Check D2L Brightspace Status and Availability

D2L Brightspace Help Desk

Need help?  Contact Minnesota State IT Service Desk for D2L Brightspace problems or questions.

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.

D2L Knowledge for Faculty, Staff, and Enrolled Students

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.  Please update your browser bookmarks to the D2L Support site (https://mnscu.sharepoint.com/sites/D2Lsupport).

The new D2L Support site uses StarID credentials to log into Office 365/SharePoint.  

  • Students:  Use your StarID@go.minnstate.edu as your username (not your campus Office 365 login) and your StarID password.
  • Faculty, Trainers, Admins, and Campus Staff:  Use your StarID@minnstate.edu as your username (not your campus Office 365 login) and your StarID password.

View PDF for login instructions.

D2L Knowledge for Other Users

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

Minnesota State IT Service Desk

The Minnesota State IT Service Desk for Minnesota State colleges and universities users can be accessed at the our IT Service Desk (servicedesk.minnstate.edu).  Faculty, staff and students can access the site by logging in with their StarID credentials.  If you do not have StarID credentials, you can log into the site using the Guest Login link.

Accessing the IT Service Desk

After logging in to the IT Service Desk customer portal, please use "For Students" or "For Faculty" link under the Service Catalog to submit your D2L Brightspace question.  If immediate assistance is required, please call the IT Service Desk phone number (1-877-466-6728). You will be given a request/incident number when you call the support line. This request/incident number is automatically created when you submit a question and is included in a confirmation email.

Service Desk Staff: The IT Service Desk staff provide email and phone technical support to students and faculty using D2L Brightspace.

Hours

The IT Service Desk is available during these hours:

  • Sunday: 1:30 PM to 10:00 PM
  • Monday - Thursday: 7:30 AM to 10:00 PM
  • Friday - Saturday: 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM
    Closed on all national holidays

Routine questions about using D2L Brightspace

For routine questions or problems about using D2L Brightspace, contact:

Escalation of D2L Brightspace Technical Issues

For escalation of D2L Brightspace technical questions or for MnSite support, please contact:

D2L Brightspace Contract and Academic Issues

For administration of the D2L Brightspace software license and academic issues within the Minnesota State colleges and universities, contact:

Institution websites

Map of Minnesota State Campuses

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.

D2L Brightspace Videos for Instructors

From D2L's Community Site:

*These videos were developed by D2L and may include features and tools that are not part of Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation.  For example, Minnesota State does not have the ePortfolio component. 

Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation is version 10.7.0 maintenance release three, version five (MR3 v.5) with the Daylight Experience. These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions features, tools, and workflows and may include the older visual design.

D2L Brightspace Videos for Learners (i.e. Students)

From D2L's YouTube Channel:

Overview Videos**

**These videos were developed by D2L and may include features and tools that are not part of Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation.  For example, Minnesota State does not have the ePortfolio component.

Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation is version 10.7.0 maintenance release three, version five (MR3 v.5) with the Daylight Experience. These videos were developed by D2L for different Brightspace versions features, tools, and workflows and may include the older visual design.

D2L Brightspace Reserved Maintenance Windows

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

 

Why Reserved Maintenance Windows Are Required

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.

Planned Downtimes

There are two basic types of planned downtimes:

  • Routine maintenance and upgrades to hardware and server software that support D2L Brightspace, and another for
  • Updates and maintenance releases for the D2L Brightspace software.

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.

Unplanned Downtimes

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.

D2L Brightspace Monthly Update Schedule 

Software updates for D2L Brightspace will be implemented on a monthly basis through September 27, 2016, 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.

Any changes to this schedule will be updated here and communicated to campuses.

Date Version
May 24, 2016 10.6.0
July 11, 2016 10.6.1
July 12, 2016 10.6.2
Sept 27, 2016 10.6.3

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.

Getting Started

Visit or login to the D2L Community.

The Community Site Features

  • Community Updates
  • Best Practices
  • Documentation
  • Future Directions
  • Share
  • Discussions

Join the Community

To enroll in the D2L Community, click the Become a Member button (top right) on the Community login page, or use the following link to the Enrollment 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.

Best of All It's Free!

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)

Minnesota State D2L issues

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 search for the term "Known Issues".  (Note: Use your StarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password to log in when prompted to access the site.)  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.

Known Issues from Other Organizations

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's D2L Brightspace implementation is version 10.7.0 maintenance release three, version five (MR3 v.5) with the Daylight Experience.

University of Wisconsin Known Issues

Minnesota State's D2L Brightspace implementation is version 10.7.0 with the Daylight Experience.  Maintenance release three, version five (MR3 v.5) was taken into D2L Brightspace Production as of March 6, 2018.  Note: This is a fixed version of MR3, originally deployed into Production on November 28, 2017.