Florida State Funds - Getting Started
Overview
This page gives an introduction to configuring Regent Award for Florida state funds for the first time. These instructions assume the reader is already familiar with changing configuration settings in Regent Award.
Florida State Funds are funded through the state of Florida, Office of Student Financial Assistance. As of the 6.8.0.0 release (Summer 2024), Regent Award can support selected popular Florida funds, including Bright Futures and Florida Student Assistance Grant. For more information on how those funds work, see Florida State Funds - Bright Futures and FSAG
Getting Started
Schools are strongly urged to do extensive testing and ensure their configuration will work as desired. The ideal testing would use actual roster data and actual student data, loaded into a test environment with the same Regent Award configuration settings as production.
Schools need to:
Have access to test environments
For ease of testing, Regent suggests using a "time machine" environment that can change the server date.
Deploy or upgrade to Regent Award 6.8.0.0 Release or a subsequent Release
Ensure the administrator (user account) has a Role with applicable Permissions to change Campus Setup configuration settings
Configure Smart Forms
Configure Regent Award for:
Fund Setup
Document Setup
Packaging Philosophy
Task Setup
Disbursement Schedule Setup
User-Defined Fields, aka Institutionally Defined Data (optional)
Provide SIS-provided information sent on SBL
Ethnicity
UDFs (optional)
SAP records
Configure Data Pipelines and settings for Florida data values
Test functionality
Copy configuration settings to the new environment
Reconfigure Data Factory
Table of Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Getting Started
- 3 Versions
- 4 Smart Form
- 5 Azure Data Factory
- 6 Configuring Regent Award
- 6.1.1 Reload RNA Setup
- 6.2 Regent Award - Fund Setup
- 6.3 Agency Program ID
- 6.4 Amount Per Payment Period
- 6.5 Other Fund Setup Settings
- 6.5.1 Fund Detail
- 6.5.2 Fund Eligibility
- 6.5.3 Awarding Rules
- 6.5.4 Optional Settings
- 6.6 Budgets Sub-Tab (FSAG)
- 7 Institution Setup
- 8 Document Setup
- 9 Task Setup
- 10 Disbursement Schedule Setup
- 11 User Defined Fields
- 12 Student Batch Load (SBL)
- 13 Technical Information for Regent Staff
Versions
Florida funds are supported for Regent Award Release 6.8.0.0 and later.
Smart Form
Florida eligibility data is stored using a Regent Smart Form to capture data from the Florida Master Eligibility List (“MEL”.) A separate Student Document Requirement holds data for each Florida fund type and each FAY. Regent Award needs the FAY’s ‘Florida Smart Form Master Eligibility List’ deployed and active for each FAY receiving MEL data records. For example, if the school is importing MEL data files containing 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 data, the school needs to configure two, separate, active Smart Forms, one each for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.
Scripts to Create Smart Forms: Smart Forms are created using deployment scripts. Contact your Regent Account Manager or Delivery Services team to request to run the script for the latest Smart Form versions via a Regent Cloud Operations (RCO) ticket. The RCO ticket needs to specify the following: the SQL script (ending in “.sql”) needs to be deployed using the UTF-8 option against the SNAP database. Use the following text: "Please run the attached scripts against the SNAP database for {Customer Instance} using the UTF-8 option. When the script is finished executing please RDP into the SNAP VM and recycle SNAP API application pool in IIS (brief outage) to refresh the SNAP cache."
Note: The Student Portal does not need to be in maintenance mode to deploy the Smart Form scripts. Students will stay logged in during the Smart Form script deployment. Cycling the SNAP API application pool will not remove students from the Student Experience portal.
To view Smart Form version information, open a Web browser and access the main StudentX URL for the environment, with /version added onto the end. For example:
https://YourUniversityStudentXURLHere.YourUniversity.edu/version
When the Smart Form questionnaire is deployed, the Smart Form will be visible under the Questionnaires sections of the Versions page, such as the following:
Azure Data Factory
Regent technical staff will prepare the Azure Data Factory configuration on behalf of the school. For Regent Award schools using Florida funds, some Data Factory settings will need to match specific Regent Award configuration for Florida fund-specific and document-specific items. Some additional technical details for Florida funds are at the bottom of this page.
Regent’s Data Factory integration uses the Data Factory Pipeline. The Data Factory Pipeline will import data from the Master Eligibility List (MEL). MEL data is stored on a configured Smart Form Student Document Requirement for each supported Fund. Additional general information about Regent’s Data Factory Pipeline is at: Data Pipeline Import/Export Processes.
Configuring Regent Award
As always, please work closely with your Regent Account Manager and/or Delivery Services implementation team to coordinate any configuration changes to environments.
Reload RNA Setup
After making changes to ANY section of the Regent configuration setup, remember to always 'Reload RNA Setup' to apply the new settings.
Administration → Enterprise Setup → Reload RNA Setup button
Regent Needs Analysis (RNA) is Regent’s packaging engine. Reminder, students must also be repackaged, e.g. Batch Packaging or the Modify Academic Plan (MAP wizard), to apply the new configurations to their Financial Aid packages.
Regent Award - Fund Setup
Each Florida scholarship program needs one or more associated Funds configured in Fund Setup. Schools must configure the Florida fund before awarding from that fund in Regent. If a fund is not properly configured, Regent cannot process that fund in the Florida export reports.
To meet specific awarding needs, a school can configure multiple Fund Setup configurations for the same Florida scholarship type. The value of the ‘Agency Program ID’ for each configured Fund must match the Florida scholarship program/type code.
For example, a school might award different amounts per unit for the Bright Futures Florida Medallion Scholarship (BFFMS), depending on whether the student is in an Associate of Arts program or a Bachelor’s program. The school would configure separate Funds in Fund Setup, each with the same ‘Agency Program ID’ value of BFFMS. Each instance of the Fund would be configured separately in Fund Setup, with specific selected programs on the ‘Programs’ sub-tab.
Whenever a school has multiple Funds configured in Regent, each Fund needs to be linked to a configured Disbursement Schedule for the fund. Each Fund also needs to be individually prioritized in the Packaging Philosophy.
To prevent double awarding, schools should carefully configure each Fund with the selected programs and selected sites, to not overlap with another configured Fund or another disbursement schedule.
Multiple configured Funds in Regent can still all use the same shared Student Document Requirement if the funds are for the same Florida scholarship/type code. See details below for Document Setup.
Agency Program ID
Regent primarily identifies Florida funds using the ‘Agency Program ID’ field in Fund Setup. Regent can process the following Florida scholarship/grant program type codes: BFATS, BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV, CDDV, FFMT, FFRS, FFSS, FGMG, FIS, FRAG, FSAG, FSAGCE, FWEP, HDGAP, JM, LEASP, MMB, OCOE, RFS. The Fund types in bold (BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV, and FSAG) are supported for automated packaging in Regent. Other Florida funds have limited support, to allow processing funds in Florida exports. For a full list of supported Florida funds, see Florida State Funds - Bright Futures and FSAG.
The school must configure the Fund Setup ‘Agency Program ID’ field to match the value of the scholarship/grant’s Florida program code. For example, the ‘Florida Bright Futures - Academic Scholars’ scholarship has a Florida program code of “BFFAS.” The corresponding Regent fund needs a value of ‘BFFAS’ configured in the fund’s ‘Agency Program ID’ in Fund Setup. The “BFFAS” Agency Program ID is then used to match students who are imported on the Master Eligibility List roster with “BFFAS” for the Florida program code.
Amount Per Payment Period
Bright Futures Amount Per Unit
The automated Bright Futures funds use a per-unit amount. Amounts can be FAY-specific, school-specific, and potentially program-specific. For the automated Florida Bright Futures funds (BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV), schools configures those amounts in Fund Setup, ‘Amount Per Payment Period’ section. The school configures the 'Amount Per Unit’ for each FAY, per the OSFA policy for their school.
In the following example for BFFAS, a school is configured with a hypothetical amount per unit of $121.33 for the FAY of 2024-2025. All selected programs for the fund will use that per-unit amount. When configuring the fund, a school should not configure any values in the other ‘Amount Per Payment Period’ settings. Leave the other fields in that row blank. The automated Florida rules will disregard the other settings on that row.
FSAG Flat Amount Per Payment Period
FSAG uses a flat amount per payment period. Amounts can be FAY-specific, school-specific, and potentially program-specific. Each term’s FSAG amount depends on the term’s enrollment level.
FSAG amounts need to be configured according to the school’s agreement with OSFA. Some Public Florida universities can award for Half-Time (6 units), Three Quarter Time (9 units), and Full Time (12+ units). Other FSAG-eligible institutions may award FSAG for a Full Time enrollment level (12 units).
Example ‘Amount Per Payment Period’ configuration for Florida Student Assistance Grant (FSAG), for a public Florida two-year college:
Other Fund Setup Settings
Other Fund Setup settings may affect awarding. Schools should carefully review these settings for all Florida funds, including non-automated Florida funds as well as FSAG and Bright Futures.
Fund Detail
Fund Source: State
Fund Scope and Budget Scope: Federal Award Year
Alternative FAY Schedule: Jul 01 - Jun 30
Allow Multiple FAY-Scoped Awards per Period: No
Allow Awards from More Than One Available FAY per Crossover Period: No
Fund Eligibility
For Bright Futures automated funds only (BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV):
For automated roster-based funds, configure all settings in the Fund Eligibility settings section as No, to allow Regent to apply eligibility tests using the MEL roster.
ISIR Required? should be Unselected. Bright Futures does not require an ISIR.
For FSAG only:
If no ISIR, allow awarding from Estimated SAI when available: Unselected
ISIR Required? Selected/checked
SAP Required? Selected/checked
Pell Eligibility Required: Unselected
SAI Minimum/Maximum: Configure minimum and maximum values for each FAY, per your school’s policies.
Example possible values for 2024-2025: Min -$1500 Max $9984
Note, some schools may choose different ranges.
Require At Least Half-Time Enrollment Level in All Paid Terms: Set to either Yes or No, per your school’s policies.
In most cases, schools can leave this setting configured as No. However, a school can optionally set to Yes for some funds, such as FSAG, that mandate a half-time enrollment level. For example, a school might have a policy to not reduce paid disbursements (“Allow Auto-Adjustment of Paid Disbursements” = False), but the school still wants to deny future awards in later FAYs if a student has a term with a paid FSAG award, and the student drops to below half-time enrollment for that paid term. If a student would be otherwise eligible for FSAG in a future FAY, but the student has a previous FAY with a past paid term with below HT enrollment, the student would not be awarded for that future FAY.
Other Florida funds: Configured per your school’s policy and OSFA guidance.
Awarding Rules
The fund automation has been designed to work with the following Fund Setup configuration settings.
Initial status: Accepted
Rounding: Cents (Bright Futures), Dollar (FSAG)
Adjustments Allowed: Both
Adjust After Census Date: Selected/checked
‘Allow Auto-Adjustment of Paid Disbursements:' Set to either Yes or No depending on the school’s policy.
Yes: If the school prefers students to keep paid amounts (including overawards).
No: If the school wants a paid amount to be reduced when a student has a change, e.g. when a student drops courses resulting in fewer units or a lower enrollment level.
For more information about that setting, see CZ KB: Fund Setup | FundSetup AdminGuide4.1.0.0 TreatmentofPaidvsUnpaidDisbursements
Freeze amounts: Past Payment Periods, to prevent changing amounts in past terms
Award Distribution Options: Distribute Using Payment Period Amounts
Prorate Distribution Amounts: No/unchecked
Exclude Header and Trailers:
Unselected for BFFAS and BFFMS, to enable Summer awarding for those funds if the student’s MEL Conditional Codes allow it
Unselected for FSAG, to enable Summer awarding
Selected/checked for BFGSC and BFGSV, because those funds do not award for Summer.
Non-Need-Based Fund Used to Replace SAI:
For automated Bright Futures funds (BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV), set to Selected/checked because the automated Bright Futures scholarships are not need-based.
For FSAG, set to Unselected/unchecked, because FSAG is a need-based award.
Optional Settings
Begin and Cease Auto-Packaging Settings: Optional, to enable or disable auto-packaging from a specific FAY for a date range.
For example, a school might want to disable auto-packaging of new Florida awards when the school is submitting the final reports to the state for that FAY.
Award Minimum/Maximums: Optional; allows a school to limit awards to require a minimum amount or maximum amount per FAY.
For much more information on other Fund Setup settings, see main CZ KB article: Fund Setup Data Elements
Budgets Sub-Tab (FSAG)
FSAG is a decentralized fund, awarded by the school and then reimbursed from the state. FSAG funding is limited, so the FSAG fund allocation needs to be configured in Fund Setup. The Regent “Budget” holds the school’s allocation amount for a FAY.
Budget Amount: Set to the school’s annual allocation.
Period Filter: Set to Payment Period, July 1 to June 30 of the FAY.
Other Florida funds might also use budgeted allocations.
For more information on configuring annual allocations with Regent Award Budgets, see Regent Award Fund Budgets
Institution Setup
FSAG allows half-time or greater awarding for public Florida institutions. For those institutions, Regent Award needs to be configured in Institution Setup with a Mailing Address, state of “Florida” and the Program Participation Agreement (PPA) configured with Institution Type of “Public.” Other postsecondary institutions, such as some private institutions, may also award FSAG for full-time students per the school’s agreement with OSFA.
Document Setup
Florida funds are designed to use two sets of Documents configured in Document Setup:
Master Eligibility List (MEL) Smart Form to hold the MEL information;
Blocking Document for each Fund to prevent accidentally paying students before receiving clearance from the state of Florida.
Florida Master Eligibility List (MEL) Document Configuration
Schools must configure Florida MEL documents in Document Setup before importing the Florida Master Eligibility List (MEL) data.
During the MEL import, Data Factory stores the MEL data using a Student Document with a Regent Smart Form, for each Florida scholarship type. Data is FAY-specific, and each line on the MEL roster corresponds to a different Florida fund type. If a student has a Document for a Florida fund for a specific FAY, and the school imports a new MEL roster, Regent replaces the student’s Smart Form data with the updated MEL information.
Schools must create a separate Document Setup configuration for each Florida scholarship type that the school plans to use for awarding. Different configured Funds in Regent Award will share the same Document Requirement. For example, if a school has different BFFMS Funds in Fund Setup, having different per-unit amounts for different types of Florida Medallion Scholars, then the school would still only configure one Document Setup configuration to hold all BFFMS Master Eligibility List.
When a Document Requirement is configured in Document Setup, Regent will automatically apply the MEL data.
External Document ID
The External Document ID may be different depending on an institution’s needs. Please work closely with Regent staff to configure that value, especially to coordinate any changes. Regent’s Data Factory import relies on the External Document ID value to link the incoming MEL data to the correct Student Document Requirement.
Schools do not need to configure documents for Florida scholarships that the school does not award. For example, if an institution does not participate in the Benacquisto Scholarship Program (Florida code “FIS”), the school does not need to configure a Document Setup to hold FIS eligibility data. However, Regent staff may still need to configure Data Factory with a placeholder value to allow importing the rest of the MEL file. More technical details are at the end of this page.
Other Document Setup Settings
In Regent Award, Document Setup must be configured with the following settings for MEL documents:
Enforce Scope Uniqueness: Selected/checked
Office Use Only: Selected/checked
Smart Form Type: Use Smart Form Code
Smart Form Code: FLMasterEligibilityList
Always apply document to all Federal Award Years: Selected/checked
Screenshot:
Blocking Documents
Schools may configure additional, fund-specific “Blocking Documents” in Document Setup. A Blocking Document is a way to apply restrictions to a student and/or fund using a Student Document Requirement. When a student has a Blocking Document assigned, and that Document Requirement is in “Needed” status, the Document can prevent certain actions from occurring e.g. paying disbursements via Export Student Transactions (EST). Schools may also configure the Document as ’Office Use Only' to prevent students from seeing the Document on the Student Experience Portal.
For example, a school might configure a Blocking Document to Restrict Disbursements for the Bright Futures - Florida Academic Scholars award (BFFAS). When a student has that BFFAS award, but the student has the Blocking Document, the BFFAS award would still appear in their package, but Regent would prevent the fund from disbursing on the Regent “Export Student Transactions” (EST) process. If the school submitted the student to the state of Florida (e.g. in the Disbursement Eligibility Report for the term), and Florida had an “edit code” that needed to adjust the award amount, the school could manually adjust the award using the Modify Award Wizard (MAW). The school can then set the document to a “Satisfied” status, which would allow the payment to disburse.
Another reason for applying a Blocking Document is if the school needs to evaluate whether a student meets the school’s policy for residency. Schools might automatically assign a Blocking Document for non-residents. Documents may also be assigned via script, or a script can change the document status on existing documents. Please work with your Regent Account Manager or Delivery Services Team.
Packaging Philosophy Setup
Automated Florida funds must be configured in the Packaging Philosophy with ‘Auto Package’ as enabled/selected for BFFAS, BFFMS, BFGSC, BFGSV, and FSAG. If a school has configured multiple instances of a fund type, each fund must be configured to auto-package.
The Bright Futures - Academic Scholars should be ranked above the Bright Futures - Medallion Scholars, i.e., BFFAS should have a lower value than BFFMS in the numeric Priority field.
Bright Futures automated funds should be configured to package to % of COA (or % of Direct Costs). FSAG should be configured to package to % of Remaining Need.
Other Florida funds should be configured with ‘Auto-Package’ unselected. The school configures those funds according to their policies and any applicable guidance from OSFA.
An example Packaging Philosophy priority list is in the following screenshot:
Task Setup
Tasks are Regent’s way of alerting a Regent user that a student or award may need review. In most cases, schools will already have a Task enabled.
Schools are encouraged to enable the Task for “Review Eligibility Change.” For example, if a student has a Manual award from an automated fund, but the MEL loads some new data that indicates the student is not eligible, then a Regent user should confirm whether the student should still be eligible for the award.
For more information about configuring Tasks, see Task and Task Queue Setup.
Disbursement Schedule Setup
Each fund must be linked to a Regent Disbursement Schedule. Florida funds do not need any special configuration for Disbursement Schedules. See main article: Disbursement Schedule Setup Data Elements
User Defined Fields
Under Institution Setup, an institution may optionally configure a “User Defined Field” (UDF) to track the student’s Highest Education completed.
UDF Field Name: Highest_Education
Code: HIGHEST_EDUCATION
UDF Value Field Type: Text
UDF values are sent in the “Institutionally Defined Data” on the Student Batch Load (SBL). If a student has a Highest_Education UDF with a value of either “MS” or “PHD” then that student will not be awarded from Bright Futures. All other values for that UDF will have no effect on awarding. The Highest_Education UDF name and values are not case sensitive.
Student Batch Load (SBL)
In addition to UDFs, Regent uses some specific information from the Student Information System (SIS). SIS information is provided by the Student Batch Load (SBL) process. Additional details about the Regent SBL are at Student Batch Load (SBL) and Attributes Document (SBL Data Dictionary)
Ethnicity and Race
Florida requires schools to report the Race and Ethnicity of Florida award recipients. For MEL-based awards, Regent uses the reported ethnicity from the imported MEL data. For FSAG, a decentralized award, Regent infers the student’s race and ethnicity using the SBL data.
Schools should send SBL data for ethnicity and race. See Attributes Document (SBL Data Dictionary). The Regent SBL values are mapped to the Florida values for export.
Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP)
Schools must provide annual cumulative GPA information for Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) records, prior to exporting the Grade & Hours report. See Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP)
Technical Information for Regent Staff
The following information is intended for Regent technical staff configuration and troubleshooting.
Clients should always work with their Regent Account Manager, Project Manager, or Delivery team for specific support needs.
Data Pipeline
If you copy data from another environment, the Azure Data Factory Name may need to be updated to use the correct name for the target environment. Other data factory settings might also need to change, depending on the Azure environment.
Additional Pipeline - Exporting DER for Otherwise Eligible Report
Schools may additionally configure a customized DER report to track ‘Otherwise Eligible’ students. Those students meet all eligibility requirements, but they have $0 Unfunded awards due to lack of budgeted funds. To report these students to OSFA, a school will first need to add new Query to cover the unfunded records. Then, the school adds and configures a new Data Pipeline for the new data export, using the new query. Regent recommends creating the new Data Pipeline with a copy of the same settings as the current Florida Disbursement Eligibility Report (DER). Note, students must also be packaged prior to export, so Regent can mark affected payment periods with the Florida disbursement code value “C99” (Otherwise Eligible).
Data Factory JSON Configuration
Change Log