Customer Services Team

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We Are Here For You

The Customer Services Team VISION is "Collaborative Support through Technology".

The Customer Services Team MISSION is to deliver a positive customer experience through clear communication, data analysis, and support to ensure educational equity every day.

Collecting and reporting data about schools and libraries through our renowned online WISE-suite of applications may be the backbone of what we do, but the Customer Services Team (CST) does much more than that.

Live Human Support for Help Tickets

…so that you know you matter to us. Everyone on the Customer Services Team is grateful for the work you do in and for our Wisconsin schools and students every day! Whether you're dealing with an Uncommon WISEdata Reporting Situation or just need to be sure that you are understanding the steps on a Knowledge Based Article (KBA) correctly, we are here to help you! The Customer Services Team resolves Help Tickets for WISEdata, WISEid and WISEstaff, WISEadmin, and WISEdash.

Providing Training

…to help you better understand your data and the WISE applications that house them. Our WISE Events Calendar hosts weekly User Groups to keep you informed and feeling confident.

Hosting the Annual WISEdata Conference

…is the biggest training series we offer! March 2023 we completed our 8th annual conference in person. STAY TUNED for the 9th annual WISEdata Conference by viewing our WISEdata Conference page!

Data Collection

…to maintain compliance with state and federal reporting requirements, and because we know that data-informed decisions can result in measurable improvements.

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Providing Training

Providing Support

WISEdata Conference

Collecting Data

Data Request Forms

Confidential

Non-Confidential

Training, Webinars and Resources

Training and webinars occur all the time, like our weekly WISE User Group Webinar. You can locate these events and sign up by visiting our WISE Events Calendar.

User Group Webinars

Need help figuring out data related concerns? Join us for User Group webinars! These webinars occur regularly throughout the school year and even over the summer. You can ask questions specific to your specific data needs and get immediate response from DPI Subject Matter Experts - no robocall responses! We have a place for everyone - from the newest beginners to the most experienced.

Training

WISEtraining is full of options that range from eLearning courses, Quick videos to help you get started and mini tutorials to help you better understand our WISE suite of data applications at your pace.

Great Resources

Release Notes are published every other Tuesday to make customers aware of our WISE application updates and improvements.
Our Data Elements are updated continuously to provide you with resources that apply to your needs.
Notifications page to see recent communications we send to schools/LEAs across a variety of topics.
Search our Knowledge Base Articles Portal to find more information.
Have an unusual data scenario? Check out our Uncommon WISEdata Situations page to see if we have an explanation or a resource to help.
User Guides help you know what steps to take on specified WISE applications to accomplish specific tasks. You can search for User Guides for WISEadmin, assigning User Roles through WISEhome, WISEid, and WISEstaff.

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Providing Support

While we do our best to provide helpful information online, sometimes solutions are best found by talking to a real person.

Human Support

Customer Services Team members answer Help Tickets through phone calls and emails. You can open a Help Ticket any time you need one.

Data Quality Outreach is done annually through phone calls and e-mailed notifications to help our local education agencies (LEAs) maintain healthy data.

And don't forget to check out all the training opportunities we provide (described in the section above!).

Technical Support

The Customer Services Team provides technical support for WISE applications, like WISEdata, WISEdash, WISEid and WISEstaff, WISEadmin Portal and WISEgrants.

We also support applications outside the WISE family, such as School Directory.

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Hosting the Annual WISEdata Conference

Receiving

A primary goal of the annual conference is for DPI to listen to the reporting, analysis, and data usage needs of its attendees (e.g., school districts, public and Choice schools, and CESAs).

DPI welcomes your feedback all the time! It’s as easy as clicking a button:

Submit Feedback About This Webpage

Giving Back

Based on feedback from those we are beholden to, we present attendees with information related to new features and functionality in WISE applications.

In doing so, we provide attendees with a better understanding of state and federal reporting requirements, including any updates and changes for the upcoming school year

Visit our WISEdata Conference webpage to find presentations, recoded sessions and photos from the 8th Annual event that occurred March 9 and 10, 2023.

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DPI, WISE and Data Collecting

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The education of today’s children shapes tomorrow’s future. Studying the current results of that education, and studying trends over time is how improvements are made. For those studies to be done - we need data.

Schools and local education agencies (LEAs) send data to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) every day. Data is sent about schools, as well as the students and staff within each school.

Many of these collections are required by either federal laws (such as ESSA, and IDEA), or by state statutes. There are also optional data collections that can provide very useful information, but they are not required by any law or legislation. Each piece of data sent to DPI is described and explained through our Data Element pages.

When these data elements are combined into purposeful collections, they can provide metrics - or reporting measures. Schools and LEAs use metrics to measure the success of the education they provide to our Wisconsin students. LEAs and schools input metrics and data into their Student Information System (SIS) and send it to WISEdata.

WISEdata is the hub of the entire WISE system. It is an open collection system that allows student information system (SIS) vendors to connect to the ‘data warehouse’ at DPI through an API (for details, visit the Ed-Fi Credential API page). Once collected, WISEdata takes care of sorting the data into required categories, based on reporting requirements and other organizational factors. Generally, data is categorized into either a:

Snapshots: DPI conducts two snapshots each year, a spring demographic, and a winter student count. Data collected from snapshots keep DPI in compliance with state and federal data regulations, as well as help DPI make long-term improvements.
Staff Collection: such as the annual staff audit, conducted to ensure Wisconsin schools and LEAs are employing properly licensed and certificated teachers.
Student Outcome Collection: such as academic progress, school connections and climate, and teacher talent. This will also reflect school data such as enrollment, dropout, discipline and graduation rates. WISEid, Roster, and Discipline are some of the many student outcome collections created under the umbrella of WISEdata. There are some student outcome data collections that are not a part of WISEdata, such as the PI-1207.

All of the data collected by DPI is available for review through WISE applications such as WISEdata Portal, WISEdash for Districts, WISEdash Public Portal, or WISEstaff/WISEid.

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Portals

WISEdata Portal

The WISEdata Portal (WDP) is a multi-vendor, open data collection system that allows public school districts, charter schools, and private schools participating in a parental Choice program to submit data to the DPI from a school’s SIS vendor. WDP is available for your school to evaluate your data, and rectify any validation messages. WISEdata Portal is secure, so only LEA staff with an assigned user role can access this personally identifiable information.

WISEstaff / WISEid Portal

WISEstaff is a secure web application within WISEdata used to maintain required information about school staff members. The WISEstaff data collection facilitates the collection of agency staff demographic and assignment data. WISEid is a secure web application used to maintain basic demographic information about people in schools. WISEid provides identity management through the assigning of a secure, individual identification number.

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WISEdash Public Portal

WISEdash Public Portal is a data portal that uses "dashboards," or visual collections of graphs and tables, to provide multi-year education data about Wisconsin schools. WISEdash is available to the general public. Student data is redacted for protection of personally identifiable information (PII). Data on the public portal is available at the school, district, or State level.

WISEdash for Districts

WISEdash for Districts is a secure version of WISEdash that allows persons with access to view their district data and create reports based on that information. This version of WISEdash is available only to school staff with a need to know. Secure login occurs as users access the app via WISEhome. Data is available down to the individual student level. Only district level data is available.