Release 5.4 Product Brief

Owned by Heather Smith
Last updated: Jun 22, 2021 by Susan Sherrick
10 min read
Product Release5.4.0.0
Release Date
Keywords

Product Brief

Additional Documents
StatusFINAL
Authors

Ron Dinwiddie

Susan Sherrick

Sharon Clough




Product Release Summary

This Product Brief includes a summary of Regent 5.4 and direction to additional documentation and information.

Product Release Description

Recent Minor Regent Releases: 

In mid-December 2020, ED indicated a target date for the Spring 2021 COD upgrade of March 14th.  Last year’s update didn’t occur until April 26th.  With Regent’s commitment to regulatory timing, we rebalanced our production roadmap to plan for an earlier annual COD upgrade date this year.  Thus, provision of key enhancements including our standard Spring Regulatory Update were provided in a series of minor releases following certification of Regent 5.3.  We published Release Notes in the Customer Zone Knowledge Base for enhancements in 5.3.1.0 and 5.3.3.0, and Release 5.3.4.0 contained the 2021-2022 Pell Grant Schedule updates.

These minor releases included:

  • Standard regulatory updates in support of 2021-2022 COD processing per guidance in the 2021-2022 Common Record Technical Reference:
  • New Document Configuration Setting for ‘Override Signature Requirements’
  • Automated SAP Calculations Without SBL SAP Node
  • New Fields Available for Communications Filters
  • Support for Communications to Parent PLUS Borrowers
  • Configuration Options to Activate Regent Plan by Program/Site
  • Title IV Authorizations via Student Experience Portal
  • FERPA Authorization for Key Individuals via Student Experience Portal
  • Corrected Disbursement Rules for Expired MPNs

Release notes for the above enhancements:

Regent 5.4:

The 5.4.0.0 release addresses product defects as listed in the “Bugs” section of the Release Notes, and also enhancements and new features including:

  • Subsidized Usage Limit Applies (SULA) Calculations for Regular, Term-based Programs
  • New Document Configuration Options:  Document configuration has been enhanced to include options for the additional Active ISIR fields
  • Regent Smart Form enhancements
  • New 'Disclosure' page in Regent Plan and additional Student Indebtedness Tokens for use on the new page
  • Inclusion of Student Communications in the Messages component of Student Experience

Release Notes

Further details on enhancements/new features and a complete list of bug fixes can be found in the Release Notes.   The  5.4 Release Notes  are made available externally via Customer Zone.

The Release Notes also contain information on new configuration options, and a list of updates to the Admin Guide and User Guide.

Other Documentation

In addition to the Product Brief, the following documentation is also available:


System Requirements

Any client currently using Regent Award may take the Regent 5.4 version of Student Experience for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.

Any client currently using Regent Review may take the Regent 5.4 version of Student Experience for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.


New Feature Overview for Regent 5.4    

 

Included in the preceding minor releases:

  • Standard regulatory updates in support of 2021-2022 COD processing per guidance in the 2021-2022 Common Record Technical Reference:
    • Added Message Classes to the SAIG Mailbox Integration feature in support of 2021-2022 COD processing.  The new message classes will set dynamically as Active for SAIG processing in Regent if the related classes for the prior FAY are configured as Active.
    • Added support for the new 4.0e COD Schema.
    • 2021-2022 Pell Schedules
    • Note:  Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement (ASLA) functionality was made available last year in Regent 5.1.  Please see the 5.1 Release Notes in the Customer Zone Knowledge Base for specifics.  The mandate to require students to complete ASLA prior to receiving 2021-2022 Direct Loan disbursements has been deferred by ED until the 2022-2023 Federal Award Year.


  • New Document Configuration Setting for ‘Override Signature Requirements’:  This setting works with the ‘Require Electronic Signature’ configuration option to allow the Regent system to determine whether the electronic signature requirement for a student’s document should be ‘Student Only’ or ‘Student and Parent’ based on the student’s dependency status. 


  • Automated SAP Calculations Without SBL SAP Node:  When this option is selected, Regent Award will automatically calculate SAP without requiring the Institution to send specific SAP information in the Student Batch Load (SBL) file.  The system will react to GPAs as provided in the Student Node of the SBL.  Clients electing to use this option for one or more programs will ensure the new 'Auto-Generate SAP Node from Student GPA' is configured as 'Yes' for the student’s current program (inheritable from Institution Setup and Campus Setup).


Regent 5.4:

The 5.4.0.0 release addresses product defects as listed in the “Bugs” section of the Release Notes, and also enhancements and new features including:


  • Subsidized Usage Limit Applies (SULA) Calculations for Regular, Term-based Programs:

Using the most recent SULA information from CPS, COD or NSLDS along with student enrollment level information, Regent Award will adjust Subsidized Direct Loan eligibility for students in regular, term-based programs who reach their SULA 150% limits.  The calculations also include implementation of the special rules applying to awarding of a full grade level of Subsidized eligibility to a period shorter than a full academic year.  In cases where a student would be otherwise eligible if the full award amount was reduced by $1, that adjustment will be made. School users will be alerted via an icon within Regent Award when a loan has been limited from the otherwise eligible amount due to SULA.

In the absence of any COD information, Regent will assume that 1) SULA applies to the student and 2) that there is no existing Subsidized Usage Period (SUP).  Regent will update awarding upon receipt of additional data from one of the official sources.

The SULA subtab has been enhanced to show loan level detail for both COD SULA attribution and for the Regent calculations. Activity Log Entries will also provide helpful information to users about Regent SULA calculations.

This enhancement supports SULA calculations for term-based, regular programs.  Users will identify via configuration which programs are to have SULA managed by Regent Award.  Users will also have an opportunity to configure the COD program length to be used in SULA calculations. 


  • New Document Configuration Options:  Document configuration has been enhanced to include options for the following Active ISIR fields:
    • State of Residency
    • EFC Range
    • First Bachelor’s Degree FAFSA


  • Regent Smart Form Enhancements:

The e-signature time stamp displayed on a smart form document output (.pdf) will reflect the student’s local time, based on their browser, at the time e-signature was actually completed. This will align with the Time stamp within the Regent Award UI for document receipt and signature.  The e-signature time stamp on the document .pdf will include the student’s 3-letter time zone indicator (taking into consideration daylight savings time versus standard time) to make it easier for client users in other time zones to understand when the document was signed.  A format Example: 1/20/2021 4:58 AM CST

The ‘Confirm Your Current Marital Status' field on the ‘gold copy’ Verification Worksheet has been updated so it will not default to either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Student will be required to select the appropriate value, and the help text has been moved to display above the radio button options.

The top section of informational text for the ‘IRS Tax Transcript/Tax Return' field of the ‘gold copy’ Verification Worksheet has been revised to advise that signed copies of a prior year’s tax returns are acceptable for verification. The text now reads “In order to complete the verification process, you will need to provide a copy of your completed and signed 2019 1040 form or a 2019 Tax Transcript for both you and your spouse from the Internal Revenue Service for the Financial Aid Office to review. A 2019 IRS Tax Return Transcript may be obtained using any of the following options:”

The text has also been updated in the ‘Children and Other Dependents Information' section of the ‘gold copy’ Verification Worksheet. The following sentence has been added to the existing text: “Do not include children for whom you pay child support if the amount you pay does not provide more than half of the overall support for those children.”


  • Disclosures Sub-Page in Regent Plan with Additional Student Indebtedness Tokens for Student Experience: 

Regent is providing a new page in Regent Plan where client can provide additional borrowing or other consumer information.  Some individual states are now requiring that students be provided with additional indebtedness information, and unaffected institutions may also wish to supply such additional information to their students. 

The Disclosures page will open in it's own browser instance, and provides unlimited space for client configuration using a WYSIWYG Editor.  Link capability will allow users to direct students to this page from the Student Experience footer or from other locations within Student Experience.  

A series of new tokens are available for use on the Disclosures page.  Loan amount totals will include all originated loan amounts from Regent Award, ISIR data, and NSLDS FA History files regardless of disbursement status, and have been created for Total Subsidized Loan, Total Unsubsidized Loan, Total Perkins Loan, Total Graduate PLUS, Total Parent PLUS (where the student is the borrower), Total Other Federal Loans, and Total Title IV loans.  Tokens are also available for: Aggregate Sub/Unsub Percentage Used, Interest Rates for each type of loan (based on Fund Fee configuration), and estimated Monthly Payment Amounts.

FA Users will configure single Funds for ‘Other Federal Loan’ or ‘Aggregate Loan’ along with a standard repayment period for each if they wish to use the associated tokens.  Additionally, they may wish to import lump sum amounts of each from legacy systems for use in presenting students with their complete borrowing pictures at the institution.

Users have the option to only display the page to students with loan history, and to present a configurable message to students who do not have any available loan histories when they attempt to access the page.



  • Inclusion of Student Communications in the Messages component of Student Experience:

Regent Award, Regent Review, and Student Experience have been standardized with 'Communications' as the broad category to include Notifications (e-mails), Messages (portal messaging), and other communication-related items in the future. Aligning updates have been made to Permissions in Regent; the 'Send Communications' (now 'Send Notifications') feature moved from the Activity tab in Regent to the Communications tab; and e-mails will be noted as 'Notification-related', rather than 'Communication-related'.  Clients wishing to update prior e-mails from 'Communication-related' to 'Notification-related' in the Activity Log should contact their Account Managers to request the related script be run in their instance.  

NOTE: Permission updates as documented in New Configuration Options section of the 5.4 Release Notes are required to access Communications.


In Student Experience, the renamed 'Communications' component will include separate sub-tabs for Notifications and Messages.  Messaging must be enabled for Student Experience in order for the Notifications piece to be available.  If the 'Display Generated Communication in Portal' configuration is enabled on the Communications tab, the 50 most recent notifications (e-mails) generated within Regent will display to the student on the Notifications sub-tab. Any e-mail attachments will be included and students will be able to access them.  FA Users will be able to configure whether a notification goes out via e-mail, displays in the Communications component of Student Experience, or is both e-mailed and displayed in Student Experience.  Students will not be able to reply to e-mails within the module.  One suggested use for this new functionality is to provide students with their College Financing Plans by this more secure means, rather than attaching them to e-mails.



Known Issues for Regent 5.4

KeySummarySuggested Workaround
RS-13962Split Weeks not functioning as expected for Abbreviated Loan PeriodNone.
RS-14001Certain TEACH Grant awards not being assigned a CPS Transaction Number for COD export. Process the TEACH award at COD-on-the Web.
RS-14124Nonterm Academic Year End Date is incorrect when student returns after absence greater than 180 days.None.
RS-14395Automatic "cancel/recreate" to update Loan Fee percentage is exporting incorrectly when all disbursements are anticipated.Cancel initial loan at COD-on-the Web.
RS-14969A nonterm loan period has one payment period when it contains more than half an academic year in credits.Adjust the loan to ensure two disbursements.
RS-15432Multiple Zero Dollar Grad PLUS Awards reported for certain students.None.
RS-15520Error when attaching documents with special characters in file name.Do not use special characters in file name.
RS-18232Data view missing or has invalid completion date for R2T4s that resulted in neither Refunds nor PWDs and were finalized as "no action required". Date is available in the UI.
RS-18545Error Msg: 'Packaging error. Non-unique disbursement number generated' triggered in certain cases where there are duplicate award periods.As a cleanup, the script RS-15586 Documentation is used to renumber the duplicate disbursement and clear it.
RS-18575In certain cases, the 'Cancel Funds if Document is in Unsatisfied Status' is not working as expected.Manually cancel the award.
RS-18692The awards tab sometimes displays extra terms when a loan period is selected.None.
RS-19187In certain cases, students who withdraw from Summer courses but re-enroll are showing the correct HT enrollment status on the Academic Plan,  but the Pell is only the LTHT amount.Use Modify Award Wizard (MAW) to adjust the Pell amount.
RS-19422 a gap between nonterm courses, Regent is not properly extending and then hard closing the payment period to accommodate the weeks between courses. This causes an EST error 0023 when disbursing the next payment period. Enter a student level break for the gap period between courses, or ue EST override to push through the disbursement.
RS-19466In certain R2T4 cases when Pell is not fully earned, at least 1 payment has disbursed for the term and at least 1 payment has not, cents in the Step 10 amount to return may not be handled properly.Manually modify the Pell award once calculation is completed
RS-19477On occasion, the BP Process completes successfully, but the Process Log is not closed ("hangs" at 99%) to it appears to the user that the porcess did not complete.Contact Regent for manual step to close the process on the Process Log.
RS-19496ISIR - Unmatched' Report Includes SSN in CSV and XML file exports when "include SSN" is false.  SSNs do not display in initial results on screen.  Delete SSNs as soon as export file is created, or export in .pdf, Word, or Excel.
RS-19807In the 'What If I Change My Course Enrollment' tool of Regent Plan, the 'All Terms' option is not functioning correctly.Students can enter desired number of units or enrollment level on a term- by-term basis.
RS-19854COD WB Reconciliation displays 'Process command failed' error when clicking 'Save, but do not run EST for AR'_ button. None.
RS-19973"Select All" Checkbox for tasks now selects all in the queue rather than only the 20 displayed itemsCheck each task for which the action is desired, rather than doing a page at a time.
RS-20126Only one bulk action can be applied at a time to tasks.If wishing to make multiple updates at the same time, do not use the bulk action function.
RS-20703"Go to FAFSA on the Web" is not blue and underscored to reflect a hyperlinkAdvise student to click on text or provie URL via messaging.
RS-20877Certain students with 0 gross Direct Loan amounts in closed periods are exporting with Net and Fees greater than $0None.
RS-20977Borrowing option changes / selects when white space right of text is clicked in Student Experience.None.