Scheduled Downtime - Community Services and ART

Community Services (formerly ServicePoint) will be down starting at 5:00 AM on Friday, October 8, 2021. ICA anticipates this will take two hours. Additionally, ART will be down over the weekend starting at noon that same day. Please read on for more details

FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards Upgrade

The upgrade that will apply the FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards to our site is scheduled for 5:00 AM on Friday, October 8, 2021. ICA anticipates this will take two hours. This upgrade will apply the changes to federal data elements that our software vendor has changed or added to the system. That means the wording changes to HUD universal data elements of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity and the new and changed HUD CoC, HHS RHY, and HOPWA program specific data elements will be available with this upgrade. Below is a preview of these changes.

Gender

The modified response options and revised data collection guidance so that clients may select as many responses to the ‘Gender’ field as they would like are now available in Community Services:

The temporary ‘Gender’ field that was added to the system for use until new field became available has been removed. If you added data in the temporary ‘Gender’ field, ICA will be updating all responses with the new options available. To assist with the new data entry options, ICA is writing a new Knowledge Base article about collecting and entering the ‘Gender’ data element that will be available by the end of the day on October 11, 2021. Until that article is available, here are some quick tips to assist with data entry:

The Gender field is currently appearing on the Client Search screen, but you cannot search solely by gender.

You can select multiple responses if they are not ‘Client doesn’t know,’ ‘Client refused,’ or ‘Data not collected.’ To make multiple selections, hold the Control (Ctrl) key and left-click each value as necessary.
Choosing one of ‘Client doesn’t know,’ ‘Client refused,’ or ‘Data not collected’ makes all other options greyed out.

Race

The new response options for ‘Race’ have replaced the previous options:

Ethnicity

The new response options for ‘Ethnicity’ have replaced the previous options:

Canned Reports - CoC APR and ESG CAPER

Beginning October 1, 2021 Sage will only accept the FY 2022 versions of the ESG CAPER and CoC APR. WellSky, MN’s HMIS software vendor, plans to have the FY 2022 versions of the ESG CAPER and CoC APR available sometime during the week of October 11, 2021, so ICA is anticipating that the FY 2022 versions will not be available in the MN site until October 16, 2021, at the earliest. Users will not be able to submit reports in Sage until the reports have been updated in HMIS. ICA will send out more information about this when we have more details.

ART Downtime This Weekend

Starting at noon on Friday (10/8/2021), ART will be entirely offline for system maintenance. This downtime lasts through the entire weekend and is expected to be available by the end of the day on Sunday (in other words, 12:01 a.m. 10/11/2021).

ICA will update the system alert inside of Community Services when we confirm that ART is back up on Monday morning.

Impact on ART Reports

When Community Services comes back online after the FY 2022 HMIS Data Standards upgrade tomorrow, all ART reports will be temporarily outdated. That means today is your last day to run ART reports, so if you have a report due within the next two weeks, please pull them before the end of the day! As previously announced, ICA will utilize the REPORTcollection to indicate what is outdated, what needs updating, when we anticipate updating each one based on a triage, and when that update is complete.

Re-certification Training

Supervisors and HMIS Users: Remember! If you do not complete the Recertification Training by Friday, October 15, your HMIS account will be inactivated until such a time as training is complete.

Future Periods of Downtime in October

ICA expects that both Community Services and ART will have scheduled downtime over the month of October. We will attempt to provide you with as much notice as possible regarding the periods of downtime.

Please contact mnhmis@icalliances.org with any questions.

HMIS News