April 08, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWDS Office is pleased to announce a new page on the CWDS Website titled The Latest News from CWS-CARES. The new page will feature the CARES Compass (CWS-CARES Executive Summary) and the CARES Explorer (CWS-CARES Project Newsletter) and will be implemented on April 22, 2024.
The CARES Compass is a bimonthly 2-page summary of upcoming CWS-CARES communications, and brief project highlights.
The CARES Explorer is published quarterly to keep external audiences informed on CWS-CARES through a full-length newsletter of informational items and specific topics with more detailed project information.
Accessing the new page:
- From the main CWDS Website, access will be added under the Stakeholder Resources dropdown then clicking the CWS-CARES User Resources link.
- Repurpose the “Check out our FAQs” blue box to state, “Check out the latest news from CWS-CARES.”
Here are screenshots of the updates on the CWDS website:
Action Required
Contact the CWDS Customer Relations team if you have any questions.
March 25, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
Effective March 28, 2024, CARES-Live 2.8.29 Release is Scheduled to Move Into Production
The CARES-Live team has scheduled release activity that will interrupt connectivity to the CARES-Live application. The release activity will begin at 6:00 PM on Thursday, March 28, 2024, and conclude at 9:00 PM. During this release, the CARES-Live team will focus on application changes, and users will not be able to access the CARES-Live application during this scheduled outage.
CARES-Live 2.8.29:
- This release address security findings and other infrastructure updates and security patches not visible to CARES-Live users.
Action Required
If users experience any issues with CARES-Live, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.
February 29, 2024
Communications
All Co-Existent County SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
As requested, here is the list of patches that IBM tested and applied to the Dedicated County Windows 10 Workstations for February 2024:
Windows 10 22H2
MS24-FEB: Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 - Windows 10 Version 22H2 - KB5034763 (x64) Critical
MS Office 2016
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 - Office 2016 - KB5002467 Critical
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 - Office 2016 - KB5002469 Important
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 - Office 2016 - KB5002519 Critical
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 - Office 2016 - KB5002522 Critical
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 - Office 2016 - KB5002537 Critical
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 - PowerPoint 2016 - KB5002495 Important
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Publisher 2016 - Publisher 2016 - KB5002492 Important
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Visio 2016 - Visio 2016 - KB5002491 Important
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Word 2016 - Word 2016 - KB5002542 Important
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Skype for Business 2016 - Skype for Business 2016 - KB5002181 Important
Adobe Acrobat Reader CC
MS24-JAN: Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 4.8 for Windows 10 Version 1607 - Windows 10 Version 1607 - .NET Framework 4.8 - KB5033910 (x64) Important
Adobe Acrobat Reader 2023.008.20533 Available - Adobe Acrobat Reader - Continuous Track APSB24-07 Critical
M&O Emergency February 2024 Zero Day Patch for Outlook Vulnerabilities
MS24-FEB: Security Update for Microsoft Outlook 2016 - Outlook 2016 - KB5002543 Important
Action Required
No action is required. Informational only.
February 22, 2024
Communications
All CAD Contacts and SPOCs:
The CWS/CMS CAD BusinessObjects (BO) server has seen an increase in report storage, resulting in low disk space warnings and some intermittent report scheduling failures. While the free space on the server remains low, there is a chance of intermittent failure for scheduled reports. Please review your scheduled reports each morning and re-run if necessary.
Action Required
If you have recently added or modified scheduled BO reports, please review these schedules to make sure you are only running the report when needed. Report recurrence frequency should not be scheduled more frequently than daily, at most. Also, check that only the minimum number of instances are being retained by BusinessObjects.
All users, please review all of your reports and delete any old, unused, or duplicate reports. Please also review versioning and delete older versions if no longer needed. If it is not possible to delete reports, please purge obsolete data from reports to reduce disk usage.
Contact Chris Lovejoy (Chris.Lovejoy@osi.ca.gov) if you require more information regarding these requests.
February 15, 2024
Communications
All Data Quality Analyst and SPOCS:
The Data Quality (DQ) Portal has been updated with new data cleansing processes that will cleanse, standardize, and enrich data providing timely, accurate, and consistent information to improve CWS/CMS services as well as contribute to a successful CARES migration. The summary of these processes is as follows:
- SCR 8844 Education Enrollment Closure – Around 1.4 million (66% of total) of open education current enrollments can be closed as the focus client is not on an open case and/or not on an active referral.
- Client Prefix / Suffix Cleanse and Standardization – Standardize around 330,000 clients with erroneous prefix/suffix values.
- SCR 8776 SSN Cleanse for CARES – Remove 162,000 SSNs for Client & SCP that do not meet rules as set by the social security administration (SSA).
- SCR 8935 Reporter Badge Number Cleanse for CARES – Move badge number from last name to the appropriate badge number field for around 70,000 reporters.
- SCR 8955 Other Adult Name Update – After R9.3, new explicit first/last name fields exist for other adults in home. This process will perform the data parse and population from the existing single name field for the existing 250,000 records.
- SCR 8840 Placement Home Name Standardization – Change county-created FFACRFH & FFACH home names to emulate LIS standards to assist in searches and reduce duplicates for 120,000 homes.
The DQ Portal has been updated accordingly:
- Information documents & sign-up links for the above processes can be found on the ‘Data Cleansing Instructions’ page, see sections 3.1 Fully Automated & 3.2 County Validation.
- The ‘Auto-Clean Frequency’ page that summarizes all cleansing and their run frequency has also been updated.
- To see what your county has signed up for, the ‘Auto-Cleanup Counties’ page has been updated.
Action Required
Visit the DQ Portal and review the above mentioned SCR’s.
February 08, 2024
Communications
CWS Directors, SPOCs and Technical Contacts in Affected Counties:
February 8, 2024 UPDATE: The California Department of Social Services (CDSS), the CWDS Project and IBM are still working on determining an approach for sharing with counties the documents that have been quarantined. This decision will take a little longer to complete than originally thought. The updated ETA for the decision is now March 15, 2024. An update will be shared out to everybody once the decision has been made.
In the meantime, the CWDS Office is still awaiting notification from the CWS Directors from a majority of the impacted Counties on your preference to delete or to keep quarantined the affected files. If you have not yet shared your preference, please do so by the extended deadline of February 29, 2024.
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December 26, 2023 UPDATE: The California Department of Social Services (CDSS), the CWDS Project and IBM have decided that the safest option is to quarantine the identified infected and unsupported files in CWS/CMS. The files will not be deleted from CWS/CMS, but users will be prevented from opening the affected documents. The affected documents will be saved to a quarantined area of CWS/CMS on Saturday, January 6, 2024. If a CWS/CMS user attempts to open one of the quarantined documents, they will receive the following error message:
Please note that this DRMS 00122 error message is informational only and that the user will be able to continue to work in the CWS/CMS application after receiving the error message.
The CWDS Project and IBM are still looking to receive responses from the CWS Directors indicating their permission to permanently delete these files. Please contact CWDS Customer Relations (CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov) by January 31, 2024, with your decision whether to have IBM delete the files in a batch file deletion process.
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December 18, 2023 UPDATE: In the attached letter the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has provided updated guidance to Counties impacted by the CWS/CMS infected and unsupported file cleanup effort.
Please contact CWDS Customer Relations (CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov) with any questions related to this guidance.
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As part of planning for CWS-CARES V1, the CARES Data Conversion team has been performing incremental conversion from CWS/CMS data and documents into CWS-CARES. After the documents are extracted from CWS/CMS, they are scanned to ensure that no viruses are introduced into the CARES environment. During this process, it was discovered that, out of 73 million documents that are stored in the CWS/CMS database, approximately 2,400 documents are infected with a virus or malware. Of these 2,400 documents, 95% were last updated in 2001 or before.
Further, there are an additional 2,600 files that have an unsupported file extension.
Due to security concerns, these documents and files cannot be moved into the CWS-CARES application.
Please NOTE: These infected documents are stored in binary large object (BLOB) format on the mainframe in the Db2 database. As a result, these documents do not affect CWS/CMS data on the mainframe. However, if the document is opened, the virus can infect the user’s personal computer. Please ensure that you have a current antivirus operating on your workstation.
If you are receiving this communication, it means that your county is impacted by this issue.
For each affected County, we will send a report listing the infected files and unsupported file extension files, with additional details pertaining to that County. The reports will be sent to affected counties after the Kick-off meetings.
Please provide a point of contact including IT Support and Security Officer as appropriate and their information (Name, Email, Role, etc.) for the person that should receive your County’s report no later than 11/8/23. The report will be sent via encrypted email to that person.
Please use this form to provide the point(s) of contact: CWS/CMS Infected Documents/Unsupported File Extension - Contacts
Once Customer Relations receives the point of contact person’s information, they will be invited to the Kick-off meetings scheduled for 11/14/23 and 11/16/23. The intent of those meetings will be to review next steps.
Action Required
Please provide a point of contact and their information (Name, Email, etc.), using the link above, for the person that should receive your County’s report no later than 11/8/23.
January 22, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and CAD Contacts:
It was observed that Business Objects (BO) applications were found to be unstable again this morning. The cause of the server issue continues to be under investigation.
The BO team restarted BO services this morning at 8:30.
BO applications are stabilizing slowly.
The BO team is aware of the BO issues and is working on an upgrade to correct the issue. The BO team reached out to the California Department of Technology (CDT) Windows team last week and opened an active case to investigate the server reboot freeze during the weekends.
Action Required
Review scheduled BO reports today and tomorrow morning. Rerun the report jobs, as necessary.
January 22, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts in Amador, Del Norte, Lassen, Modoc, and Trinity Counties:
January 22, 2024 UPDATE: Verizon has reported that the fiber cut was repaired on Saturday, January 20, 2024, and that all services were available.
____________________________________________________________________________
The California Department of Technology (CDT) has reported a high-level outage impacting the Verizon network. This outage can cause a major impact to the CWS/CMS application, CARES-Live application, and other county services located on the impacted equipment.
CDT is working with Verizon to resolve the issue. There is currently no ETA for the resolution of this issue. Additional updates will be sent out as new information is received.
Action Required:
CWS/CMS
If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
CARES-Live
If users experience any issues with CARES-Live, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.
January 02, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
The CWDS Project is excited to announce that Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) will soon be used by specific project teams and workgroups as a collaborative and interactive tool. MS Teams will support document collaboration and interactions between project teams and county personnel included in CARES-related workgroups, as well as core county constituents. The use of MS Teams will be implemented on a phased approach starting with the CARES Analytics Transition (CAT) Workgroup on 1/8/2024, followed by the Data Conversion Workgroup at a later date in January. Updated communications will be sent to provide specific dates as to when subsequent workgroups and service areas will implement the use of MS Teams.
Over the past few months, the CARES Data Infrastructure (CDI) lead engineer, Craig Woody, has worked with 50 counties to complete the technical set up of MS Teams in their county. In order for counties to collaborate with the CWDS Project using MS Teams, both the county and the CWDS Project need to set up a B2B (Business-to-Business) direct connect in their respective Azure Active Directory (AD). It is only Outbound access that the CWDS Project is requesting. The project does not require any Inbound access to a county’s tenant. This process to set up MS Teams can be completed relatively quickly via a meeting with the county’s technical team. During the meeting specific steps can be discussed and completed.
If your county is not actively working with Craig Woody on this initiative to set up MS Teams, we ask that you please do so in order to take advantage of this opportunity for collaboration. Please send Customer Relations an email if your county does not plan to use MS Teams for collaboration with the CWDS Project at this time. Customer Relations will document your county’s decision and/or identify a future timeframe to explore setting up MS Teams in your county.
Action Required
Please reply by 1/19/2024 if your county does not plan to set up MS Teams at this time or in the near future.
December 27, 2023
Communications
All Directors and SPOCS:
The CWDS Office is pleased to announce a new section of the County Contacts Page of the CWDS Website. This new section will be implemented on January 29, 2024. After this is implemented, counties will have the ability to add additional contacts for the Director level. This new contact section is called ‘Director-Alternate’. It will be located under the Director tab for both CWS and CARES contacts.
The intent of this new ‘Director-Alternate’ contact is to provide counties the ability to identify contacts that should also receive executive-level communications from the CWDS Project.
On June 20, 2023, a communication was sent to all CWS SPOCs and CARES SPOCs asking for validation of names in the CWS Director area on the CWDS Website County Contact page to ensure that the name listed is indeed your CWS Director. We received responses to this request from fifteen (15) counties with eighteen (18) 'Director-Alternate' contacts. The CWDS Office will add these contacts to the new 'Director-Alternate' section on behalf of those responding counties. If your county did not provide a Director-Alternate contact or needs to make an update, please provide that information on the CWDS Website All Counties page once this section is implemented on Monday, January 29, 2024.
In order to ensure that future communications reach the appropriate audience, we encourage all counties to review and update as needed the County Contacts page on the CWDS Website at All Counties as soon as possible. Attached is the CWDS County Contacts Page Guide that Single Points of Contacts (SPOCs) can utilize as a reference in updating their county’s contacts.
Action Required
After January 29, 2024, add or update contacts to the ‘Director-Alternate’ section as needed. Review and update, as needed, the County Contacts page on the CWDS Website All Counties page. Contact the CWDS Customer Relations team if you have any questions.
