Check D2L Brightspace Status and Availability
Need help? Contact Minnesota State IT Service Desk for D2L Brightspace problems or questions.
D2L Brightspace Upgrade April 2019 (version 20.19.04):
Note D2L's continuous delivery (CD) numbering convention has changed. Starting with April 2019, the versioning is 20.19.04. The base number - 20.19 - represents the year, and .04 represents the month, which will increment with each monthly release.
D2L Brightspace has been upgraded to the April 2019 release (version 20.19.04) as of Thursday, April 18, 2019.
New and updated features in the April 2019 release include:
D2L Brightspace Past Upgrades:
Single Sign On Is Available For D2L Brightspace:
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact: karen.wenz@minnstate.edu or dick.mcmullen@minnstate.edu
The Minnesota State system office offers the D2L Knowledge site for D2L Brightspace users, including students, faculty, trainers, campus site admins, and other technical support staff. At the D2L Knowledge site, the D2L Support team provides a variety of Knowledge Articles, including, but not limited to: frequently asked questions, common questions, reported issues, and best practices about D2L Brightspace. The D2L Knowledge Articles are searchable within Office 365/SharePoint, providing users with on-demand support 24x7.
The Minnesota State D2L Knowledge site is available to faculty, staff, and enrolled students at all Minnesota State schools. The D2L Knowledge site has moved to a new location: D2L Support within Office 365/SharePoint (https://mnscu.sharepoint.com/sites/D2Lsupport).
The new D2L Support site uses StarID credentials to log into Office 365/SharePoint.
View the PDF for how to login instructions.
The D2L Support site uses StarID credentials to log into Office 365/SharePoint.
For users who do not have StarID credentials, you can view select Knowledge Articles (e.g. FAQs) at our D2L Knowledge page.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact: suzanne.schlangen@minnstate.edu
The Minnesota State IT Service Desk provides a IT Services portal (https://servicedesk.minnstate.edu) for Minnesota State users. Faculty, staff and students can access the site by logging in with their StarID credentials. If immediate assistance is required, please call the IT Service Desk (1-877-466-6728) and provide detailed information to allow our staff to provide efficient support.
The IT Service Desk is available during their business hours:
After logging in to the IT Services portal with your StarID credentials, you can submit a request for D2L support:
For requests or questions about D2L Brightspace, please contact the Minnesota State D2L Support team:
For escalation of D2L Brightspace technical questions, please contact:
For administration of the D2L Brightspace software license and academic issues within the Minnesota State colleges and universities, please contact:
A variety of training is offered or coordinated by the Minnesota State system office for D2L Brightspace users, including faculty, trainers, campus site admins, and other technical support staff. Training is provided in a variety of venues, including, but not limited to: printed documentation, on-demand recorded videos, webinars, and hands-on face-to-face workshops.
From Minnesota State D2L Support:
Come to our Minnesota State D2L Support channel in Kaltura MediaSpace. (Note: Login to Mediaspace is your StarID credentials.) Within the MediaSpace channel, view the D2L Brightspace Webinars 2019 playlist, providing these webinars:
From D2L's Community Site:
*These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions, features, tools, and workflow that may not be part of Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation. Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation is version 20.19.04 (April 2019 release).
From D2L's YouTube Channel:
**These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions, features, tools, and workflow that may not be part of Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation. Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation is version 20.19.04 (April 2019 release).
These are reserved maintenance windows that may be used for D2L Brightspace software updates, or routine maintenance to the hardware and server software that support the D2L system. These reserved times will only be used if needed, and users will be notified in advance if the system will be offline and unavailable to users. Monthly D2L Brightspace software updates typically do not require downtime. See update schedule below for dates and software versions.
| Days | Dates | Times | Update Type |
| Tuesdays | All Tuesdays | 5:00 a.m. - 7:00 a.m. | Routine Maintenance |
| Sundays | All Sundays | 5:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. | Routine Maintenance |
Throughout the year, downtimes are required to allow for maintenance and upgrades of the system hardware and software that support Minnesota State Instructional Management System (IMS) enterprise, as well as updates and maintenance releases to the IMS software, which is currently D2L Brightspace. Based on broad-based input from people in the academic, administrative, and technical areas of the Minnesota State system, recommendations were made regarding the optimum times to schedule these downtimes.
We have pro-actively scheduled potential reserved windows for maintenance releases and version updates that may be available in the future. Pro-active planning keeps faculty and students informed of times that D2L Brightspace may not be available. While a potential downtime for D2L Brightspace software updates is scheduled once a month, we typically do not use more than three or four of these downtimes each year. Scheduling one potential downtime a month gives us more flexibility in taking maintenance releases and updates as they become available, thereby providing more timely fixes to software issues.
There are two basic types of planned downtimes:
Users will be notified in advance if a reserved maintenance window will be used. If no work is necessary during a particular period, the reserve window will not be used.
Unforeseen emergencies or special circumstances (power outages or hardware failures, for example) that require downtime at other dates and times will be announced as necessary.
Since Minnesota State IMS Enterprise System is among others hosted at an off-site facility, occasionally, we may also experience downtimes related to the services at that site. Having an established downtime schedule for our own maintenance helps us to coordinate downtimes with our hosting data center, thereby enabling us to minimize the frequency and duration of any disruptions in service related to the D2L Brightspace software.
Software updates for D2L Brightspace will be implemented on a monthly basis, typically on the second Tuesday of the month.
If downtime is required it will occur between 5:00 - 7:00 a.m., and users will be notified in advance. Typically no downtime is required for the monthly software updates.
These dates are scheduled by D2L. Any changes to this schedule (such as delays in receiving the monthly update) will be updated here and communicated to campuses. Note that on occasion D2L will also deploy hotfixes between monthly updates.
| Prod Update | Version |
| January 17, 2019 | 10.8.9 |
| February 21, 2019 | 10.8.10 |
|
March 21, 2019 Delayed to March 22, 2019 |
10.8.11 |
| April 18, 2019 | 20.19.04* |
| May 16, 2019 | 20.19.05 |
| June 20, 2019 | 20.19.06 |
| July 18, 2019 | 20.19.07 |
| August 15, 2019 | 20.19.08 |
| September 19, 2019 | 20.19.09 |
| October 17, 2019 | 20.19.10 |
| November 21, 2019 | 20.19.11 |
| December 19, 2019 | 20.19.12 |
Our IMS provider, D2L, is based in Ontario, Canada. D2L hosts a free community website that is available to D2L Brightspace clients, including faculty, administrators, and technical support staff. Current documentation is available for using (e.g. faculty, trainers) and supporting (i.e. site administrators, technical support) D2L software.
Visit or login to the D2L Community.
To enroll in the D2L Community, click the Become a Member button on the Community login page. Provide your name, institution and email address.
The community is available to instructors, administrators, and other support staff (trainers, instructional designers, etc.), but not students. A D2L staff member will confirm your affiliation with a Minnesota State school and you will be provided with a username and password to access the community site.
Take advantage of the Community site for up-to-date information about D2L, and opportunities to connect with other D2L Brightspace users world-wide.
A number of software applications can be used to build course materials that can be used in D2L Brightspace. Some examples include LodeStar Learning and Respondus Quiz Generator. Software applications that are licensed for system-wide use are listed at the IT Connect page below.
System-Wide Software Licenses: Information about current software available to Minnesota State schools is provided at System-Wide Academic and Technology Software Agreements/Contracts (http://www.minnstate.edu/system/its/contracts/index.html)
Our current Known Issues document is available at D2L IMS SharePoint site.
Faculty, campus trainers, and campus site administrators can log into the site and view the "Known Issues" document. Use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password to log in when prompted to access the site. View PDF for login instructions.
A known issues list is provided by D2L at each software version release. The list is updated by the System Site Admin team when new issues are discovered and reported after a software version upgrade.
These are known issues from other schools and organizations that use D2L. Please note that these issues may be related to other versions and maintenance releases, and do not necessarily apply to the current version used by Minnesota State. Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation is version 20.19.04 (April 2019 release).
Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation is version 20.19.04 (April 2019 release). Version 20.19.04 was taken into D2L Brightspace Production as of April 18, 2019.
