Check D2L Brightspace Status and Availability
Minnesota State Learning Technologies
Have a question or need help with D2L Brightspace? Please contact the Learning Tech Team at Minnesota State:
- From the Contact Us page located on the D2L Support Knowledge site (view login instructions),
OR - From the Minnesota State IT Services customer portal (login with StarID credentials).
D2L Brightspace Upgrade August 2019 (version 20.19.08):
D2L Brightspace has been upgraded to the August 2019 release (version 20.19.08) as of Thursday, August 15, 2019. New and updated features in this release include:
- Teachers and Students: When composing email messages, you can select Insert Image to add pictures from your computer or a URL. Images display inline and/or are attached to the sent email.
- Teachers and Students: In Notifications, you can sign up for Weekly summary email notifications. Custom notifications for past and inactive courses have been removed, along with SMS instant notification for content.
- Students: When viewing Assignments, the new Assignment List view displays without an opt-out option.
- Teachers: You can opt into the new Quiz Builder Experience when adding/editing questions in the Quizzes tool.
- Teachers: You can restore deleted attempts within a quiz using the Quiz Attempt log.
- Faculty and Staff login with YourStarID@minnstate.edu and their StarID password.
- Students login with YourStarID@go.minnstate.edu and their StarID password.
- View PDF for login instructions.
D2L Brightspace Historical Upgrades:
- View the PDF document for Major features in D2L 2019 Upgrades.
Single Sign On Is Available For D2L Brightspace:
- See Detailed Information and a five minute overview video about the Single Sign On process.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact: karen.wenz@minnstate.edu or dick.mcmullen@minnstate.edu
The Learning Tech Team at Minnesota State offers the D2L Knowledge Base for D2L Brightspace users, including students, faculty, trainers, campus site admins, and other technical support staff. A variety of knowledge articles are available including, commonly asked questions, how-to processes, and best practices within D2L Brightspace. The knowledge articles are searchable within Office 365/SharePoint, providing users with on-demand support 24x7.
Knowledge site for Faculty, Staff, and enrolled Students
The D2L Knowledge Base is available to faculty, staff, and enrolled students at all Minnesota State schools. The D2L Knowledge Base is available from the D2L Support SharePoint site (https://mnscu.sharepoint.com/sites/D2Lsupport).
Use the following username format to log into the D2L Support SharePoint site:
- Students: Use YourStarID@go.minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
- Faculty, Trainers, Admins, and Campus Staff: Use YourStarID@minnstate.edu as your username and your StarID password.
View the PDF for how to login instructions.
D2L Knowledge for Other Users
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 questions, please contact: suzanne.schlangen@minnstate.edu
Minnesota State IT Service Desk
The Minnesota State IT Service Desk provides a IT Services portal (https://servicedesk.minnstate.edu) for Minnesota State users. You 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:
- 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
IT Service Desk customer portal
After logging in to the IT Services customer portal with your StarID credentials, you can submit a request for D2L support:
- Navigate to the Submit a New Request/Ticket link on the homepage.
- Enter D2L in the window, and click OK.
- On the search results page, click on the role-specific link to submit a request for D2L Brightspace:
- Faculty or Campus Staff: click on Request Assistance - Faculty or Staff.
- Students: click on Request Assistance - Student.
- Complete the required fields (highlighted in red).
- When reading, click Submit.
- After submitting your request, a prompt window will provide your Request ID number. Please provide this number when referring to your request.
- You can view your submitted request from the View My Submitted Requests/Tickets link on the homepage.
Requests or questions about using D2L Brightspace
For requests or questions about D2L Brightspace, please contact the Learning Tech Team:
- Submit a request via the IT Services customer portal (instructions above).
- Contact us via the D2L Support SharePoint site (view how to login instructions).
For escalation of D2L Brightspace technical questions, please contact:
- Karen Wenz, IMS System Administrator
karen.wenz@minnstate.edu
Office: 320-223-6042
D2L Brightspace Contract and Academic Issues
For administration of the D2L Brightspace software license and academic issues within the Minnesota State colleges and universities, please contact:
- Lesley Blicker, Director of IMS Learning and Next Generation Technology
lesley.blicker@minnstate.edu
Office: 651-201-1413
Institution websites
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 Minnesota State:
Academic and Student Affairs has launched an events calendar that brings together faculty development opportunities to a single location. Join us for the D2L Brightspace series of webinars prior to semester start.
Previous webinars are available in the Minnesota State D2L Support MediaSpace channel, including Annotations in Assignments and Grading with Rubrics .
From D2L's YouTube Channel:
- Basic Navigation: Navigation - Overview - Instructor* (2 mins).
- Common Course Setup Tasks for Instructors* (10 min. playlist)
*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 the August 2019 release (version 20.19.08).
D2L Brightspace Videos for Learners (i.e. Students)
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 the August 2019 release (version 20.19.08).
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, 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 learning management system 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 D2L Brightspace implementation is the August 2019 release (version 20.19.08).
Minnesota State D2L Brightspace implementation is August 2019 release (version 20.19.08). Version 20.19.08 was taken into D2L Brightspace Production as of August 15, 2019.
