Tonight's Home Base Maintenance Window

Tonight’s Home Base maintenance window is set to begin at 7 p.m.  The PowerSchool, NCEES, Schoolnet and NCEdCloud applications are all scheduled for a brief maintenance.

The PowerSchool application will be brought down for one night only, Friday, February 18 at 7 p.m. and returned to service by 12:00 p.m., Saturday, February 19.  The application will be made accessible to all users once maintenance is complete. 

This maintenance window will include a small SRC update. Here is a copy of the SRC release notes. In addition, due to the influx of PowerSchool SIS outages we have experienced since our last Oracle upgrade, PowerSchool will perform an Oracle restart during this maintenance window. This restart is expected to improve system performance and decrease the number of outages. We estimate that maintenance will be completed by noon on Saturday, February 19. If this changes, PSUs will be contacted.

Security patching will be performed on the Schoolnet application starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18. Schoolnet may experience a brief 30 minute outage.

NCEdCloud will undergo miscellaneous security updates beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18; however, no downtime is expected.  

Please share this message with other staff as appropriate.

Note:  Each year, a list of scheduled maintenance windows are published by NCDPI.  This is published in advance to help teachers and administrators better prepare for temporary outages and loss of access.  Please review the 2022-2023 maintenance schedule and put these dates on your calendar. In most cases, the entire window is not necessary and we can return systems to service earlier than listed. If an emergency maintenance is required in addition to these scheduled dates, all users will be notified in advance.

NCEES MAINTENANCE

Sunday, February 20 at 10:00 p.m. to Monday, February 21 at 6:00 a.m. EST, the NCEES vendor (PowerSchool) will be deploying version 22.2.0.0 into the NCEES system.

Release Notes can be found in the PowerSchool Community for Professional Learning and Perform Enterprise have also been posted in Help.

During this time, NCEES’s availability will be limited. The only NC update item is:

• Professional Learning,
  • Improvement - Section Title Displayed in My Courses,
    • Both Section Title and Section Number are now displayed in My Learning Opportunities in the My Course channel. To view after starting a course, navigate to My Courses tab > My Courses container.

See screenshot below:

Admin View of Notes Library fixed

A District reported that Superintendents with View Only Access and Principals/Evaluators with Edit access to Staff Plans could no longer view all the notes entered into the 'Notes Library' areas.

This issue was verified by NCDPI and PowerSchool Support. The settings were updated to fix this issue. Notes Library activities are found in the Principal Plan's Data Collection container and in Evaluation plan's Performance Journal activity. Notes Library is also available in the Observation Rubric to Evaluators/Observers when starting the activity.

Below is a list of access groups view rights of notes created in the Notes Library (rights are restricted by the access assignments in My Staff > Administration Staff Management):

• Principal or Assistant Principal Evaluation Process 2021-2022
  • School Administrator (P/AP) – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
  • Evaluator – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
  • Contributor – Can View Notes Created by Self Only
  • View Only – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
  • Re-open Admin – Can View Notes Created by Self only 
  • New User Button – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
• Comprehensive Evaluation 2021-2022
  • Teacher – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
  • Observer – Can View Notes Created by Self only 
  • Peer Observer – Can View Notes Created by Self Only
  • View Only – Can View Notes Created by Everyone
  • Evaluator – Can View Notes Created by Everyone 
  • Re-open Admin – Can View Notes Created by Self Only

Please open a ServiceNow Support Ticket if the PSU is experiencing issues with Notes Library.

Screenshot below shows view of Notes Library from Performance Journal access.

NCVPS Updates NCEES Moodle Courses to Canvas

NCVPS has updated content in several Professional Development courses in the NCEES PD Catalog, transferring them over from Moodle to NCDPI's Canvas. 

To assist NCEES Professional Development Leads and PSUs that may have these courses on a NCEES PD Playlist or shared in other ways with their staff, please click the link below:

• NCVPS Moodle to Canvas Course Updates Feb 2022

Registration has been removed from these identified Moodle courses. Staff that are in progress in any of these Moodle courses should plan to complete the course by Feb. 25, 2022, after which they will be archived.

Check out the NCVPS Professional Learning website, then navigate to NCEES > Professional Development to search for and start these courses. Staff may also use the NCEES> Professional Development tab > View All link > Refine by Office : NCVPS to view all courses offered by NCVPS through NCEES.

Is your staff new to using DPI's Canvas Courses? 

• Check out Getting Started with Canvas as a Student.

Do staff get a 403 or cannot access Canvas error message after selecting a Canvas Course in NCEES?  Please send any questions to Home_Base@dpi.nc.gov. The NCDPI Canvas and/or NCEES Product Managers will troubleshoot course access. PSUs do not have to have a local Canvas instance to access DPI's Canvas courses.

NCEES Winter/Spring Webinars

Please click on the titles below to register for the upcoming NCEES Webinars which are held most Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m.

A certificate to turn into your PSU for approval of .1 -.15 CEUs will be provided to participants that complete the feedback survey at the end of each live session. Click here for Webinar Descriptions.

• 2/15/2022     
• Deep Dive into PD Playlists in NCEES (1.5 hr)   
• Target Audience: Professional Development leads with access to NCEES. Staff assigned in NCEES as PD Playlist Moderators.
• 2/22/2022     
• Export a Plan to PDF reports for District Administrators in NCEES (1.5 hr)
•  Target Audience: Staff with NCEES District Administrator Admin type.
• 3/4/2022  NCTIES    
• Presentation: Growth, Goals & Credits in NCEES
• NCTies Registration    
• Target Audience: Staff in NCEES
•  3/8/2022        
• End of Year Principal Evaluation Processes (1 hr)
• Target Audience: Superintendents/Directors (evaluators of Principals) Principals, APs, Evaluators
•  3/15/2022     
• End of Year Teacher/Support Staff Evaluation & PDP processes (1 hr)
• Target Audience: Teachers and Support Staff. Evaluators and Observers of Teachers/Support Staff.

• RECORDED
  • District Admin Creating Ad-Hoc Reports (1.5 hrs)
    • Recording: https://youtu.be/CQZbraqnNM4
    • Presentation: https://bit.ly/DACAHR-2022
    • FAQs

NCDPI Technology Support Center

NCDPI's Technology Support Center continues to meet your support needs for:

• Schoolnet 
• NCEES/Unified Talent
• IAM/SSO (NCEdCloud) 
• Staff & Student UID (eScholar)

Support availability:
Web NEW URL: https://ncgov.servicenowservices.com/sp_dpi  -  24/7

Phone:    919-716-1840, Monday - Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. (excluding state holidays)

Technical support for SIS needs is handled directly by PowerSchool support using Chat, Call or opening a Case ticket.