Introduction

This Business Process Analysis (BPA) document describes the Student Experience interface provided with Regent Award and outlines the various component options and configurations to facilitate document collection, awarding, and communication processes.

This page defines the following associated with the Student Experience:

• Branding & Layout

• Account Management

• Useful links

• Messaging Center

• Financial Aid

• Required Documents

• Smart Form

• E-Signature

• Specifications for configuration of the following:

  • Data requirements

  • Communication

  • User Roles

  • Documents

  • Tasks

  • Additional Configuration

Process Overview

This section describes the default behavior of Regent Award processes associated with the Student Experience and available components.

Regent Award provides a Student Experience for student self-service capabilities. The Student Experience is accessible to students who have been created in Regent Award via the SBL import. If configured, students may access Student Experience utilizing Single Sign-On (SSO) after logging in to the school’s primary portal. Alternatively, students may be provided a direct link to the Student Experience portal, where they will create a unique username and password.

The Student Experience portal technology is a highly stackable responsive design allowing students to utilize the portal via computer, tablet or mobile device.

The portal is comprised of five components that allows easy navigation throughout.  The components are:

• Dashboard

• Required Documents

• Message Center

• Financial Aid

• Useful Links

Student Experience Configuration

Configuration for the Student Experience Portal is located within Institution Setup in Regent Award.  For a school with multiple Institutions, and only one Student Experience portal site, configuration is only needed at one level of setup.  At the time of implementation, Regent will work with you to determine which Institution will house your Student Experience portal settings.  If a school has multiple sites, Regent will work with them to determine the appropriate Institution setup linkage with each site.

Portal Tab

The configuration is organized using sub-tabs that corresponds to a component of the Student Experience portal.  A user must have access to the "View/Edit Portal Settings" permission to view any of the configurations documented below.  In addition, the tabs described below will be available to schools based on licensing:

Regent Award License

• General

• Account Management

• Useful Links

• Message Center

• Financial Aid

• Documents

Publish Portal Configuration

A permission-based button is located on the portal Tab of Institution set up with the label "Publish Portal Configuration."  A school may make modifications to the various configuration items, but those new settings will not be used by the Student Experience portal until they've been "published" using this button.  Once the configuration items are published, they will be immediately available to the student without the need to re-login to the application.  If a school makes changes to their Institution, Campus and or Site names, the "Publish Portal Configuration" button will also make those new names available to the Student Experience portal.  There is no need to also choose "Reload RNA" from Enterprise Setup when publishing portal Configurations.

General Branding & Layout

The Student Experience portal may be customized to reflect the school’s branding colors.  Schools may provide a logo, a primary color and a secondary color as well as primary and secondary background colors.

 Schools may customize the portal dashboard to include a privacy policy, contact information, and an instructional message to students.

 The portal can further be customized to include communication settings for students and parent when using the Regent Review Verification Worksheet Questionnaire.

Account Management

Schools can configure the login method for which students access the portal either via a Single Sign On (SSO) or non-SSO and provided a direct link by the school.  The portal may further be configured to only allow Active students access.

SSO

Students access the Student Experience portal via a link on school’s primary student site and are redirected to the Student Experience in a new browser window.  Authentication occurs via SSO using SAML 2.0 and uses the Student ID 1 or 2 as configured by the school. At session timeout (15 minutes), the page will be refreshed to return to the school’s Student Experience home page. 

Useful Links

Regent Award provides schools the option to present informational FA or school-specific useful links to students within the Student Experience.  The following are commonly used links and

preconfigured: 

Schools have the option to insert additional links and customize the text to be displayed in the portal.  The links can be displayed in a preferred sequence order. There are no limitations on the number of links that can be configured.

Communications

The Communication component provides the ability to send a message to the student via Regent Award or to the school via the portal as well as display scheduled notifications.  Students will be presented with two tabs to either review notifications such as Missing Information, Award Letters, or the College Financing Plan (CFP) or messages where a student can create a new message (depending on configuration) or review messages received from the Financial Aid Office.  Schools can review and reply to the message in Regent Award using the Communications tab. Schools may also configure the Communication component so that messages can be sent from the school however the message is “Read Only” on the portal.

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Financial Aid

The Financial aid component allows the student to accept and decline awards under certain circumstances depending on configuration.  Schools can configure the use of the Statement of Understanding (SOU) document for loans in an initial status of Offered, as well as display the full Cost of Attendance (COA)  

Financial Aid Main Page

Several elements will appear when the Financial Aid main page is opened. 

• Current Academic Year   

• “Help” icon

• Funds that are within that configured to display via Regent Award

• Call to Action

• Full Cost of Attendance grid

Academic Year dropdown

The Academic Year dropdown is available for students to view previous and future Academic years if they exist on their Academic Plan and are configured.  The dropdown will default to the student's current Academic Year. 

Help icon

On the Financial Aid component title bar, a "Help" icon displays on the far right. When this icon is clicked, a "pop-up" screen appears displaying the following content: 

Call to Action

When the student has actionable awards in an Academic Year other then the default AY displayed on the Financial Aid main page, a message is displayed to the student at the top of the Financial Aid main page, notifying the student of these awards.  The message will provide the Academic Year(s) in which there are actionable awards, as a hyperlink that will refresh the Financial Aid main page to display the selected Academic Year.

Organization of Award Data

There are four categories of aid that display on the Financial Aid component in the following order and according to the schools packaging philosophy:

• Gift Aid:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Grant," "Waiver," or "Scholarship."   

• Work-Study:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Work."

• Loans:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Loan."

• Other:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Other," "Exempt," or "None."

A red badge icon displays next to the category heading representing the number of actionable awards in that category for the displayed academic year.

Awards with the following Award statuses will display only if configured:

• Declined

• Estimated

• Cancelled

Multiple Awards

It's possible that a student may have 2 or more awards of the same Fund type in a given Academic Year.  Each non-loan award will display on a separate tile, as illustrated in the screenshot below.  The awards will also be listed separately in the COA.

Open

For multiple Federal Direct Loans of the same fund type on the same loan period, the Financial Aid component will display a configured message on the expanded award tile.

• The message displays in place of the award actions; no actions will be available.

• Awards in Estimated status or Cancelled status are not considered for this validation.

• These awards do count in the number shown as a “badge” throughout the site.

FAY-based Awards

The Financial Aid component displays only the portion of a FAY-based award that falls within the displayed AY.  In other words, only the award disbursement amounts associated with the payment periods of the FAY-based award that fall within the Academic Year the student is viewing, will be displayed to the student.  No actions are available for these awards if any portion of the award falls outside of the displayed AY. For example, a FAY based fund could have disbursements across two different AYs.

Understanding the Collapsed Award Tile

When the Financial Aid component loads, the student will see a series of "collapsed" Award "tiles" that display a preview of information about the award.  Each Award displays as a separate tile with the following information:

1. Award Name

2. "Amount Available" 

   1. If the award has been Accepted, this is labeled as the "Current Amount."  If the award is in an Offered status, this is labeled as the "Offered Amount."

   2. The amount available is:

      1. The lessor of either the offered or eligible amount of the award or  

      2. If the award is manual, and the override eligibility flag is true, it is the offered amount of the award.

      3. If a student has a $3500 award, but has accepted only $3000, the Award tile will show Current Amount $3000, since $3000 was accepted, but it will also show the additional text message on the Award Tile stating 'You can accept an additional $500.00.' 

   3. The available amount is used for:

      1. Determining whether the student has accepted the full amount of their eligible Subsidized loan before allowing the student to accept any portion of any Unsubsidized loans they might have.

      2. Determining whether or not to present the student with the message "You can accept an additional $..." award tile.

      3. Determining the amounts that we show/allow the student to accept on award tile.

3. Award Status

   1. Awards in an Accepted status display the status in Green

   2. Award in Offered status display the status in Red

4. A ‘Review or Update’ link displays for actionable awards in order to drill into more detail

5. A “View Details’ link displays for non-actionable awards in order to drill into more detail

Awards in an Accepted status with an additional amount being offered will also display a message on the collapsed tile to alert the student that they still have remaining eligibility.

Once the student has accepted or declined an award, the collapsed award tile will appear as Grey while Regent Award repackages the student.

Understanding the Expanded Award Tile

Upon clicking on the 'Review or Update' or the 'View Details' link on the collapsed award tile, the student will see additional award details including:

• The Fund Description, if configured in Regent Award Fund Setup

• The amount of award available, in both the Gross and Net amounts

• “Current Amount” if the award has been Accepted

• “Offered Amount” if the award is in an Offered status

• The Direct Cost Widget if configured to display

• Payment Period details and disbursement amounts

• For term-based programs, the term name will appear as either the Term Name from Regent Award Term Setup, or the Term Start and End Dates, depending on the configuration.  Nonterm programs will always display the payment period start and end dates in the grid

• The Net Amount of the disbursement will display for each term/payment period

Award Actions

When the award tile is expanded, the student will be able to see the actions available for that award, if the award is configured to require Active Acceptance.[DH3] [JD4]  If the award is in an Offered Status, or if the Award is in an Accepted status and there is an additional Offered Amount available to the student, the following actions displays for the award. (The exact amount the student will be accepting displays next to each action, in parenthesis):

1. Accept the Full Gross Amount Available ($####.##)

2. Decline the Full Gross Amount Available ($0.00) 

   1. The "Decline" option will not display if the award status is "Accepted" and any portion of the award is Paid. In this case, the student can only increase the award amount accepted.

3. Accept the Gross Amount Available up to the Amount of my remaining Direct Costs ($####.##)

   1. This action displays only if configured

   2. This option is available only for Subsidized Loans, Unsubsidized Loans, Parent PLUS Loans, and Grad PLUS Loans.

4. Accept a Specific Gross Amount

   1. This option has a text box where the gross amount can be entered.

   2. The field is "read-only" unless "Accept a Specific Gross Amount" is chosen, at which point the box becomes active and allows for a value to be entered.

   3. A default value of the full amount available is auto-populated in this box but the Student can edit it.

   4. This field validates that a currency value has been entered, not greater than the Gross Amount Available for the award.

   5. This field validates that, if the fund is a Federal Direct Loan, a value of at least $1 per term in the Academic Year must be entered. If the AY is a 2-PP AY, then the minimum value entered must be $2. If the AY is a 3-term AY, then the minimum value entered must be $3.

   6. This field validates that the user enters a whole dollar amount, with no cents, if the Fund Setup Rounding Option is set to "Dollar" or to "None."

   7. This field validates that the user can enter a dollar amount including cents if the Fund Setup Rounding Option is set to "Cents."

Once the student has selected an action the award and saves the changes, Regent Award begins repackaging the student, taking the chosen action into consideration.  While this occurs, the student is presented with the following message: "Your Financial Aid changes are currently being processed and should be available shortly." 

Note, the "Save Changes" button displays only if actions are available, along with the message "Changes made to the amount you accept may result in the recalculation of the Current Amount and Offered Amount for other awards when the "Save Changes" button is clicked."

Additional Action Details

There may be times when a student is unable to accept or decline awards due to a blocking document or task, or possibly having failed SAP in Regent Award.  If this occurs, the student will be presented with a message:  "Your Financial Aid is unable to be processed at this time, please check back later or contact your [Office Name] at [Financial Aid Email Address] or [Financial Aid Phone Number]."  The [Office Name], [Office Email] and [Office Phone] fields display based on the text configured on the Portal setup, General subtab.  

Below are some other key nuances of when to expect award actions to be available under certain circumstances:

• If the award is in an Accepted status, and there is no additional Offered Amount available, and no portion of the award has been Paid, the following actions display for the award (the same validation described above applies):

  • Decline the Full Gross Amount Available

  • Accept the Gross Amount Available up to the Amount of my remaining Direct Costs (if configured)                                                   

  • Accept a Specific Gross Amount

• Parent Plus awards in an Accepted status will have actions available only if configured.

• Parent Plus awards in an Offered status will have actions available only if configured.

• If a student has multiple awards of the same type on the same loan period, a message will display on the expanded award tile, for Federal Direct Loans only, in place of the award actions: “Contact your [configured FA Office Name] at [configured FA phone] or [configured FA email] to obtain assistance with accepting this award."  These awards will still count in the number shown as a “badge” icon throughout the site in order to direct the student’s attention to them, that some action is needed.

Actions Not Allowed

No actions are available to awards under the following circumstances:

• If the award is set to Passive Acceptance (the "Initial Status" of the fund is configured as Accepted on Regent Award Fund Setup). No action available to awards. 

• If the Loan Period End date is in the past (less than today's date) No action available to awards.

• If the Award has disbursements were modified by an R2T4 (either via a Refund or PWD) No action available to awards.

• If the award contains a non-zero or non-cancelled disbursement that crosses into an AY other then the one being displayed. No action available to awards. For example, a FAY based fund could have disbursements across two different AYs.

Accept Full Subsidized Loan, before accepting Unsubsidized Loan

When a student has been offered both Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans in a given AY, the Department of Education requires that the student must first accept the full amount of the Subsidized Loan before accepting any portion of the Unsubsidized Loan

The Financial Aid component was designed to ensure that the student must always accept the full amount of Subsidized Loan being offered, prior to accepting any Unsubsidized Loan.

If there is Offered Subsidized Loan and Offered Unsubsidized Loan in the same Academic Year, then only the "Declined" option is available for the Unsubsidized Loan and the following message is shown: You must accept your full Subsidized Loan eligibility prior to accepting an Unsubsidized Loan.

Generally, the student’s remaining eligibility for the Subsidized Loan should be calculated as:

• The lessor of either the offered or eligible amount of the award or

• If the award is manual, and the override eligibility flag is true, it is the offered amount of the award.

• If the remaining unaccepted eligibility for the total of the Subsidized Loans in the Academic Year is greater than zero, then the Unsubsidized Loans in the Academic Year cannot be accepted. The only action available for these Unsubsidized Loans will be “Decline.” The student can Decline the Unsubsidized Loan and select “Save changes.”

Once the Subsidized Loan for the Academic Year is fully accepted (Remaining Eligibility = 0), all actions for the Unsubsidized Loan for the Academic Year display.

Once the student has accepted any portion of any of the Unsubsidized Loans for the displayed AY, they cannot reduce any Subsidized loans for the displayed AY, unless the Unsubsidized Loans are first reduced to zero.

The student may always Decline the full amount of the Unsubsidized loan prior to accepting any of the Subsidized loan.

Multiple Loans

When multiple Subsidized Loans and/or multiple Unsubsidized Loans are offered to the student, the system will ensure that only loans within a given Academic Year are considered together.  For example, within the Academic Year, there may be Loans offered on loan periods that do not span all payment periods within the Academic Year. 

The student may have multiple Subsidized and or Unsubsidized Loans in the Academic Year due to, for example, a mid-year grade level increase resulting in additional eligibility awarded via single term loans. All Subsidized Loans must be accepted prior to any Unsubsidized Loans.

If the student has 1 Subsidized and 1 Unsubsidized, both fully accepted; and later another Subsidized and Unsubsidized are added to the AY, the newly added Unsubsidized loan can only be “Declined.” The student must fully accept the newly added Subsidized loan before they can accept the newly added Unsubsidized loan.

If the student has 1 Subsidized and 1 Unsubsidized loan; Subsidized is fully accepted and Unsubsidized is partially accepted; later an additional Subsidized loan is added to the AY. The Unsubsidized loan must once again have only the "Decline" action available, then the student must fully accept the additional Subsidized loan before they can accept any more of the existing Unsubsidized loan. In other words, the additional Subsidized loan would have to be fully accepted before all the actions would become available, again, for the Unsubsidized.

Statement of Understanding

The Financial Aid component provides an optional means of informing the student about how much loan money they need to fund their education.  A Statement of Understanding (SOU) which provides information that the loans must be paid back and are the student's responsibility is available and is configurable and customized to present to students prior to allowing students to accept awards.  In addition, the following must be configured to support the SOU:

• Fund setup

• Document setup

• Portal setup

When the student clicks “Read Statement of understanding”, the full configured SOU text is displayed. 

Payment Details 

From the expanded award tile, when the student clicks on a Term/Payment Period name/dates, or the net amount for the Payment Period, the Payment Details screen will appear displaying the following information:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

• Configurable "Help" Text

• Term/Payment Period Start and End Date or Term Name, based on configuration 

• Payment Status (e.g., Scheduled, Paid)

• Paid Date or Scheduled Date

  • This label is dynamic based on the status of the disbursement. If the disbursement is not paid, the label displays as "Scheduled Date." If the disbursement is paid, the label displays as "Paid Date." If the disbursement is canceled or declined, no date is shown.

• Net Amount of the disbursement

 Student view on a desktop:

  Student view using mobile device:

Direct Costs Summary

Along with the expanded award tile is a summary of the student's direct costs, to aid them in making decisions about how much of the award to accept.  An info icon explains "These are the Academic Year (AY) Direct Costs for the current AY being displayed. Direct Costs are expenses like tuition and fees that are typically billed by the institution.”  If the Direct Costs Summary is configured to display, it is shown for all award types, and shows the students Total Costs and Remaining Direct Costs (labeled "Remaining Costs" to conserve space):

• The Total Direct Costs is the amount of all COA items for the AY configured as Direct Costs in Regent Award.

  The Total Remaining Direct Costs is the total of all costs configured as Direct Costs for the AY minus all resources and the gross amounts of awards in Accepted status for the AY.

When the student chooses an award action, the Remaining Costs balance automatically adjusts in the summary to show the student the effect that award action will have on the Remaining Costs, prior to the student saving the award action. For example:

• If the student chooses to Accept the Full Gross Amount Available, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by this amount.

• If the student chooses to Decline the Full Gross Amount Available, the Remaining Costs number will remain unchanged.

• If the student chooses to Accept the Gross Amount Available up to the Amount of my Remaining Direct Costs, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by this amount.

• If the student chooses to Accept a Specific Gross Amount, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by the amount entered.

• If the student increases the Amount of an Accepted Award, the Total Remaining Direct Costs will decrease by the net amount of the increase.

• If the student decreases or declines a previously Accepted Award, the Total Remaining Direct Costs will increase by the net amount of the decrease/cancellation.

When the "Remaining Cost" amount becomes a negative number, the Direct Cost Summary will display $0.00. 

Cost of Attendance

Unlike the Direct Cost Summary that displays directly on the expanded award tile, the "Costs" are not dynamically updated as the student selects various Accepted Amounts on the award tile, but instead will update the COA grid once the Award acceptance is complete and saved.

Each time the student Accepts an award or increases the amount of a previously Accepted Award:

• The Total Remaining Direct Costs decrease by the NET amount of the new award/increase.

• The Total Accepted Funds update.

• The NET increase to the Accepted Fund amount is reflected in a corresponding decrease to the Remaining Direct Costs amount.

• The GROSS increase to the Accepted Fund amount is reflected in a corresponding decrease to the Remaining Total Costs amount.

Each time the student decreases or declines a previously Accepted Award,

• The Total Remaining Direct Costs will increase by the NET amount of the decrease/cancellation.

• The Total Accepted Funds will update.

• The NET decrease to the Accepted Fund amount is reflected in a corresponding increase to the Remaining Direct Costs amount.

• The GROSS decrease to the Accepted Fund amount is reflected in a corresponding increase to the Remaining Total Costs amount.

• Negative numbers are displayed with parenthesis around the number.

The COA grid displays the following information to the student:

Required Documents

The Student Experience portal provides students with access to all documents added to the student’s record in Regent Award, except for “Office Use Only” documents.  Students can view document requirements (i.e. needed, received, satisfied), download and upload documents to complete requirements. When using Regent Review, students can also complete the Verification Worksheet Questionnaire.  

 The portal can be configured to allow students to upload multiple attachments to a document according to the document requirement. Note: Proof of Identify is unable to be uploaded in the portal due to regulatory constraints.

 In addition, schools have the flexibility to configure instructional text in the portal and define how the documents are displayed to the student.

 See the Document Management BPA for more information on Regent Award document management capabilities and configuration.

Smart Forms

Verification Worksheet Smart Forms

Schools licensed for Regent Review have the flexibility to display instructional messages and allow students to make personal information updates in the Verification Worksheet Questionnaire.  Refer to the ISIR Management BPA for additional details on the Verification Worksheet Smart Forms.

Schools may also choose to display the ISIR Dependency Reject Status when the ISIR dependency status equals X or Y.  When schools set this to “Yes”, the Verification Worksheet Questionnaire will pre-populate using the ISIR data and prevent the student from accessing the questionnaire.

Title IV Authorization and FERPA Smart Forms

Regent Award provides two Smart Forms incorporated in the Student Portal. 

The Title IV Authorizations form collects required authorizations from students via an interactive Smart Form available in the Student Experience portal. All Smart Form responses are surfaced within Regent Award under the Student Portal Authorizations section in the Student Details tab.

The FERPA Authorizations form allows students to provide authorization to release information via an interactive Smart Form available in the Student Experience portal for those Parents/Spouse/References that are provided via SBL, entered manually in Regent Award, or included on the ISIR in the Student Details tab. All FERPA Authorization Smart Form responses are surfaced within Regent Award under the Student Details tab.

E-Signature

Regent Award provides an electronic signature configuration for documents that are Smart Forms and non- Smart Forms. 

E-Signature Smart Forms

Schools licensed for Regent Review may configure student and parent E-signature confirmation options. Schools must choose a minimum of three fields to verify the student’s or parent’s identity. 

1. First Name

2. Last Name

3. Student ID

4. Password

E-Signature Non- Smart Forms

When utilizing this feature the document must be configured on both the Document Setup and Student Portal.  Schools can choose to only allow E-signature for student or both the student and parent. Like Smart Forms the student will be presented with the option to E-sign.

Configuration

Configuration Template

Data Requirements

There is no data integration required for the Student Experience.

Communications Template

There are no new Communications related to the Student Experience.

Users & Roles Template

Refer to the school’s Users & Roles_Setup Template for specific configurations related to Student Experience permissions.

Documents Template

There are no new Documents related to the Student Experience.

Tasks Template

There are no Tasks related to the Student Experience.

Additional Configuration

Student Experience Template

Refer to the school’s StudentExperience_Setup Template for specific configurations related to Student Experience.