Box View - information for staff
Updated: 29th March 2018
On 5th January 2018 Crocodoc, the tool for providing feedback annotations in Blackboard, was replaced by Box View. This change has been made by Box, the provider of the service, and is outside of the immediate control of the University. We are sorry for any disruption this may cause.
This change ONLY affects the annotation tool. It does NOT affect Turnitin or other marking features in Blackboard such as the Grade Centre, rubrics, or general comments. An alternative approach to annotation is to download assignments, annotate them e.g. in Word, and then upload the annotated feedback files.
Guidance from Blackboard on using Box View
Short video (1:30 minutes)
Please note that the zoom and page navigation tool in Box View is at the bottom of the page (in Crocodoc this was at the top).
Known issues, limitations and workarounds
The rest of this page provides information on the the main known issues, limitations and any suggested workarounds for staff. These have been reported to Blackboard, and the University is working with the company to address the limitations of Box View. The Digital Education Office will continue to update this page as developments, fixes or other issues emerge.
Assignments not rendering immediately
If when you access the assignment to start marking the text does not appear, refresh the page.
If the document still doesn't appear this may be due to disabled third party cookies in the browser. This particularly affects Safari. The workaround is to allow cookies for the site: Manage cookies and website data using Safari.
Downloading annotated assignments
If you give feedback via an annotated file eg a Word document this can be downloaded. However unfortunately it is not currently possible to download assignments with annotations which have been added in Box View.
Editing comments
Markers can edit comments until they are posted, but not after they have been posted. Unfortunately you cannot select text in comments you have made previously to copy and paste into a new comment. A workaround is to type comments, especially longer ones, in a separate Word document and paste the text into Box View. We know that some staff already use their own comment bank of frequently used feedback, copied from a Word document. Another option could be to add numbers on the text using Box View, which refer to feedback in a separate Word document.
Moving comments
You cannot move a comment once it has been posted.
Issues using Highlight comments in Internet Explorer 11
If using Internet Explorer 11 there are issues when trying to highlight text for adding a comment. We recommend Chrome if you wish to use highlight comments.
Issues which have been fixed
Line breaks in comments
Fixed 3rd Jan 2018 - Line breaks now appear correctly after posting
Some characters appear as code
Fixed 3rd Jan 2018 - Characters including apostrophes and speech marks which were appearing as code when the comment was posted now appear correctly
Enhancements
27th March 2018 - drawing tool re-released
Further fixes and developments
Blackboard have provided further information on their community site in this update which shows the current status of bugs and features in development: Inline grading and new box view update February 2018