4.6.0.0 - Release FAQs

Can anyone take Release 4.6.0.0?  

All Regent Award clients are expected to take Release 4.6.0.0. for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.  Production Upgrades are coordinated with Account Managers.

What is included in Release 4.6.0.0?

This release addresses product defects as listed in the "Bugs" section in the release notes, and enhancements including: 

• SAIG Usability Improvements
• Self-Scheduling for Processes
• Pell Cost of Attendance Enhancement
• Disburse Pell on Attended Units Only
• Multiple Document Attachments
• Improved Management of Truncated Loans
• Data View Enhancements
• Required Updates for Ohio State Grant and NSLDS File Formats
  
• Task Usability Improvements

What regulatory updates are included in this Release 4.6.0.0?

The NSLDS TSM/FAH Import file data record layout was updated in a Maintenance Release to be available for the December NSLDS upgrade.  Previous LEU fields were identified as being for Pell, and new fields were added in support of IASG. Note: IASG processing in Regent has not changed. 

What is the status of Student Experience?

The enhanced portal, financial plan, call center support and other aspects included in the Regent Student Experience roadmap are still on track for inclusion in the 5.x release series.

What is the rationale for paying Pell only for attended units?

Many institutions disburse Pell based on an enrollment status that includes all registered credits for the term.  They then later refund a portion of that initial Pell disbursement if the student does not attend enough credits to support the registered enrollment status.  Paying the lump sum up front streamlines disbursing for the majority of the students, but can also result in students with unexpected tuition balances due when their Pell is reduced near the end of the term.  This new option will allow institutions to disburse Pell to students only for the enrollment status supported by credits the student has actually attended.

Original Option: A student is registered for four 3-credit courses in a term.  Full Time Pell is disbursed based on the 12 registered credits.  If the student does not attend the last course, on the Pell Recalculation Date, the Pell is reduced to the Three Quarter Time amount and a refund for the difference is processed from the student’s account.

New Option:  The same student is registered for four 3-credit courses and is still awarded Full-Time Pell based on those 12 registered credits.  When the student starts attending the first 6 credits, the institution only disburses Pell for the Half Time enrollment status amount, and a second disbursement for the remainder of the Full Time award is created in “Scheduled” status.  When the student attends a third course, a new disbursement is paid in the amount of Three Quarter Time Pell less the Half Time amount already paid, and a new disbursement for the rest of the Full-Time Pell is created in “Scheduled” status.  The last disbursement will be made when the student begins attending the final 3-credit course.  But, if the student does not attend that final course, the student has only attended Three Quarter Time credits.  The student has been paid for Three Quarter Time enrollment status, the award is reduced to the Three Quarter Time amount on the Pell Recalculation Date, and no Pell refund is necessary. 

What is different about the new Process Scheduling option?

Regent Award was enhanced to provide users with the ability to schedule processes directly from the Regent Award User Interface. Schools will no longer need to request a CZ ticket to have Regent IT Ops set up their scheduled processes.  Please note that to avoid running processes twice, any currently scheduled processes must be disabled before creating new schedules for those processes via the Regent Award User Interface.

Why was the Pell Cost of Attendance functionality enhanced?

Previously, Regent offered users the ability to configure one Full-Time/Full Year COA for Pell for each Program, and this was sufficient when all costs for all programs well exceeded the COA on the bottom line of the Pell Schedules.  However, while programs will still be linked to Pell COA configurations, users will now be able to configure different Pell COA amounts for each Federal Award Year (FAY), for both Full-Time (FT) and Less-Than-Half-Time (LTHT), and with options for each FAFSA housing status.  Users will also have the ability to override the Pell COA at the Payment Period or FAY level for an individual student.

When users upgrade to the 4.6 Release of Regent Award, the current Program-level COA amounts will automatically be moved to the new Pell COA configuration. By default, all programs with the same Pell COA value (based on the previous Program level setup) will be grouped together in a new Pell COA Setup configuration named to reference that Pell COA amount. For example, if 68 programs have a Pell COA setup of 28995, the Pell COA setup name created will be Pell_COA_28995, and all 68 programs with this Pell COA value will be associated to this new setup. This setup will include FT and LTHT Pell COA values of 28995 for each housing status for the 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 FAYs. Users will then be able to customize the name and content of each Pell COA setup record.

Do we know what the COD updates will include in the spring release yet?

There is no new COD schema for the Spring 2019 upgrade.  There are some changes to edits in support of IASG and the Fallen Heroes Scholarship, but no changes in functionality other than to support COD processing for the 2019-2020 year.

Does Release 4.6.0.0 contain any Task improvements?

Yes.  We have added "auto-close" functionality for the ‘Review Student Message’ task.  Once the user has replied to the student via the Communications tab in Regent Award, the task will close automatically. 

Another enhancement allows users to limit which funds will trigger the “Review Overaward with Unpaid Disbursements” task.  The task will trigger once for each over-awarded period only if the loan period contains at least one unpaid disbursement from the configured funds.  As before, the task will retrigger if overaward amounts change within the same period and there is still an unpaid disbursement from a selected fund.  But, the task will no longer continue to trigger if the only remaining unpaid funds are from funds that are not configured for the task.  This improvement will address use cases when users were experiencing high task volume when the triggering funds were all non-disburseable or outside of the institution's control.

We have also added a Process Log entry when the Auto-Task Escalation or Auto-Task Assignment processes are completed.

Will students be able to delete document attachments?

There will be no change to the current Document Setup "Attachments Allowed" functionality that determines whether or not a student will be able to upload an attachment for the document requirement. If the setting is "Yes," we'll simply allow one or multiple attachments.  If this setting is "No," no attachments will be allowed.

If attachments are allowed and the document requirement status is “Needed’ or “Incomplete’, the student will be able to upload additional attachments to the document.  Note, this will now mean adding new document attachments rather than replacing existing document attachments as in the past.  If the document requirement status is “Unsatisfied”, “Waived”, or “Satisfied”, the Student will not be able to upload additional attachments to the document.

The institution will be able to choose whether or not the student can add additional attachments when a document requirement is in "Received" status. When the school does NOT allow the student to modify attachments on documents in a Received status, the student will be prompted with a message warning them that attachments cannot be changed once submitted.

Students will be able to delete attachments as long as they are in the same session they were in when they uploaded the attachments.  Once documents have been submitted, the student will no longer have the option to delete them.