The NorthstarMLS Add/Edit system will be unavailable from this Friday, June 4, 6 PM – Sunday, June 6, 1 PM due to a major database upgrade. Contact help@northstarmls.com or 651-251-5456 with any issues once the system is back online. Please see below communications from NorthStarMLS that was sent to members by email last week and is posted on the MLS news screen.

Keep in mind as you plan for the downtime
In addition to ensuring all your listings, media and edits important for the weekend are into the system by 6 PM Friday June 4, please also keep in mind these important points:

• Listing Expirations during downtime:
  • If Expiration Date June 4, listing expires June 4 when Add/Edit goes offline at 6 PM.
  • If Expiration Date June 5, listing expires when Add/Edit comes back online June 6 (approximately 1 PM).
  • If Expiration Date June 6, expires normally that night (12:01 AM June 7).
• Coming Soon listings becoming Active during downtime:
  • If Expected Market (Availability Date) set to June 5, listing becomes Active June 4 when Add/Edit goes offline at 6 PM.
  • If Expected Market (Availability Date) set to June 6, listing becomes Active June 6 when Add/Edit comes back online June 6 (approximately 1 PM).
• Don’t forget to get your weekend open houses entered early. Keep in mind that once Add/Edit goes offline, you cannot edit or cancel them.
• Starting Friday afternoon, the 4th, MLS rules for completion of listing entry, photo uploads and status changes will be paused to account for the downtime.

If possible, we strongly encourage you to get your Add/Edit work for the weekend done early and not wait until Friday afternoon. We will vigilantly be monitoring system performance but expect traffic on the system to be at its busiest at that time.

Why is this upgrade important and worth the disruption?

This will be a major upgrade to the database structure that will initially result in few visible changes to how you work in the Add/Edit system, but important gains on the back end. We understand there is never a convenient time to take the Add/Edit system offline for this long, especially during our incredibly active market. We ask your understanding as the need for this short-term outage makes possible these long-term benefits:

• Improved system performance and reliability.
• The ability for us to make requested enhancements more responsively.
• Greater scalability and flexibility to continue our expansion across the Midwest. NorthstarMLS is a national leader in this MLS consolidation effort for the benefit of brokers, agents and developers who bring new products to them.
• An improved open-source platform allowing us to share with and adopt enhancements made by partner MLSs.
• Better alignment with industry data standards.

What you can expect when Add/Edit comes back online

Our team has worked many months on this upgrade, including rigorous testing. With any project of this magnitude, no amount of testing will catch every potential issue, though we do expect we have adjusted for everything major. Once we are back online, staff will address any issues you report to us and resolve them as quickly as possible. You may report them through our Help Desk at help@northstarmls.com or 651-251-5456. Our business hours are 8-5 M-F, but on call staff will monitor messages after hours and relay to our technical team. We appreciate your patience as we work through any kinks.

Will the Add/Edit system look or behave differently?

Good news, most of the improvements will be on the back end, so you do not have to learn and adjust to major changes. For the minor changes to the Add/Edit interface, we are working on a video to demonstrate these and will have it posted in advance of the release.