caused by issues with the tool itself. We file tickets with the provider but we are at their mercy for updates and we have been waiting for 3+ months for the latest update/fixes.
Luckily, the update for Annotations was released last week and we think it will fix many of the bugs, especially for the language related ones but we need to be sure and wait for the testing to complete before we push out the update, lest we introduce new defects.
My goal is to complete the testing, and work with the release team to hotfix certain high impact and high case count defects (such as French Characters Not Saving in Assignment Annotations). Unfortunately, we may not be able to fix all defects but we will triage, review and prioritize the remaining defects accordingly.
Please keep an eye on the Fixed Issues List as I will update all of the fixed tickets when we have more to share once the testing has been completed. If you have questions, please contact your D2L representative for additional details.
Kind regards,
Jackie
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Hi Jackie,
Thanks for taking the time to put this together. This gives us a sense of the scope of the problem and the work going on behind the scenes to address it. I will let our instructors know.
Best.
Mike
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We were part of the Wave 4 (Americas) update pushed out over the last few days. I tried the annotation tool out today and it appears to work for Korean, Japanese, and Spanish. Can others give it a try and let us know if it appears to be working correctly? I realize now I only tried the text annotation and not adding notes.
