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Description: When the Specify Dates option is selected under Availability in the Add Announcement page AND the Beginning fields are set for a future date or time, the email notification is sent from a CourseWork 5 no-reply email address. Normally, an announcement email notification contains the name and email address of the announcement creator.

Workaround: Instead of setting availability dates, you can either choose the Hide option and then release announcements manually at the desired time or you can release announcements as you create them. There is no other workaround to ensure that the sender's identity appears in the email notification.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-13512.

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Description: Announcements not ready for release to all site members used to be saved as drafts. Now, they are hidden instead -- "Hide" is selected in the Availability section of the Add Announcement page. The Sakai permission matrix does not reflect this change in functionality. Section TAs and Librarians have the ability to add announcements, but they don't have full admin permissions to see hidden announcements. So, a Section TA or Librarian could create an announcement, set it to "Hide", then not be able to see it themselves. This could be quite disconcerting and confusing.

Workaround: If greater permissions are needed, a Section TA or Librarian can be upgraded to TA or Course Admin, respectively. The latter roles have full permissions, including being able to access hidden announcements.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-11047.

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Description: If you remove a section in the Section Info tool, any content in the Announcements and Schedule tools associated with that section will disappear from the interface. In contrast, items in Materials will still be available to instructors and will only need their access reset to be made available to students. Switching from manual to automatic management in Section Info will remove any previously defined sections, so be cautious when making such a change. 

Workaround: If sections need to be removed, first check through the Announcements and Schedule tools for any content assigned to those sections. Change the access setting for each item to display to the entire site. When new sections have been defined, the access for Announcements and Schedule items can be reset and associated with the new sections, if desired. 

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-13737.

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Description: If you open the Scores page for an assignment in one browser window, then open the Scores page for the SAME assignment in another window or tab, that could lead to data being saved to the wrong place. Any data entered in either window will save to the last record you selected. Let's say you opened the scores page for Student A in one window by clicking on Student A's name. Then, you click on Student B's name in another window. If you go back to the first window and enter scores and comments for Student A's assignment and hit Update, the scores and comments will be saved to Student B's record. The Java bean technology is designed to hold only the identity of the last record you selected.

Workaround: When editing scores in the Assignments tool, work in one window at a time.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker.

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Description: Our current discussion tool, CourseForum based on phpBB, is an external tool that we pull into CourseWork. It has a dependency on AFS, requiring each CourseForum to accommodate a volume name character limit. Many subjects have to be abbreviated to meet this requirement, resulting in some invalid links for particular subjects (e.g., MS&E, HUMBIO)

Workaround: If you know the correct subject code, you can edit the link sent to you in email notification so it will work properly (e.g., change "ms-e" to "ms_e", change "humb" to "humbio", change "humn" to "humnties"). If you need help getting the correct subject code, you can refer to the Academic Class catalog in Axess or contact the CourseWork team.

Resolution Status: We are not planning to fix this problem with the current discussion tool, CourseForum. Instead, we are evaluating possible replacements for CourseForum that will work better within CourseWork v5/Sakai.

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Description: When instructors use WebDAV to display students' Drop Box folders on their local desktop, the folders are named with the students' SUNet IDs rather than the display names appearing in the CourseWork interface (Last Name, First Name).

Workaround: To help match the students' SUNet IDs to their names, click on Site Info and scroll down to the site participant list. Each site participant's name, SUNet ID and email address are displayed together. This list can be open for reference while working with the Drop Box folders in WebDAV view.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai) to include the display name for each Drop Box folder in WebDAV view. For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-12844.

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Description: When an item is added to the Materials tool with a release date set in the future, it will be unavailable to students (and guests) until that release date. If an instructor or admin chooses to send an email notification to students about this material, the expectation is the email notification will be sent when it is released. Instead, the email notification is sent immediately. This is confusing for students, because the email contains a link to a material that is not available to them yet and will lead to an error.

Workaround: It is recommended to either not send email notification for a material with a future release date or send email after the material is released by going to Actions > Revise Details and updating the item with Email Notification set to High.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-7670.

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Description: When a link ending in .shtml (an html document including server side commands) is added to the Materials tool with the Add > Add Web Links (URLs) option, clicking the link will result in a "404 Not Found" error page.

Workaround: The same problem does not occur if the link is added with the rich-text editor (Add > Create HTML Page option in Materials) or sent in an announcement. You could also create a tinyURL for the link and add that to Materials.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker.

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Description: When you upload a file in the CourseWork interface and add a Display Name that is different from the actual file name, the Display Name will not appear when using the WebDAV protocol. When a folder name is changed in the CourseWork interface after it has been created, that update will similarly not appear in the WebDAV view. Only original file and folder names are reflected in WebDAV. Also, changing file names directly in a WebDAV window will not change the Display Name of the file in the CourseWork interface. This can cause major confusion to students who download files using WebDAV.

Workaround: If you must change a folder name, it is best to change it using WebDAV. If the folder is empty, the folder name will merely update in the CourseWork interface. If the folder has content, it will generate a new folder with the new name and content and leave an empty folder with the old name (which can be removed later). If you must change a file name, it is better to upload a new file and remove the old file. Try to use file names that clearly match the associated Display Names or just use the actual file names for display.

Resolution Status: Bugs logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA reports SAK-1368 and SAK-12081.

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Description: In sites that have several hundred participants and a large collection of materials, the loading of the Materials page can slow down to a crawl. This has been reported when many students are trying to access the materials right before a test.

Workaround: No real workaround, except to encourage students to download materials as soon as they are available to avoid peak usage times.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker. We may have to wait until we upgrade to the next version of Sakai to see performance improvements in the Materials tool.

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Description: Links to mpg video files result in a display of garbage characters when clicked in Internet Explorer. Some people have also reported trouble with downloading Word docs while using IE. These problems don't occur while using Firefox.

Workaround: Use the Firefox browser if these problems occur for you.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker.

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Description: When uploading files or folders to Materials through the WebDAV protocol, adding special characters to their names -- quotation mark ("), apostrophe ('), pound sign (#), question mark (?) -- cause various problems accessing the content in the CourseWork interface. Folders named with quotation marks or apostrophes will not open or expand. Folders named with pound signs or question marks will open, but the items inside will display a broken link error when clicked. Files named with a quotation mark or pound sign or question mark will display a broken link error when clicked.

Workaround: If you need these special characters in your file or folder names, it is best to upload the files or create the folders using the CourseWork interface instead of using WebDAV. The system will then convert the special characters to underscores for use by the file system and when displaying the content in a WebDAV window. Another method is to make sure that your file or folder names do not have these special characters before uploading them through WebDAV. Then, special characters can be added to the names by using Actions > Revise Details in the CourseWork interface. However, this method will result in a mismatch between what is seen in a WebDAV window and what is seen in the CourseWork site, potentially causing confusion for students.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-8566.

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Description: Some users experience significant slowness when trying to upload files using WebDAV on a Mac, particularly if trying to upload a large amount of content. This is not consistent behavior, but varies depending on the client-side environment.

Workaround: PCs have shown better performance with the WebDAV protocol, so use a PC for large uploads if you experience excessive slowness on your Mac.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker. We will monitor new Mac OS releases for WebDAV performance improvements.

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Description: If you remove a section in the Section Info tool, any content in the Announcements and Schedule tools associated with that section will disappear from the interface. In contrast, items in Materials will still be available to instructors and will only need their access reset to be made available to students. Switching from manual to automatic management in Section Info will remove any previously defined sections, so be cautious when making such a change. 

Workaround: If sections need to be removed, first check through the Announcements and Schedule tools for any content assigned to those sections. Change the access setting for each item to display to the entire site. When new sections have been defined, the access for Announcements and Schedule items can be reset and associated with the new sections, if desired. 

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-13737.

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Description: When a user tries to edit a manually created section to change the section size from limited to unlimited, the change does not go through, even though a success message is displayed.

Workaround: In the Edit Section page, delete the number in the field after "Limit number of students in section to" and click Update. You will get an error message that you can ignore. Then, click the radio button for "Unlimited number of students in section" and click Update. This will successfully change the section size.

Resolution Status: This problem will be fixed when we upgrade to Sakai version 2.5, date to be determined. CourseWork is currently based on Sakai 2.4.x. For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-10748.

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Description: Normally, a student is not allowed to be assigned to more than one section of the same type (e.g., two Discussion sections). When the Section Info tool is set to allow students to sign themselves up for sections AND switch sections, occasionally an error occurs when a student switches sections. Instead of being removed from the original section assignment upon switching sections, the student maintains membership in both sections. This is a rare scenario and can be fixed easily by the instructional staff of the course site (anyone with the role of Instructor, Course Admin or TA).

Workaround: Click on the Student Membership link in the top navigation of the Section Info tool. Use the search field to find the student, if needed, and click on the student's name in the list. Click the Unassign link next to the section from which the student wants to be removed.

Resolution Status: Upon investigation, we have found that this scenario occurs when a student switches sections within seconds of joining another section. Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker.

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Description: If you remove a section in the Section Info tool, any content in the Announcements and Schedule tools associated with that section will disappear from the interface. In contrast, items in Materials will still be available to instructors and will only need their access reset to be made available to students. Switching from manual to automatic management in Section Info will remove any previously defined sections, so be cautious when making such a change. 

Workaround: If sections need to be removed, first check through the Announcements and Schedule tools for any content assigned to those sections. Change the access setting for each item to display to the entire site. When new sections have been defined, the access for Announcements and Schedule items can be reset and associated with the new sections, if desired. 

Resolution Status: Bug logged in JIRA (Sakai). For more details, see the JIRA report SAK-13737.

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Description: This problem only occurs when a person who is not the instructor of record requests a site in Worksite Setup by clicking "Add a course(s) and/or section(s) not listed above..." and selecting the desired subject, course number, and section number from drop-down menus. (Instructors setting up their own sites will not experience this problem.) If the requested course has multiple instructors, more than one SUNet ID will appear in the "Instructor's SUNet ID" field. When the Continue button is clicked, an error message will appear -- "Alert: Please enter a valid username for the instructor of record." The wizard will not continue to the next page unless the following workaround is employed.

Workaround: Remove any additional SUNet IDs and commas from the "Instructor's SUNet ID" field, leaving only one SUNet ID. Then, you can continue to the next page of the setup wizard.

Resolution Status: Bug logged in Stanford bug tracker.