February 14, 2025
Communications
To: Child Welfare and Probation CARES SPOCs and Child Welfare Implementation Coordinators
CC: County, Tribe, Probation, and State Leadership, and OCM Coordinators
February 14, 2025 UPDATE: We would like to notify everyone that the January 2025 Q&A (PDF) is now posted to the website. CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings | Child Welfare Digital Services.
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February 4, 2025 UPDATE: Thank you for taking the time to attend the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2 held on Wednesday, January 29, 2025. We were thrilled to have over 557 staff participate, representing an impressive 52 of the 58 California counties, tribal communities, as well as 13 Probation offices. Your active participation and engagement were invaluable.
For your convenience, the presentation slides and recording are now available on our website at CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings | Child Welfare Digital Services.
We appreciate the comments and thoughtful questions you raised. We captured over 137 questions during the session, and we will be publishing the session’s Questions & Answers document to the website in the next few weeks.
To stay up to date on the latest CWS-CARES project news, visit the CWDS website and subscribe to our project newsletters.
We value your continued partnership and look forward to seeing you at the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #3 on June 25, 2025.
If you have further questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact CWDS Customer Relations.
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January 27, 2025 UPDATE: If you registered for the session, you should have received an email from CalHHS Office of Technology and Solutions Integration with an Outlook calendar invitation attachment containing the Webinar link. Please note that this invitation will not automatically be added as an event on your calendar; you must open the Outlook calendar invitation attached to the previous email and accept it.
Registrations are still being accepted. To register or re-register for the session, please use this hyperlink: Register for January 29th CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing Session
We look forward to your participation.
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We hope you found our first Stakeholder Briefing Session in June 2024 informative and useful. We’re excited to announce our Second CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing Session to unveil new features, foster engagement, and drive user adoption.
Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Format: Webinar
The agenda includes:
- Leadership Opening
- A Holistic Design & User Feedback Update
- Demonstrations and Feature Highlights:
- Intake & Investigations (what’s changed since the last session)
- Case Management
- The Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED) interface between CWS-CARES & CalSAWS
- An External Systems Update
- Implementation, OCM, & Training Updates
- Technology Updates
- Q&A
You may register for the session using the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2 Registration page.
Registration takes less than a minute by entering your name, email, and county or organization. Once registration is complete, a meeting notice with the session information will be automatically sent to the email provided.
You may register for others or forward this email to staff that might be interested in attending the session. We encourage everyone to register by January 22, 2025.
The session will be recorded. For more information, please refer to the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings page on the CWDS website which contains the session dates, past session recordings, and materials.
Action Required
You are invited to register for the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2. We encourage registration by January 22, 2025. For additional questions, please email CWDS Customer Relations at: CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov.
February 07, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWDS Office and IBM have scheduled a patch update for the System Change Request (SCR) website. The patch window is scheduled for Wednesday, February 12, 2025, beginning at 7:00 PM and concluding at 11:00 PM. The SCR website will be unavailable for approximately one hour within the patch update window.
Action Required
No action needed.
January 27, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts and CTW Registered Testers:
To accommodate the CARES Pilot Support activities, the CWDS Executive Leadership Team has decided to postpone the CWS/CMS Release 9.6 by three months, originally scheduled for Saturday, May 17, 2025. We apologize for any inconvenience this postponement may cause.
The new CWS/CMS Release 9.6 Go-Live date is still to be determined. An update will be sent out as soon as the new release date has been finalized.
Action Required
Please look for the CTW related meeting cancellations. No other actions regarding CWS/CMS Release 9.6 are needed at this time. Release activities are on hold until the release Go-Live date has been finalized.
January 16, 2025
Communications
All Core Constituent Survey Participants:
Thank you for participating in our third quarterly Core Constituent Survey and sharing your valuable insight on the CWS-CARES Core Constituent meetings.
For your awareness, we’ve attached a 1-page summary of the survey results, highlighting some of the feedback we received from participants.
You may forward this to members of your organization who completed the Core Constituent Survey or others who might find this information helpful.
We appreciate your contributions and look forward to using your input to continue improving the Core Constituent meetings.
Action Required
Please forward this email to any others who completed the Core Constituent Survey.
January 08, 2025
Communications
The California Department of Technology (CDT) reported a major incident, Virtual Private Network (VPN) users were unable to authenticate connectivity. CDT investigated the issue and has resolved the services. Users are now able to access VPN.
Action Required
If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS or with using VPN, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
December 24, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
December 24, 2024 UPDATE:
The issue with the IBM Help Desk Phone System is still being investigated, and it is expected to take a few days to resolve. As a temporary solution, please use the alternate phone number provided below to reach the IBM Help Desk. Alternate Phone Number: 1-855-479-3365
Please note: this alternate phone number will remain in effect until the issue with the original IBM Help Desk Phone System is resolved.
We appreciate your patience.
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An issue has been discovered with the IBM Help Desk Phone System. Callers receive a message that the call cannot be completed as dialed or the call is dropped. This issue is being investigated and additional updates will be sent out as status is received.
Action Required
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 the alternate phone number listed above.
December 20, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs:
Effective Monday, December 23, 2024, the CWDS Office has decided to relocate the following areas/pages from the public-facing CWDS website and move them to the County Logon area (https://cwds.ca.gov/):
- County Info | State Recognized County Administrator List
- County Info | Regional Chair page
- County Info | 24 x 7 Site List
- Data Quality Portal | Data Quality Workgroup Leads list
- Data Quality Portal | CWS/CMS Data Quality Dashboard
- Probation Users | “Who to Contact” document
- Probation Users | SPOC Guide
- County Contacts Page (moved to County Logon area on December 16, 2024)
With this change, users are required to log in using a valid email address that is recognized by the organization's email domain.
Users attempting to access these pages will be prompted to enter their login credentials for the CWDS website if they are not already logged in. This change will take effect on Monday, December 23, 2024.
Action Required
No action is required. Users can sign up with a valid organizational email domain to access the pages listed above, as well as any other sections of the CWDS website that require recognized login credentials.
Please contact the CWDS Customer Relations mailbox if you have any questions regarding this action.
December 16, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWDS Office has decided to remove the CWDS Contacts pages from the public-facing website, available to all users. Instead, to view this contact information, a user must first log in with a valid email address recognized by an organizational email domain. A user trying to access this ‘Contacts’ section will be required to enter log-in credentials for the CWDS website if they have not already logged in. This change was implemented today, December 16, 2024.
Action Required
No action required. Users may self-register to ‘Behind County Login’ by signing up with a valid organizational email domain to access the County Contacts, and all other sections of the CWDS website requiring recognized login credentials.
December 11, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and CAD Contacts:
December 11, 2024 UPDATE 2: The BO production environment was experiencing congestion and running slowly this morning. As a result, the BO team performed a reboot at 11:30 AM. The reboot was successful, and everything is now functioning properly.
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December 11, 2024 UPDATE: The CWDS custom branding effort failed last night and the Business Objects (BO) login screen was reverted to the generic SAP version. The BO team will research this branding issue and then determine the next steps in regards to this effort.
Meanwhile, the BO production environment is down this morning. The BO team is researching the cause, including if it is related to last night’s rollback following the failed custom branding effort.
The BO reports did not run last night. Once the BO environment has recovered, users will need to review the reports, and run them if needed.
Additional communications will be delivered as new updates are provided.
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December 6, 2024 UPDATE: The CWDS Office and IBM have scheduled an outage for the Business Objects (BO) server to update the branding on the Business Intelligence login screen. Following the update, the branding will return to the normal CWDS branding instead of the generic SAP screens. The scheduled BO maintenance outage will be on Tuesday, December 10, 2024, beginning at 4:00 PM and concluding at 4:30 PM.
BO will not be available during the scheduled outage.
The CWDS Office and IBM continue to work with the vendor on the issue regarding transferring reports to and from the Rich Client server. An additional update will be provided once the fix for that issue has been determined.
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November 21, 2024 UPDATE: After working with the Business Objects vendor, IBM and the CWDS Infrastructure team are reporting that Business Objects is now up and operational, with a few limited issues / differences that remain to be resolved.
Please Note: The login screens will look a bit different. Generic SAP screens will be used temporarily and will be updated at a later date (please see screenshot below).
In addition, there appears to be an issue with transferring reports from Rich Client to the server and back. IBM and the Infrastructure team will work with the vendor as a fix for this specific continuing issue becomes available.
Screenshot of the generic login screen:
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November 20, 2024 UPDATE: Several issues have been identified after the installation of the Business Objects patch upgrade. Work is taking place now to resolve those issues and a communication will be shared once resolved.
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November 20, 2024 FINAL UPDATE: The installation of the Business Objects patch upgrade has completed. Business Objects is now accessible; however, users may experience degraded performance while the Business Objects server catches up on the scheduled jobs from this morning. The CWDS Infrastructure team and IBM are monitoring for potential issues.
NOTE: Web Intelligence Rich Client users may need to update their workstation installation of the client.
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November 20, 2024 UPDATE: This is a reminder that the Business Objects production environment is not available this morning, to install a patch update. A follow-up communication will be sent out once the environment has become available, estimated to occur at around 12:00 Noon.
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UPDATE: We are applying a patch to address this Business Objects issue, which will be implemented in both the Training and Production Environments. These environments will be unavailable during the following patch periods:
- Training Environment - November 19th, 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
- Production Environment - November 20th, 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Action Required
If users experience any issues please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.
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An issue has been discovered with the current version of Business Objects used with the CWS/CMS application.
Issue Description:
Whenever a numeric field, such as government entity code, is used as a condition in a data provider (query), the query will run correctly the first time. Whenever the data provider is edited, the system will return a type mismatch error and require the user to remove and re-add the condition. The query will then run, as long as it is not edited again.
This only appears to be an issue with numeric fields; character fields, such as Client Name, do not experience this issue. Once the query is run, it operates normally as long as the user does not go back and edit the data provider. The user can refresh the data and save, as well as edit the report formatting, without issue.
Issue Resolution:
A patch level update will be required to resolve the issue. The CWDS Office and IBM are evaluating the next Business Objects patch to determine if it will resolve the issue, without generating any new issues. There is currently no estimated time of when the patch will be implemented. Additional updates will be sent out as new information is received.
Workaround:
When Business Objects informs the user of a type mismatch error after a numeric field is used as a condition in a data provider, and the data provider is edited, then the user must remove and re-enter the condition. The query will run, without issue, as long as the data provider is not edited again.
Action Required
Until the issue is corrected with the appropriate patch update, users will need to perform the workaround listed above, by removing and re-entering the condition when they receive a type mismatch error message.
December 09, 2024
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts
On Friday, December 6, 2024, the list of Education Providers in the CWS/CMS application was updated with data obtained from the California Department of Education (CDE). During this update, several Education Providers in the application were end dated. This occurs whenever an existing CWS/CMS Education Provider no longer shows up as an active Education Provider in the data obtained from CDE.
Attached is a list of all closed Public Education Providers and all closed Private Education Providers that were end dated during this update. This information is being provided to assist counties with determining if any data corrections are needed.
Please contact CDE with any questions regarding the list of closed schools.
Email: cdsadmin@cde.ca.gov
