Update

All Directors and SPOCs:
February 7, 2024 UPDATE: Child welfare leadership, 

Thank you for your staff’s participation in the CWS-CARES Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) experience.   
During the February 1^st EUST kickoff and in a subsequent email, CWS-CARES leadership shared that the activities originally scheduled to begin on Monday, February 5, 2024 were postponed to a later date.   
The details of the updated activities are listed below. Meeting invitations with these dates have been sent to your staff. Please have your staff contact the CARES project team (CARESPVSTeam@osi.ca.gov) if they are participating in EUST activities and have not yet received session invitations.  

• Tuesday February 20^th - EUST Overview Training (morning and afternoon sessions offered; staff should select only one) 

• Wednesday February 21^st - Scenario Walkthrough 

• Thursday February 22^nd - CARES Basics Training (morning and afternoon sessions offered; staff should select only one) 

• Wednesday February 21^st – Testing begins 

• Friday March 15^th – Testing ends 

Meeting invitations will be scheduled for Office Hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays during the testing period from February 21st to March 15th.    

If you have any questions, please contact CARESPVSTeam@osi.ca.gov. Thank you for your support of the EUST process.  

Action Required
Staff to accept the meeting invitations, as necessary.
Thank you,
CWS-CARES Product Value Services (PVS) Team
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Child welfare leadership,

Thank you for your staff’s participation in the CWS-CARES Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) experience.  

During the EUST kickoff today, CWS-CARES leadership shared that the activities beginning on Monday, February 5, 2024 are postponed to a later date because of additional stabilization needed in the testing environment.  

Therefore, we are rescheduling the dates for demonstrations, training sessions, virtual office hours, and the overall testing period to ensure that users have an optimal experience to provide their valuable feedback.  

We will provide an update as soon as possible, with a minimum two-week advance notice prior to the new start date of testing activities. 

If you have any questions, please contact us.  

Thank you for your time and commitment to the EUST process. 

Action Required
Staff to accept the meeting invitations, as necessary.

Executive Leadership Team (ELT)
Cynthia Tocher
Jessica Rougeux
Tricia Gonzalez

All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and TAC Members:
The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Child Welfare System Branch will be presenting the upcoming County Annual Planning Document Update (CAPDU) County Fiscal Letter (CFL) during the next CDSS Policy Guidance webinar, scheduled for Thursday, February 8, 2024, from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM.
The webinar will be recorded and posted to the CDSS website once it is available.

Action Required
No action is required. Informational only.

• This release address security findings and other infrastructure updates and security patches not visible to CARES-Live users and provides a more accurate recent number of ‘Available Beds’.  Please note the extended outage is required to execute the additional data refresh process to update the ‘Available Number of Beds’ information. 

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
EFFECTIVE JANUARY 25, 2024, CARES-Live 2.8.28 RELEASE IS SCHEDULED TO MOVE INTO PRODUCTION
January 26, 2024 UPDATE: The CARES-Live 2.8.28 release was implemented on Thursday, January 25, 2024. During testing of the new release, an issue was discovered that can potentially cause some facilities to not display on the Search Results page.

Preliminary findings show that only a limited number of facilities will be displayed with a broad search using only the ‘County Type’ field without any additional search criteria included.

However, adding additional fields to the search criteria (e.g., adding ‘Facility Type’, ‘Facility Name’, and/or ‘Facility ID’) yields the desired results.

The CARES-Live team is meeting to perform further analysis and to discuss next steps. Additional updates will be shared as soon as new information is received.
_________________________________________________________________________________
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, January 25, 2024, and conclude at 12:00 Midnight. 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 2.8.28:

• This release addresses security findings and other infrastructure updates and security patches not visible to CARES-Live users and provides a more accurate recent number of ‘Available Beds’.  Please note the extended outage is required to execute the additional data refresh process to update the ‘Available Number of Beds’ information. 

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.

ALL SPOCs, Technical Contacts and SBC Administrators:
The California Department of Technology (CDT) has scheduled a firmware update of Citrix NetScaler to correct an identified security vulnerability. The update window will occur on Friday, January 26, 2024, beginning at 8:00 PM and concluding at 10:00 PM.
Server Based Computing (SBC) users are advised to sign out prior to the change. During the update window, SBC users may be kicked out of the system or unable to log in. If users are kicked out of the system, they will need to wait until the update window is completed to sign back in.

Action Required
All users should logoff of Citrix SBC prior to the start of the update window. Contact the IBM Help Desk (800-428-8268) to report any issues with Citrix SBC after the update window has completed.

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
EFFECTIVE JANUARY 25, 2024, CARES-Live 2.8.28 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, January 25, 2024, and conclude at 12:00 Midnight. 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 2.8.28:

• This release address security findings and other infrastructure updates and security patches not visible to CARES-Live users and provides a more accurate recent number of ‘Available Beds’. Please note the extended outage is required to execute the additional data refresh process to update the ‘Available Number of Beds’ information. 

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.

• From the Stakeholder Resources tab | CWS-CARES Users, then click the CWS-CARES Meeting Matrix link. The user will then be redirected to view the a PDF of the CWS-CARES Meeting Matrix.
• The CWS-CARES Meeting Matrix will also be available via the search feature on the CWDS Website.
• Additionally, the Meeting Matrix will be available via the CWDS Events Calendar page. A message will be added to the current CWDS Events Calendar page, this message will include a link to the CWS-CARES Meeting Matrix. The message will be as follows:
  Note: This page does not include CWS-CARES meetings. For recurring CWS-CARES meetings, please see CWS-CARES Meeting Matrix.  

Action Required
Contact the CWDS Customer Relations team if you have any questions.

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