Product Brief Release 3.5

Product Release Summary

Release 3.5 contains:

Product Release Description

Regulatory Updates 2017-2018

Update TEACH amounts for Federal Sequestration rules

Regent implemented the mandated Federal Fiscal Year Sequestration reductions for TEACH Grants.  A TEACH Grant with a first disbursement on or after October 1, 2016 and before October 1, 2017 requires a reduction of 6.9 percent from the award amount for which the student would otherwise have been eligible. The following chart shows the FY 2016 and FY 2017 sequester required TEACH Grant Program reductions as they apply to the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 award years.  Please see the following site for additional details: http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/GEN1611.html.

ISIR Tab and ISIR Wizard: Verification Tracking Group Bar Updates

Regent has updated the ISIR tab and ISIR Corrections/Verification Wizard to remove the following verification items per 2017-2018 FAFSA updates:

• SNAP benefits was removed for Verification Tracking Groups V1, V4, and V5 for 2017-2018 ISIRs.
• Child Support Paid was removed for Verification Tracking Groups V1, V4, and V5 for 2017-2018 ISIRs.

2017-2018 ISIR Import Process

To accommodate the Annual Regulatory Updates for ISIR processing, Regent completed the following in R8: 

• Updated the ability to import 2017-2018 ISIRs to allow users to view the new and renamed fields and comment codes on the student’s ISIR tab.   
  • Yearly reference and content updates to the following fields:
    • Year Indicator
    • Student’s Date of Birth
    • Student’s Marital Status Date
    • Student Legal Resident Before 01-01-2012?
    • Student’s Legal Residence Date
    • First Bachelor’s Degree By 07-01-2017?
    • Born Before 01-01-1994?
    • Parents’ Marital Status Date
    • Parents Legal Residents before 01-01-2012?
    • Parents’ Legal Residence Date
    • Date Application Completed
    • Transaction Receipt Date
    • Reject Override A
    • Reject Override B
    • Application Receipt Date
    • Transaction Processed Date
    • Department of Defense (DOD) Parent Date of Death
  • Text Updates to the following fields
    • Parent Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Benefits
    • Student Medicaid or Student Supplemental Security Income Benefits

2017-2018 ISIR Import Corrections

To accommodate the Annual Regulatory Updates for ISIR processing, Regent has made the following updates for ISIR Corrections in R8: 

• Yearly reference updates to the following fields:
  • Year Indicator
  • Transaction Receipt Date
  • Reject Override A
  • Reject Override B

2017-2018 EFC Calculation Formula Updates

As part of the 2017-2018 Regulatory Updates, Regent updated the following EFC formulas with the new amount values as per the Software Developer’s Specification published by the Department of Education for the Federal Award Year 2017-2018:

• Formula #1 - Dependent
• Formula #2 - Independent Without Dependents Other Than A Spouse
• Formula #3 - Independent With Dependents Other Than A Spouse
• Formula #4 - Simplified Dependent
• Formula #5 - Simplified Independent Without Dependents Other Than A Spouse
• Formula #6 - Simplified Independent With Dependents Other Than A Spouse
• Alternative EFC Formula#1 - Dependent
• Alternative EFC Formula#4 – Simplified Dependent

Other items updated as part of the 2017-2018 EFC Regulatory Updates are:

• Valid Field Definitions and Editing Specifications
• Model Determination Changes
• Simplified Needs Test
• Reject Codes Updates

2017-2018 Reject Code Updates

As part of the 2017-2018 Regulatory Updates, Regent made year reference updates to the following Reject Codes:

• Reject Code A
• Reject Code B 

2017-2018 Updates for SAR C-Codes

Regent completed Annual Regulatory Updates for the SAR C-Codes.  These updates will be reflected in R8 on the ISIR tab, ISIR Comparison Wizard, and Document Setup.

ISIR – Conflicting Information (16-17 vs 17-18)

As part of the PPY regulatory updates, Regent has implemented a report that will assist schools in identifying conflicting information in key ISIR fields between the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 ISIRs for students, due to the fact that 2015 income information will be used for both the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 FAFSAs.

Applicants and parents who are eligible to use the DRT for their 2016-2017 FAFSAs, either when initially completing their FAFSA online or later by using the FAFSA online correction process, should once again use the IRS DRT when completing their 2017-2018 FAFSAs. Using the IRS DRT for both FAFSA years will dramatically reduce the likelihood of conflicting information between the two years. However, the DRT match will not resolve all potentially conflicting data element issues. There is a large percentage of students and/or parents who are not eligible to use the DRT process or who have had a change in circumstances between the two years which may result in conflicting information that the school must document and resolve.

R8 has been enhanced with a new report, the "ISIR - Conflicting Information (16-17 vs 17-18)" report, which identifies discrepancies between the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 active ISIRs related to dependency, household size, number in college, tax filing status, AGI, income from work, tax paid, other un-taxed income, child support paid, SNAP benefits, etc. 

ISIR Verification: New value of "6" available in 2017-2018

DoE added a new value of 6 to the identity verification results tool used to submit identity verification results to CPS for students selected to verify their identities and high school completion statuses (Verification Tracking Group V4 or V5).  R8 will now provide the ability to select or upload identity verification results for students when they find issues with both identity and high school completion.

2017-2018: Automatically Handle Tax Transcript Documents

Due to the "Prior Prior Year" (PPY) implementation of Regulatory Updates this year, students will use the same tax information as last year's FAFSA (2016-2017) for this year's FAFSA (2017-2018). Regent has been enhanced with the ability to re-use the status of certain 2016-2017 documents so that schools will not have to re-verify tax documents for 2017-2018.  

School should work with their assigned point of contact to ensure that documents are configured correctly to make use of this enhancement.

*Note to schools:  This is an optional scripting solution that a school may select to have scheduled to run daily in the Production environment until 9/30/2018 that will identify any 2016-2017 scoped document for which there is a 2017-2018 scoped matching document. For those identified documents, the script will check the 2016-2017 scoped document status. If the 2016-2017 doc status is "Satisfied”, the system will copy that status and the corresponding document attachment (if one exists) over to the 20172018 document unless 2017-2018 document was assigned to the student manually. For audit trail purposes, a system generated note will be added to the Notes field on the 2017-2018 document indicating that the document status was copied from the 2016-2017 document status. 

Solution for C-code 399 to block 16/17 Disbursements

Students who receive a 399 C Code on their 2017-2018 ISIR must have both 2017-2018 and 2016-2017 disbursements blocked immediately, while the C Code is resolved. The 399 C Code will only ever be given on the 2017-2018 ISIR; the 2016-2017 ISIR will not have this code. Therefore, Regent has enhanced the ISIR import process to detect that the C Code 399 exists on the student's 2017-2018 ISIR and as a result, assign the 2016-2017 blocking document to the student.  Specific document configuration is required to utilize this functionality and is documented in the Release Notes.  Per current functionality, the 2017-2018 blocking document will assign as expected based upon document configuration.   Please submit a ticket to customerzone.regenteducation.com if you have questions or need assistance with the document configuration updates.

Regulatory Updates 2016-2017

Update COD Reject / Error Code table for COD Fall 16/17 system update

Regent implemented the following updates:

• Updated COD Response Edit Code data in the R8 database for updates to error code 046 read: "Academic Year Start Date is after the Academic Year End Date or Academic Year length is less than the regulatory minimum"
• Added new edits 219 and 220 to the COD Response Edit Code data in the R8 database

Courses Override

The Course Override feature provides users the ability to override course data received by R8 through the SBL due to cases where such data may have been sent incorrectly and the adjustments need to be made in R8 vs. source system data.  R8 has also been enhanced to provide the ability to delete a course from the R8 UI.  Only those users with permissions to Edit a course will be able to access the edit screen in order to enter override data.

There are scenarios in which the course data that has been received by R8 via the SBL Import process is not accurate.  It is cumbersome and sometimes totally manual for our schools to update an SBL file for that student with correct course data.  Furthermore, the next SBL load may overwrite that corrected data with the incorrect data pulled from the school’s SIS.  As a result, schools have a need and desire to update the data elements of each course via the UI in order to process a student correctly / more quickly.  Schools also want this manually entered data to be used for a given course going forward, and not be overwritten by a subsequent SBL import.  This enhancement will allow the R8 end user to override most of the data fields provided on the <courseData> node of the SBL to ensure that R8 is processing the student based on correct course data.  If at any point in the future the school wants to stop using the manually entered data for the course, the school can edit the data by removing the manual information and R8 will default to using the most recently provided SBL data for the course. Note that appropriate school level permissions must be enabled so that users other than those with administrator level access can use override capabilities.

Course Deletion (and Restoration)

R8 has been enhanced to allow for a course to be deleted (and restored) from the UI, which will allow schools to remove bad data from a student’s record that has been imported via the SBL file.  Only users who are granted permission to delete a course from a student’s record via the R8 UI may delete and restore courses. Note that appropriate school level permissions must be enabled so that users other than those with administrator level access can use course deletion capabilities.

Disbursement Overrides

The disbursement overrides feature provides end users with the ability to override disbursement release in R8 for cases where disbursements may be held up from releasing (payment) due to any number of data/system issues, and disbursements need to be made in R8 immediately due to student processing needs/timing. This enhancement provides the ability to pay a specific disbursement for a specific student, which is a more granular approach to disbursement than was previously available in R8 via the Export Student Transaction process.

Previously in R8, when a disbursement was unable to be paid, the EST process provided the end user with the details regarding the FIRST validation check that a disbursement failed, and then the process stopped and did not check any additional validations.   As a result, the end user may have entered into a cycle of resolving an error on a student record, running EST again, and being presented with another error. This was time consuming – further delaying payment to a student. As part of the Disbursement Overrides enhancement, the end user will be presented with ALL of the validation errors that would cause the disbursement to complete the EST process, along with the option to override those validations in order to force the disbursement to be paid. The end user will be required to enter comments regarding the overridden validations, for auditing purposes. Once a disbursement has been paid, an activity log entry was added explaining the disbursement was paid as a result of overriding specific validation checks, along with the comments entered by the end user.

It is critically important to note that any time the COD acceptance disbursement override is used, the user must still resolve the causal issue(s) and get the disbursement record accepted so the disbursement records at COD, in Regent, and in the school’s student accounting system can be reconciled.

Note that appropriate school level permissions must be enabled so that users other than those with administrator level access can use disbursement override capabilities.

Editable Ability to Benefit Fields

Regent 8 has been enhanced to allow users to manually enter values into the "Ability to Benefit" fields. The new fields appear on the Student Details screen, "Ability to Benefit" section. The user-entered values will take precedence over any SIS-provided data loaded from the SBL. The SIS-provided values are displayed read-only, next to the new editable fields. Changes to the user-entered ATB values will be logged in the Activity Log.

New Document Use Types

Regent 8 has been enhanced by adding the following new values to the "Select the Process that this document facilitates" drop down under the Document Use section in Document Setup:

• Facilitate Veteran Assistance Benefits
• Facilitate Tuition Assistance Benefits
• Facilitate External Resources Benefits
• Facilitate Institutional Resources
• Facilitate Consortium Review
• Review Non-Title IV Documents

Enhance the ExportStudentDocuments Process

R8 currently has the ability to configure the ExportStudentDocument process. Regent has enhanced the process that selects (stages) the documents for export to cover user edits from the UI (excluding cases where real-time integration sends these updates via Web Services calls instead).

Modifications to "Student - Completed Units" Report

Regent 8 updated the following fields on the "Student - Completed Units" Report with the specified calculations as follows: 

• Completed PA Units – Student’s Completed Program Applicable units, including Transfers, but not including any course adjustment units; displays on the R8 UI as the SUM of the "Comp" row on the Academic Plan.
• Course Adjustment PA Units – Student’s Progression Program Applicable Course Adjustment Units
• Total PA Units – Sum of previous two columns: Completed PA units and Course Adjustment units
• Non-PA Units –Total Completed Units that are not Program Applicable

Product Revisions

Usability Improvements

1. Hover text on Activity Log Entries when disbursement validation codes are written to the activity log (for a variety of different EST messages). The hover text displays the specific detail regarding the validation error
2. Changes to the permission tree structure for "Export Student Transactions."
3. Change the button label from "Verification Results" to "Identity Verification" on the ISIR tab of Student.

System Auditing Improvements

1. Log and activity log entry with the old and new value when the user changes and saves any ATB field's value. Sample Activity Log text: Ability to Benefit data changed: Student Eligibility Code Override changed from blank to 09"

Dataview for Course Override Functionality

The dataExtract_CourseData_Override_View_v001 was created to provide visibility into course data that has been modified using the override functionality in REM. This Course Override data can then be joined to the current CourseData (dataExtract_CourseData_View) dataview as needed. This approach avoids the need to make changes to current reports that are using the Course Data dataview.

It is recommended that all clients who use the override features in R8 should incorporate this view into any reporting or querying structure that pulls R8 Course Data.

Note: No changes to existing views were made with this addition. This view represents the first version for this data model in R8.

Dataview for Disbursement Override Functionality

The dataExtract_Disbursement_Override_View_v001 was created to provide visibility into disbursement data that has been modified using the override functionality in REM. This Disbursement Override data can then be joined to the current Disbursement (dataExtract_Disbursement_View_v001) dataview as needed. This approach avoids the need to make changes to current reports that are using the Disbursement dataview.

It is recommended that all clients who use the override features in R8 should incorporate this view into any reporting or querying structure that pulls R8 Disbursement data.

Note: No changes to existing views were made with this addition. This view represents the first version for this data model in R8.

Dataview for Course Enrollment Rollup

A new version of the Course Enrollment Rollup Data View was created titleddataExtract_CourseEnrollmentRollup_View_v002. This new version of the dataview contains one change - the addition of the totalAttemptedNonProgressionExternalTransferUnits (Total Attempted Non-Progression External Transfer Units) field. This new database field was added in Release 3.4 when the new Institution-Level Configuration option titled Exclude Internal Transfer Courses with 0 Quality Points From Progression was put into place.

The totalAttemptedNonProgressionExternalTransferUnits field will contain the summation of the registered units for all courses that meet all of the following criteria:

• External Transfer = true
• Internal Transfer = false
• Program Applicable = true
• Either (Quality Points = 0, or is not specified on the SBL), OR (countTowardProgression = false, regardless of Quality Points)

For further information about the Exclude Internal Transfer Courses with 0 Quality Points From Progression configuration option, please see the Release 3.4 notes.

Configuration Requirements / System Requirements

Any client currently on the R8 R3.x branch may take R3.5 for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.

Configuration updates: Client specific permissions must be configured by clients to ensure appropriate level of access to the overrides capabilities.

Other Documentation

• FAQ's - frequently asked questions provided by product management and customer support
• Powerpoint that provides an overview of the release.
• Webinar - pre-recorded overview of the new release and new functionality
• Release Notes - detailed description of all items included in the release

Release Updates and Known Issues:

It is recommended that all customers that have taken release 3.5 upgrade to Release 3.5.0.1, which was certified on 10/7. This minor release includes new enhancements and provides additional guidance on using the Disbursement Overrides functionality. The following key pieces of work are included in  the 3.5.0.1 upgrade:

1. Reporting enfacements:
   1. Use "View Students" permission to control access to student data in R8 reports
2. Usability Improvements:

   1. Changes to the permissions on the “Bypass COD and Run EST for AR button.

   2. Add security permission to lock down the Identity Verification Results Wizard

3. Updates to EST Validation Messages. Please, see 3.5.0.1 Release Notes for a complete list of the Process Log and Disbursement Details UI Validation Messages that user will be able to override  

4. 10 issues related to application maintenance were resolved in this release. Please, see 3.5.0.1 Release Notes for a complete list.