Blogs | Unicon, Inc.

November 28, 2023

1EdTech Highlights Successes in Using Badges, VR, and Analytics to Enhance the Learner Experience

1edtech highlights successes in using badges VR and analytics to enhance the learner experience

November 01, 2022

The Solution for Third-Party Cookies in LTI 1.3 Has Arrived

The Solution for Third Party Cookies in LTI 1.3 Has Arrived

October 21, 2022

Our Future Is BRIGHT! What I Learned From Our Summer College Interns.

What I Learned From Our Summer College Interns.

August 22, 2022

A Good Project Manager Is Worth Their Weight In Gold

The project manager's responsibility is to look at deliverables holistically and plan to get the work done based on customer commitments, deadlines, and resource availability.

Tech strategy and operations

August 10, 2022

Making Your Vision a Reality

Managing scope throughout the development process for a new product implementation is always tough, and it takes a strong project manager and product owner to keep everyone on task.

Identity and access management

July 18, 2022

The Modern Data Stack Components

The great thing about the modern data stack is it is still evolving and will probably continue to evolve indefinitely.

Applications, integration, and data

June 21, 2022

Q2 2022 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

Open Source Support briefing for uPortal is an opportunity to share the contributions performed by Unicon on behalf of the OSS program

Applications, integration, and data

June 09, 2022

EDU-API: The Next Generation SIS API is Almost Ready for its Debut

The value of Edu-API to the Education Industry is to create a common pattern for integration between systems in order to make data available across the digital ecosystem

Applications, integration, and data

May 20, 2022

Making Large Classes Feel Small Again: Faculty Driven Learning Analytics

My impressions of the EDUCAUSE Connect: Student Success Analytics Practitioners Group webinar held in December 2021 on “Making Large Classes Feel Small Again: Faculty-Driven Learning Analytics

April 27, 2022

Recap and Reflections from nSquared 2022

Reflections from nSquared 2022 a conference that brought together thought leaders interested in the technology integration changes facing Higher Education

April 11, 2022

Easy First Steps for Ed-Fi Data Standard Adoption

The Educator Prep Data Model (EPDM) Starter Kit, which leverages the Ed-Fi Data Standard. Designed to give schools an easy first step to adopting the larger EPDM

April 11, 2022

Onboard Your New Education Customers for This Back-To-School Season

education technology companies are striving to step up their onboarding experience

March 28, 2022

IMS Digital Credentials Summit 2022: Current Practices, Future Direction, and Real World Implications

Summary of IMS Global Digital Credentials Summit in Atlanta, pulling together thought leaders in education, workforce development, and education technology

March 21, 2022

This Is Not Your Dad's Data Warehouse: Optimizing Your Data Architecture

Every iteration of data architecture targets a specific segment of the organization in order to improve their relationship with data.

February 16, 2022

New Articulations of Learning and the IMS Digital Credential Summit

The IMS Digital Credentials Summit has grown to join the top tier of conferences focused on next generation learning articulation and the intersection of education and employment.

February 01, 2022

What Does Your Organization Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Helping to define product strategy, customer onboarding, comprehensive testing, security reviews, and people/process changes. Unicon is an impartial third-party.

Applications, integration, and data

January 27, 2022

Support for Open Source: Flexible and There When You Need It!

Real life examples from a few of Unicon's Open Source Support subscribers

Identity and access management

November 10, 2021

Building Your Partner Ecosystem

The stakes are raised around student retention and success, vendor partnerships play a critical role in an institution's technology delivery.

November 01, 2021

Building Trust in Data Through Governance

October 25, 2021

EDUCAUSE 2021: Back Together Again

EDUCAUSE 2021 Preview of sessions from Unicon

October 04, 2021

InstructureCon 2021: Exciting Events to Anticipate

InstructureCon starts October 7, 2021 and in previewing the agenda, a few sessions stand out as particularly interesting based on the type of work Unicon does for our clients.

Applications, integration, and data

September 24, 2021

Highlights from IMS Tech Congress 2021

September 24, 2021

Reflections from ASU+GSV Summit 2021

Reflections from ASU+GSV Summit 2021by Linda Feng

September 23, 2021

Terracotta - An Innovative Experimental Research Platform for the LMS

Terracotta from Indiana University - An Innovative Experimental Research Platform for the LMS

Applications, integration, and data

September 20, 2021

Back to School Reflections - September 2021

Reflections on some of the changes our local school district and university have implemented.

August 18, 2021

Algorithmic Discrimination and Avoiding Data Bias

AI is a way for computer algorithms to make decisions based on pattern detection and coded rules, and it turns out that the way algorithms are coded can be biased.

Applications, integration, and data

June 30, 2021

Smoke Testing CAS Distributed Ticket Registries

How do you verify that Hazelcast ticket registry is functioning properly? CAS server provides distributed Ticket Registry implementations out of the box.

Identity and access management

June 29, 2021

Finally, An Easier Way to Onboard New Learning Apps: Meet LTI® 1.3 Dynamic Registration

LTI Dynamic Registration Specification, An Easier Way to Onboard New Learning Apps

Applications, integration, and data

May 26, 2021

Building a Solid Foundation for Your IAM Strategy

November, 2019 To be truly useful, an IAM assessment needs a few important components. The starting point should be discussions and interviews with key stakeholders within your institution or organization.

Identity and access management

April 27, 2021

Writing eLearning for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners

Learning experience design

March 23, 2021

Support for Standards First

Unicon signed the IMS Global’s Standards First pledge. Committed to using standards for the digital education ecosystem to improve the integrated experience for the learner.

Applications, integration, and data

March 16, 2021

Unicon's Philosophy of Instructional Design

Four tenets in our instructional design: primary student audience is understood, the technology used is appropriate, obstacles to learning are removed, and learners are assessed

Learning experience design

March 08, 2021

Migrate to InCommon MDQ Apereo CAS Server

InCommon is a widely used federation in Higher Education. They have recently created the Metadata Distribution Query service and protocol (MDQ).

Identity and access management

March 03, 2021

Improve Your Customer's Onboarding Experience When it Comes to LTI Integration

Unicon has put together a set of LTI Integration onboarding best practices which have shown to help reduce the burden of customer onboarding.

Applications, integration, and data

February 22, 2021

LEARN Evaluations Help You Get From Here to There

Unicon’s LEARN evaluation methodology walks our customers through a five-phase process to help them reach their destination.

Applications, integration, and data

January 26, 2021

Migrate to InCommon MDQ Shibboleth IdP

InCommon is a widely used single sign-on federation in Higher Education. It has recently created the Metadata Distribution Query service and protocol (MDQ). The benefits of this new service are numerous.

Identity and access management

November 02, 2020

Q2 & Q3 2020 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

The periodic openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing shares Unicon's contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program.

Applications, integration, and data

October 22, 2020

Reflections on CanvasCon 2020

Combining InstructureCon and the regional CanvasCon events is CanvasConOnline 2020, a free global virtual conference for educators and edtech experts.

Learning experience design

October 06, 2020

What is Your Digital First Impression?

An evaluation of your learner’s workflow from an application, integration, and data interaction perspective will allow you to be better informed.

September 02, 2020

How Can Instructional Designers Support Faculty?

September, 2020 There are many steps instructional designers can take when working with faculty to move a traditional course online. One of the first is to help faculty members identify the objectives of the course.

Learning experience design

September 02, 2020

Why Upgrade to Shibboleth Identity Provider Version 4 in 2020?

September, 2020 There is a new major version of the Shibboleth Identity Provider (Shib IdP), 4.x series, there are several reasons to upgrade to v4 before the end of 2020.

Identity and access management

August 11, 2020

Grouper Evaluation: Automate & Secure Learner Access

August, 2020 A Grouper Implementation Assessment can provide an IT organization with an outline of what is already in place, what business rules and processes drive the current status, and what changes are desired.

Identity and access management

July 06, 2020

Amazon AppStream 2.0: Bringing Your Computer Lab to Your Students

July, 2020 One of the challenges that caught a lot of institutions off guard was finding a solution for delivering software to students and faculty that is normally only available in a computer lab.

Applications, integration, and data

June 30, 2020

LTI Spotlight Series

June, 2020 We are starting a new series called “LTI Spotlight,” where we find and showcase different examples of what people are doing with LTI.

Applications, integration, and data

June 16, 2020

IMS Update for June 2020

June, 2020 Important News for the LTI Community

Applications, integration, and data

May 21, 2020

Cloud Migration Strategy: Trust You Are Ready to Perform a Migration and Then Do It!

May, 2020 Part 3: One thing to understand about migration plans is that they are not cookie-cutter plans. If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, then you have understood and conquered the “paralysis by analysis” phase, and the “refining your plan “ phase.

Cloud services

May 14, 2020

Q4 2019 & Q1 2020 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

May, 2020 The periodic openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, share happenings in the community, and describe opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

May 05, 2020

Reaching the Unreachable?

May, 2020 COVID-19 is really pushing forward some creative problem solving. I am thankful to have educational administrators working tirelessly to serve the needs of the entire community.

Applications, integration, and data

April 27, 2020

Cloud Migration Strategy: How to Know What You Don't Know

April, 2020 Part 2 of the Cloud Migration Strategy. Proper planning and preparation are two important factors in a successful migration into the Cloud. But the limiting factor for planning a tends to be not knowing *where* to start your cloud journey once you accept the fact that you *should* start the journey.

Cloud services

April 10, 2020

Important News for the LTI Community

April, 2020 We understand the unique situation the world is in today and can only imagine the various challenges higher education institutions, school districts, and the technology vendors who support them are facing. We are here to help and want to pass along several important updates related to LTI.

Applications, integration, and data

March 27, 2020

Cloud Migration Strategy: The Timing is Always Right

March, 2020 Part 1 of the Cloud Migration Strategy. The decision making around how to move forward and enhance your current offerings or even just get started in the Cloud keeps getting more challenging. When should you step back and re-evaluate your efforts or think about developing a cloud strategy for the first time?

Cloud services

March 25, 2020

How Instructional Designers Work with Subject Matter Experts

March, 2020 In Part 2 of our instructional design vlog series, two members of our experienced instructional design team explain how instructional designers and subject matter experts work together to create the best possible learning experience.

Learning experience design

March 11, 2020

News from the latest IMS meeting: Feb 2020 Summit on Digital Credentials

March, 2020 The quarterly IMS meetings typically combine organization workgroups and meetings with a technology summit. The most recent IMS meeting in Atlanta was particularly interesting for me because the summit was on Digital Credentials, which is an area that I have recently started learning more about.

Applications, integration, and data

February 17, 2020

Evaluating Course Performance

February, 2020 Finally, after months of effort your course is complete and ready to be published. Once the high-fives have finished you may wonder what is next. Evaluating the effectiveness of a course is an essential part of a course life cycle.

Learning experience design

February 06, 2020

Chrome Version 80 Cookie Security Updates Can Break LTI

February, 2020 Chrome version 80 was released Tuesday, February 4th, 2020. In an effort to improve security and privacy across the web, this new version contains updates to its cookie handling that may break LTI tool launches if the tool is embedded in a tool platform’s page. The update was not included with the original release, but will be rolled out using a phased approach starting February 18, 2020.

Applications, integration, and data

February 03, 2020

LTI Advisory: Putting the Pieces Together

February, 2020 We developed our LTI Advisory Service in response to the changing needs of our clients. LTI Advisory is designed to help our clients navigate the LTI specification, with the ultimate goal of being able to implement the spec internally, with support from our team.

Applications, integration, and data

December 10, 2019

Q3 2019 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

December, 2019 The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, share happenings in the community, and describe opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

December 06, 2019

Takeaways from the IMS 2019 Analytics Summit

December, 2019 The IMS Analytics Summit was held last month in Redmond, Washington. The event itself was attended by close to 150 people.

Applications, integration, and data

November 13, 2019

What Can an Instructional Designer Do for Me?

November, 2019 More than one-third of all students take at least one online course each year. But their experience varies, ranging from courses that are dry, boring, unengaging, and ineffective, to courses that are highly interactive, effective, and represent a better experience for the student than an actual classroom.

Learning experience design

November 04, 2019

Agile in Real Life

November, 2019 Agile software development has been around for years and everyone wants in. How do you successfully manage your project in an agile fashion while still giving the business teams what they need with respect to budget, deliverables, and timeline when all of these items are at odds and go against the core Agile philosophies? Here is a real-life perspective of Agile project management from two Scrum Master, PMP, and Agile Practitioner Certified project managers.

Tech strategy and operations

September 20, 2019

News from the August 2019 IMS Quarterly Meeting

September, 2019 The most recent IMS quarterly meeting was held last month in Long Beach, California. After many years of not being in Long Beach, it was nice to be back - in fact, this year I had two meetings within a few months in Long Beach! Here are some updates from the week.

Applications, integration, and data

July 22, 2019

Getting Ready for Back to School

July, 2019 Back to School is almost here, and we all know what a challenging time of year this can be. The load on your systems suddenly skyrockets as new and returning students start to enroll and get ready for fall classes. There is a heightened sense of urgency...

Tech strategy and operations

June 14, 2019

Probabilistic Graph Models for Mastery and Recommendations

June, 2019 Unicon is investing in ways of assisting instructors in the classroom and employing analysis of content and assessment relationships to inform instruction. The objective of this blog is to be able to identify and recommend optimal paths through content items and activities for learners to use to achieve mastery of a topic.

Learning experience design

May 07, 2019

Introducing Shibboleth IdP UI

May, 2019 Shibboleth is a widely adopted federated identity solution that provides web single sign-on authentication services both within organizations and across organizational boundaries.

Identity and access management

May 02, 2019

Q1 2019 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

May, 2019 The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, share happenings in the community, and describe opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

April 22, 2019

ECS Cluster Scaling in EC2 (Part 2)

April, 2019 This is the second entry of the ECS Scaling blog that covers how to properly scale the EC2 cluster of instances that are running your ECS Tasks. The ability to run your own cluster of EC2 instances with ECS is a viable solution.

Cloud services

April 17, 2019

Customizing uPortal (Part 4)

April, 2019 Previously in this series, we covered suggestions on how to write customizations for uPortal 5 using Decorator and Strategy patterns. Here, our last post, we cover how to add such custom classes to your uPortal-start repo.

Applications, integration, and data

April 10, 2019

Customizing uPortal (Part 3)

April, 2019 Strategy pattern is a pattern that encapsulates more than one implementation of some feature and makes these implementations interchangeable. How is this done in practice? Let us continue with another real example from uPortal.

Applications, integration, and data

April 03, 2019

Customizing uPortal (Part 2)

April, 2019 You can use design patterns to limit custom code changes in uPortal 5. In this post, we provide a real example of applying Decorator to uPortal5.

Applications, integration, and data

March 26, 2019

Customizing uPortal (Part 1)

March, 2019 Release 5.0 of uPortal brought major changes to tooling, deployment, and split the uPortal repo in two. While there were several other changes, like renaming all the packages from org.jasig to org.apereo, the tooling, deployment and repo changes have a significant impact on customizing

Applications, integration, and data

March 12, 2019

Takeaways from the February 2019 IMS Meeting

March, 2019 The most recent IMS quarterly meeting was held last month in Tempe, AZ, hosted by ASU. We had meetings at Skysong, with IMS's Digital Credentials Summit taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday. The meetings that I attended were the Caliper Analytics and EDU-API groups, plus the first day of the Digital Credentials Summit. Here are some of the highlights from my week in Arizona:

Applications, integration, and data

January 25, 2019

Choices for IAM Application Docker Images

January, 2019 This is the third post in a three part series. In the first part, which was posted more than a year and a half ago, I described Unicon's IAM Docker images. In the second post, I listed the Internet2 TIER program's Docker images. In this, the final post, I discuss the pros and cons of the various versions of the images.

Identity and access management

January 18, 2019

TIER Docker Images

January, 2019 This is the second posting in a three part series. In the first part, which was posted more than a year and a half ago, I described Unicon's IAM Docker images. In this post, I list the Internet2 TIER program's Docker images. In the final post, I discuss the pros and cons of the various related images.

Identity and access management

January 11, 2019

Q4 2018 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

January, 2019 The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, share happenings in the community, and describe opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

December 04, 2018

Building and Deploying a Machine Learning (ML) Model

December, 2018 - At Unicon, our security operations (sec-ops) staff engages with project teams early to determine what support is needed throughout the project. Considerations and risk indicators for projects include the security classification of the data that will be handled, and the project activities which may include data analytics, software development, infrastructure design and deployment, and production operations.

Cloud services

November 09, 2018

Q3 2018 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

November, 2018 - The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, share happenings in the community, and describe opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

November 02, 2018

Apereo CAS High-Availability with Hazelcast and Kubernetes

November, 2018 - When it comes to deploying a highly available CAS server, one of the chief concerns is to choose a technology that is capable of sharing CAS-generated tickets across multiple server nodes. The task of managing and administering CAS tickets is handled today by a Ticket Registry component that is backed by a variety of technologies able to persist, manage, and distribute ticket objects across the entire CAS cluster. Perhaps the most popular and better-adopted option in this area is a ticket registry solution backed by Hazelcast.

Cloud services

October 05, 2018

CAS Server: Interrupt Me, Please!

October, 2018 - Modern CAS (versions 5.2+) has an ability to interrupt authentication flow after primary authentication principal trust has been established. This ability enables CAS to execute an intermediary piece of application logic before continuing to establish Web Single Sign On session and routing requests back to target applications. These intermediary interrupt components are able to implement logic, for example, to present notification messages to the user, provide options for redirects to external services, etc.

Identity and access management

August 31, 2018

midPoint SSO Integration with SAML2 Identity Providers

August, 2018 - midPoint is a comprehensive Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) platform, used by organizations around the world to deal with Identity Provisioning, Identity Governance and Compliance, along with Access Management. As for the identity being a security perimeter, midPoint keeps an organization's internal network and external resources safe.

Identity and access management

August 30, 2018

Q2 2018 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

August, 2018 - The quarterly uPortal Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

August 14, 2018

Continuous Delivery of Grouper using Jenkins and Docker

August, 2018 - Unicon recently completed a project for the Colorado School of Mines to setup a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline that can be used as a template for their work modernizing their application deployment processes going forward. Because of the School of Mines participation in the TIER Campus Success Program, Internet2 Grouper and Evolveum midPoint were chosen as the target deployments of this work.

Cloud services

August 09, 2018

Q2 2018 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

August, 2018 - The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

May 15, 2018

Q1 2018 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

May, 2018 - The quarterly uPortal Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

May 09, 2018

Q1 2018 EQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

May, 2018 - The quarterly openEQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

March 29, 2018

Snackable Learning Nuggets

March, 2018 - Microlearning is a hot buzzword these days; however, the concept has been around for quite a while. I first came across it in the early 2000s while developing content for a technical certification program. We called it something different at that time, but the concepts remain the same. Since then, the term used to describe a small modular piece of learning content is dependent on what is trendy at the time. My personal favorite came out of a recent discussion with a client about their vision of "bite-sized, snackable" content. After going back and forth some we came up with the term, "snackable learning nuggets."

Learning experience design

March 15, 2018

Securing AWS Lambda REST Endpoints

March, 2018 - In our previous blog we introduced using AWS Lambda functions for simple REST services. Today, we are going to show how to secure access to your REST endpoints, using Lambda and API Gateway. Securing your services is critical before you allow your REST endpoints to be available on the public Internet. Unsecured endpoints can cause significant problems, including uncontrolled costs, incorrect data, and exposing private data. This post will show one approach to securing your Lambda REST services.

Cloud services

February 15, 2018

Microservices with Spring Boot

February, 2018 - The term "microservices" appears in many technology journals these days. This blog addresses common questions including: "What are microservices, and more importantly, how are they a better solution than what's already out there? Also, if microservices are so great, how easy is it to develop microservices?" Microservices are stand-alone applications that break down functionality into fine-grained components that run and restart independently.

Cloud services

February 02, 2018

Q4 2017 EQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

February, 2018 - The quarterly EQUELLA Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

February 01, 2018

Q4 2017 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

February, 2018 - The quarterly uPortal Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

January 05, 2018

Q3 2017 EQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

January, 2018 - The Unicon EQUELLA team completed the very first Open Source Support (OSS) Periodic Briefing on October 26, 2017. This briefing included an overview of the Apereo Foundation and open source software, a status of the open sourcing initiative of EQUELLA, and how to get involved in the EQUELLA community. The technical presentation focused on a demonstration of enhancements that are a part of EQUELLA 6.5. The briefing wrapped up with an overview of the Unicon OSS program and how Unicon provides ongoing development for EQUELLA through sustaining engineering on behalf of OSS subscribers.

Applications, integration, and data

December 21, 2017

Q3 2017 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

December, 2017 - The quarterly uPortal Open Source Support (OSS) Briefing is an opportunity to share the contributions performed on behalf of the OSS program, highlight Unicon's perspective on contributions, and share happenings in the community along with opportunities to engage further with Unicon.

Applications, integration, and data

June 30, 2017

Identity and Access Management Semi-Annual OSS Briefing

June, 2017 - The Identity and Access Management (IAM) team completed the first of two Open Source Support Briefings for 2017. This briefing included a collaborative discussion on completed development donated to the IAM open source communities (CAS, Shibboleth, and Grouper) via the OSS program; along with highlights on IAM community events, trends, and activities. The technical presentation suggests recommendations and best practices based on recent development. The briefing wraps up with an open forum allowing for all to engage with their suggestions, ideas, and thoughts on future development.

Identity and access management

June 13, 2017

Getting Started with AWS Lambda and Java

June, 2017 - AWS Lambda is a paradigm shift for constructing our web applications. Lambda enables us to run code without having to run and maintain a server. Unfortunately, paradigm shifts are always difficult to adapt to. Going through real examples helps tremendously with learning Lambda. This short blog will bring up a Hello World Lambda. We will also show a small bit of configuration in API Gateway.

Cloud services

June 02, 2017

AWS ECS Auto Scaling (Part 1)

June, 2017 - A common task I run into with clients is setting up the scaling policies for an ECS Cluster. Users typically understand the concept of auto-scaling in AWS, but when it comes to an ECS cluster there are two things to consider when scaling.

Cloud services

February 24, 2017

uPortal Tech Keeps Up with the Times

February, 2017 - A few years ago, I sat in on a presentation where a portal vendor pitched their product as a modern replacement over a stagnant uPortal. Unfortunately, the vendor had not kept up on the uPortal project. uPortal had undergone a major release with lots of UI and front-end enhancements since they looked at it. The institution stayed with uPortal.

Applications, integration, and data

February 13, 2017

Confidence in Cloud Providers

February, 2017 - In just a few years, we have seen acceptance of public cloud shift fairly dramatically from concern and skepticism to eagerly embracing the opportunities afforded. Five years ago, many of our hosted clients wanted to know that Unicon (and indirectly, they) had physical control of the data, servers, and other infrastructure.

Cloud services

December 19, 2016

Unicon IAM Update/Briefing - September 15, 2016

December, 2016 - Unicon’s IAM team had their a quarterly Open Source Support briefing. The host of the webinar was Charise Arrowood (Sr.Director, Identity & Access Management Services), and the presenters were Mike Grady (IAM Architect), Dmitriy Kopylenko (IAM Developer), and John Gasper (IAM Consultant)

Identity and access management

November 01, 2016

You joined the InCommon Federation, now what?

November, 2016 - You have paid your InCommon membership dues, your federation admins have been vetted, and you even uploaded your IdP metadata in the InCommon Federation Manager website. Like many new members, you are probably asking yourself, "Now what?"

Identity and access management

June 21, 2016

Adding RESTful APIs to Portlets

June, 2016 - RESTful APIs, while not new, have only recently seen adoption in portlets. Why? They are often used to expose a service. In the case of portlets, there is often a more complete service that the portlet fronts. Another common use is to provide the back end of single page applications. It is this later use that is likely to drive more RESTful APIs in portlets.

Applications, integration, and data

June 17, 2016

AngularJS Portlet Testing with Jasmine

June, 2016 - Recently, I had the opportunity to add a new testing suite to a portlet. That suite is Jasmine, a JavaScript testing framework. The Survey Portlet is a modern portlet which leverages AngularJS. The Angular controllers needed to be tested as part of the project. In most Maven-driven Java applications that I have seen there is no testing performed on JavaScript. Jasmine integration is a step to correct this common shortcoming.

Applications, integration, and data

November 05, 2015

Successfully Integrating a SAML Service Provider

November, 2015 - A common task when running a SAML Identity Provider (IdP) is integrating additional SAML service providers (SP). This task is not a trivial one, especially when compared to integrating CAS clients. New IdP administrators can run into problems before they even start with the technical task at hand because they aren't given the correct information to be successful.

Identity and access management

February 02, 2015

LDAP TLS/SSL Config for the Shibboleth IdP Explained

February, 2015 -Many Shibboleth IdP adopters use LDAP as an authentication provider and an attribute source. There is always the question of "do we need to configure TLS/SSL for the IdP's connection to the LDAP server(s)?" My response is "always," because we need to protect the user's credentials even in the most trusted network.

Identity and access management

January 16, 2015

shib-cas-authn3 supports Shib IdP v3.0

January, 2015 - The shib-cas-authn extensions, developed as part of Unicon's Open Source Support program, is used to delegate the Shibboleth IdP's user authentication to a CAS Server. Whether the client application is a CAS client or a Shibboleth/SAML SP, the integration presents the user with a single SSO experience. Today, Unicon's IAM team released the next version of the shib-cas-authn extension.

Identity and access management

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LTI for Groups, Grading, Privacy, Analytics, and More!

Q3 2022 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

1EdTech Highlights Successes in Using Badges, VR, and Analytics to Enhance the Learner Experience

The Solution for Third-Party Cookies in LTI 1.3 Has Arrived

Our Future Is BRIGHT! What I Learned From Our Summer College Interns.

A Good Project Manager Is Worth Their Weight In Gold

Making Your Vision a Reality

The Modern Data Stack Components

Q2 2022 uPortal Open Source Support Briefing

EDU-API: The Next Generation SIS API is Almost Ready for its Debut

Making Large Classes Feel Small Again: Faculty Driven Learning Analytics

Recap and Reflections from nSquared 2022

Easy First Steps for Ed-Fi Data Standard Adoption

Onboard Your New Education Customers for This Back-To-School Season

IMS Digital Credentials Summit 2022: Current Practices, Future Direction, and Real World Implications

This Is Not Your Dad's Data Warehouse: Optimizing Your Data Architecture

New Articulations of Learning and the IMS Digital Credential Summit

What Does Your Organization Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Support for Open Source: Flexible and There When You Need It!

Building Your Partner Ecosystem

Building Trust in Data Through Governance

EDUCAUSE 2021: Back Together Again

InstructureCon 2021: Exciting Events to Anticipate

Highlights from IMS Tech Congress 2021

Reflections from ASU+GSV Summit 2021

Terracotta - An Innovative Experimental Research Platform for the LMS

Back to School Reflections - September 2021

Algorithmic Discrimination and Avoiding Data Bias

Smoke Testing CAS Distributed Ticket Registries

Finally, An Easier Way to Onboard New Learning Apps: Meet LTI® 1.3 Dynamic Registration

Building a Solid Foundation for Your IAM Strategy

Writing eLearning for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners

Support for Standards First

Unicon's Philosophy of Instructional Design

Migrate to InCommon MDQ Apereo CAS Server

Improve Your Customer's Onboarding Experience When it Comes to LTI Integration

LEARN Evaluations Help You Get From Here to There

Migrate to InCommon MDQ Shibboleth IdP

Q2 & Q3 2020 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

Reflections on CanvasCon 2020

What is Your Digital First Impression?

How Can Instructional Designers Support Faculty?

Why Upgrade to Shibboleth Identity Provider Version 4 in 2020?

Grouper Evaluation: Automate & Secure Learner Access

Amazon AppStream 2.0: Bringing Your Computer Lab to Your Students

LTI Spotlight Series

IMS Update for June 2020

Cloud Migration Strategy: Trust You Are Ready to Perform a Migration and Then Do It!

Q4 2019 & Q1 2020 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

Reaching the Unreachable?

Cloud Migration Strategy: How to Know What You Don't Know

Important News for the LTI Community

Cloud Migration Strategy: The Timing is Always Right

How Instructional Designers Work with Subject Matter Experts

News from the latest IMS meeting: Feb 2020 Summit on Digital Credentials

Evaluating Course Performance

Chrome Version 80 Cookie Security Updates Can Break LTI

LTI Advisory: Putting the Pieces Together

Q3 2019 openEQUELLA Open Source Support Briefing

Takeaways from the IMS 2019 Analytics Summit