Title: ISIR Match to Campus Federal School Code
Tickets: RS-12235; RS-12641; RS-12660; RS-12661;

Description:

Regent Award has been enhanced to add an additional ISIR Federal School Code matching option. The new option will ensure that the Federal School Code on the student's ISIR is a match to the Site-level federal school code associated to the Regent Award Site that the student is attending. For more details, please see the Regent Award User Guide topic ISIR Matching Logic.

The new option is "Match ISIR to Student's Site level FSC" and is available on Institution Setup under "ISIR Settings." This field has a default value of "No" so as to not impact existing customer ISIR import functionality.

Title: Updating a COD Award's ISIR Transaction Number
Tickets: RS-3735; RS-12692; RS-12709;

Description

In release 4.2.2.0, Regent Award was enhanced to ensure appropriate updates are made to a COD award's ISIR (CPS) Transaction Number when required. The ISIR Transaction Number is listed in the COD export file as “CPS Transaction Number” which is an Award level element. The enhancement affected Pell, TEACH, and Direct Loans (Sub, Unsub, Parent PLUS, GradPLUS).

An internal review found a gap in the previously implemented feature. Regent Award would not update the CPS Transaction number on a fully paid Pell award that was subsequently reduced. That gap has been addressed in the 4.3.1.0 release.

The following criteria determine if a COD reported award’s (Pell, TEACH, Sub, Unsub, Grad PLUS, and PLUS) ISIR Transaction # is updated to the current Active ISIR:

1. Award does not have an ISIR Transaction # at all.
2. When a new ISIR transaction is made Active, update COD with the new transaction number for all affected awards if the award is not fully paid, regardless of whether or not the award amount changed or any transactions are being processed at the time.
3. If a Direct Loan or TEACH award has been partially paid and is then reduced, do not update the ISIR transaction number.
4. Once an award has been fully paid, do not update the ISIR transaction number at COD unless one of the following conditions occur:
   1. A Direct Loan or TEACH award that was fully paid, but has since had an additional positive transaction.
   2. A Pell award that was fully paid, but has since had an additional positive transaction.
   3. A Pell award that was fully paid, but has since had a negative transaction.

Note that Regent awards 0 EFC Pell for Pell-eligible IASG-eligible students. If the IASG-eligible student is not Pell eligible, the FA User must use the Add Award Wizard (AAW) to make the IASG award and, per COD guidance, subsequently originate and pay the IASG award at COD on the Web.

See the Regent Award User Guide topic Updating the ISIR Transaction Number of an Award .

Title: Regent Award will not Cancel and Recreate Paid Loans
Tickets: RS-12020; RS-12675; RS-12679; RS-12680; RS-12690;

Description:
Some Term-based loans were unexpectedly canceled when their enrollments were removed. The system unexpectedly moved the loans to a new Federal Award Year. The issue occurred in an older version of Regent Award after course data was inadvertently removed from terms with paid loan disbursements. When Regent Award moved the loans to a different loan period, the system detected a non-matching Federal Award Year on the loan period and canceled the paid loans. New logic, implemented in this release, will no longer cancel-and-recreate a loan if the loan is already paid.

In addition, some related changes were made to Regent Award wizards. In Modify Award Wizard (MAW), the user can now edit any nonzero disbursement. Disbursements can be edited even if they are currently outside the BBAY or Loan Period dates. Another change was made in the Program Management Wizard (PMW). If a school needs to preserve the original Academic Year (AY) dates for a disbursement on a non-enrolled term, a school can create a Manual AY in the PMW. Staff can add the additional terms to the Manual AY and mark them with the "Overlap" flag to maintain the correct BBAY length for the AY. Regent Award will not create any awards in the overlapping terms. Regent Award displays the overlapping terms as "Historic" on the Academic Plan.

Title: Improved Student Portal Loan Acceptance Messaging
Tickets: RS-12968;

Description:
To provide clarity on the requirement that the students must accept all offered Subsidized loans prior to accepting any Unsubsidized loans, Regent has improved the verbiage on the Award page of the Student Portal for Unsubsidized loans under the Actions column. The previous message "You must accept your full amount available Subsidized loan amount before accepting Unsubsidized loans." has been updated to "Before you accept any Unsubsidized loan funds, make sure you have accepted all available Subsidized loan amounts."

Title: New Configuration Option to Limit Student Updates to Parent PLUS Loans
Tickets: RS-12349;

Description:
By default, Regent will now prevent students from accepting or updating Parent PLUS loans in the Student Portal. This configuration option can be overridden by submitting a request to Regent.

Title: New Task: Review Paid Disbursement on Unenrolled Payment Period
Tickets: RS-12678;

Description:
Regent Award has been enhanced with a new Task: "Review Paid Disbursement on Unenrolled Payment Period." The Task is triggered during packaging if all of the following apply:

• Payment Period enrollment status is "Autowithdrawn"
• Payment Period has a paid, non-zero disbursement
• Payment period has no course data

The Task can be useful for finding potentially incorrect course data or awards needing adjustment. For example, if a term-based student accidentally has all their term's courses incorrectly changed to Transfer courses, then the Task would identify that term for potential data corrections or cleanup. A school could also use the Task to find any payment periods where a student has retroactively withdrawn and might no longer be eligible for the paid awards. For example, a fund might be configured to not auto-adjust paid disbursements. If a student was incorrectly paid for a payment period, and their course data was later updated with withdrawal dates before the PP start date, then the Task would help a school find those incorrect disbursements.

The Task triggers for any funds with a paid disbursement, including non-COD funds. The Task triggers only once per payment period. If a Task already exists for a payment period, in any state, then the Task does not retrigger for the same payment period. The Task also does not trigger for any AY0 awards.

Problem: 
Some term-based students had their Year-Round Pell (YRP) awards unexpectedly reduced or canceled. The students had dropped courses after the term census date.

Cause:
The Year-Round Pell calculation was unexpectedly using a current enrollment level, instead of the census enrollment level.

Fix:
The Year-Round Pell awarding logic was corrected to use the census enrollment level.

Testing:
Navigate to an affected student who had dropped courses after the term census date. Repackage the student. Regent Award should restore the correct Year-Round Pell amount based on the enrollment level at census.

Problem:
Students were getting an unexpectedly high number of disbursements which caused COD Reject Code 996. This issue occurred for students in a specific data scenario when the current or next occurring terms on the academic plan were anticipated (not backed by course data) and terms future of those anticipated terms were actual (backed by course data).

Cause:
Each time the student was packaged, Regent Award added and removed anticipated terms to/from the academic plan. Each time this occurred, new disbursement records were created, and then moved to another term on the academic plan when the term they were originally created on was removed. This was causing an excessive number of disbursements.

Fix:
The code was updated to ensure that Regent Award can properly account for future actual terms and reconcile the student's academic plan correctly without the constant creation and removal of terms or the creation of extra disbursements.

Testing:
Package the affected students. Anticipated terms will remain on the academic plan and no new disbursements will be created.

Problem: 
At a SAY school, configured for the Summer term to be a Trailer, some term students had multiple overlapping Academic Years (AY) in the same Federal Award Year (FAY). The Academic Year dates for their Summer loans were also incorrect when reported to COD.

Cause: 
Regent Award had previously created historic terms for some non-enrolled terms in SAY Academic Years. When the students later added courses in those terms, the system accidentally created duplicate terms and could not link the correct, non-historic term to a loan period.

Fix:
When Regent Award sets the first term in a partial-AY loan period, the system uses the first term that has a positive loan disbursement. If the Academic Plan already contained a Historic term, but the student now has course data for that term, the system removes the duplicated, Historic term and links the awards to the non-Historic version of the term. For non-standard term BBAY programs, Regent Award will not exceed the number of non-standard terms in the BBAY Academic Year.

Testing:
Package an affected SAY student. Review the student's Academic Years on the Academic Plan screen. The dates should not overlap. Each FAY should have only one SAY Academic Year. Check the Loans tab. The Academic Year Begin and End dates should always include the standard terms in the SAY at a minimum, and should also include the Summer terms if the loan has a non-zero Summer disbursement.

Problem: 
A term-based school was configured as "Allow Packaging to Move Paid Disbursements" equal to "No." Regent Award blocked packaging for students and provided the following packaging error, Error validating plan - the payment period on paid disbursement...was moved from the original pp (Removed Payment Period Id[])...

Cause: 
When Regent Award checked to see which terms should be included in the Academic Plan, some terms were removed. The disbursements referenced in the error message were linked to those removed terms.

Fix: 
The code was updated to allow Regent Award to restore a term to the Academic Plan if the term has a paid disbursement.

Testing: 
Test with a school configured to not allow Regent Award to move paid disbursements: on Institution Setup ("Allow Packaging to Move Paid Disbursements" must be set to "No"). Repackage the affected students who previously had the Batch Packaging error above. The students should now package without error. The paid disbursements should stay on their original terms.

Problem:
Upon initial award creation, Year-Round Pell awards are being calculated incorrectly for students.

Cause:
The non-Year Round Pell (YRP) portion of the award is not being taken into account causing Year Round Pell to be added to the student's academic plan in excess of their actual eligibility.

Fix:
Regent Award is now properly accounting for the already awarded non-Year Round Pell amounts.

Testing:
Package a student that does not have a 2018-2019 ISIR in Regent Award and confirm that the student's 2018-2019 Pell award is correct.

Problem:
Regent Award tracks disbursements from the first 100% of the Pell award, separate from disbursements of the additional 50% Pell award granted by the new Year-Round Pell (YRP) regulation. YRP disbursements are scheduled using the Pell Disbursement Schedule Setup and are flagged with a “YRP” icon on the Disbursement Details screen. This separate tracking allows the school to clearly see the portion of Pell that is being awarded for the additional 50% portion, as well as allows Regent Award to track the separate eligibility requirement that the student must be enrolled at least half-time in the payment periods in which YRP is being awarded.

In this issue, paid rebuild Pell disbursements were being canceled and recreated as Year-Round Pell disbursements.

Cause:
Regent Award could not reconcile the rebuild Pell disbursements that exceeded 100% of the student's Pell award, as YRP. During packaging, Regent Award correctly determined that the student is not eligible for the standard Pell amounts provided on the rebuild award; however, it was unable to flag the existing disbursements as YRP. Therefore, the system canceled the original disbursements and created brand new YRP disbursements that it is able to maintain.

Fix:
The system was updated to add the capability to evaluate the rebuild Pell disbursements as YRP, and flag the disbursements as such if appropriate, without canceling and recreating the disbursements.

Testing:
Import a student with a paid rebuild Pell disbursement that is entirely awarded from the additional 50% Pell eligibility allowed with Year-Round Pell. Package the student and confirm that the disbursement is left in place and the "YRP" designation is added to the disbursement (seen on the Disbursement Details screen).

Problem: 
At a school configured to automatically award grade-level progression, a BBAY term student had unexpected loan amounts. The amounts were unevenly distributed across the terms in the Academic Year (AY). The student was auto withdrawn in the first term of a 3-term AY, and had a grade-level increase in the final term in the AY.

Cause: 
The school was configured to anchor the BBAY until reaching the term's Auto Withdraw Date. Regent Award unexpectedly assigned the non-enrolled, anchoring term to a loan period. The anchoring term had reached its Begin Actual Date but was before the term's Auto Withdraw Date. When Regent Award checked the loan eligibility for each term in the loan period, the system miscounted the number of eligible terms. The system also unexpectedly did not include the correct eligible term in a single-term loan's Grade Level increase.

Fix: 
Corrected the logic for counting the number of terms in a loan period when the anchoring term in a BBAY is unenrolled and ineligible for loans. Additionally, Regent Award has improved logic for counting terms and checking loan eligibility in partial-AY loan periods for grade-level progression loans.

Testing: 
Navigate to an affected student. Make sure the loans are non-manual and cover a current or future loan period. Package the student. View the amounts on the loans. For loans unrelated to grade level, the loan amounts should be distributed evenly across the terms in the loan period. Any grade-level related loan amounts should be evenly distributed across only the terms with the higher grade level. Check the Financial Award dates on the Loans tab. Each loan's Financial Award dates should only include terms having non-zero loan disbursements.

Problem: 
Several hundred term students had disbursements unexpectedly blocked by error EST-0057, SAP status prevents release. The students had a Satisfactory or otherwise payable SAP status for their previous terms.

Cause: 
Some students had inconsistent or incorrect SAP records in the system.

Fix:
The SAP Wizard screen was updated to better handle SAP records when the system can not link a SAP record to a payment period. In addition, a cleanup script was created to fix one student with incorrect payment period data.

Testing:
Navigate to an affected student. Package the student. Confirm the student has a Satisfactory or otherwise payable SAP status for the previous term. Import a new satisfactory SAP record for the previous SAP review period, with a more recent SAP date. Run SAP in the SAP Wizard and confirm the system correctly processed the new SAP record. Export Student Transactions or run an Expected EST for the current term. In the EST output, the disbursements should successfully export without causing EST error 0057.