| PublicationDate: 5/19/99 Summary: Recipient and Financial Management System (RFMS) Update and the Office of Student Financial Assistance Programs new e-mail listserv for technical questions, SFATECH Author: PSS - Program Systems Service Posted 05/19/99 To: All Destination Points From: Jerry Russomano, Director Program Systems Service, Office of Student Financial Assistance Subject: Recipient and Financial Management System (RFMS) Update and the Office of Student Financial Assistance Programs new e-mail listserv for technical questions, SFATECH This message -Updates you on the status of RFMS -Explains the new SFATECH - What it is. - How it works. - How to sign up. - What this means for ED on FINAID-L and FINNET-L RFMS UPDATE Interface and Acceptance testing is progressing and is nearing completion. As we continue testing and discovering problems, the remainder of the testing schedule becomes even more aggressive. However, this will not affect your initial authorization.On May 26, we will send your 1999-2000 Electronic Statement of Account (ESOA). You may begin drawing these funds from the Grant Administration and Payment System (GAPS) beginning July 1, 1999. This week we will: -Run end to end tests Next week we will: -conduct beta tests with six schools -validate the systems Y2K compliance The development of the new Recipient and Financial Management System is a vital step in our effort to improve our services for the Federal Pell Grant Program. We thank you for your continued patience. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEND YOU WEEKLY STATUS REPORTS Beginning today, we will publish weekly status reports on the RFMS start up. Look for them in- - Title IV Wide Area Network (TIVWAN) - The Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website located at http://www.ifap.ed.gov, and - Listserves: - FINAID-L - FINNET-L - MEDAID-L - BURSAR-L SFATECH What is SFATECH?: In order to provide better customer service for our SFA systems and software, we are pleased to announce the availability of SFATECH. SFATECH is an on-line e-mail listserv for your technical questions about SFA systems and software. Initially, SFATECH will be used to facilitate implementation of RFMS. From May 17th, 1999 to June 18th, 1999 please use SFATECH for RFMS questions only. After June 18th, SFATECH will be open to technical questions about all Department SFA systems and software. How does SFATECH work? After you have subscribed, if you have a technical question about RFMS, write it up in an e-mail and post it to the list serve. Department staff or the Department's contractors will see your posting and begin working on a response Answers will be posted to the list so that everyone can benefit from the answers. Of course, some inquires will take longer to answer than others. If your inquiry will take more than a day to resolve, we will contact you directly to acknowledge receipt of your inquiry. All services provided by this list serve are paid for by the U.S. Department of Education. You will not be charged for any inquires posted to SFATECH, even if a contractor has to call you to resolve your issue. Remember that this list serve is for technical issues only. Non-technical questions will be forwarded to the Customer Support Branch at csb@ed.gov for response. Answers to non-technical questions will not be posted to the list. Note: In the interest of providing you with timely responses, the Department's contractors have been authorized to respond to technical questions without having their responses cleared by the Department. Here's how to sign up: You subscribe to SFATECH by sending a message from your e-mail account. Address the e-mail to: listproc@inet.ed.gov Leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message, put: subscribe SFATECH yourfirstname yourlastname For example, if your name was Pat Smith, you would send a message as follows: TO : listproc@inet.ed.gov SUBJECT : subscribe SFATECH Pat Smith And that's it. Here's what this means for ED and FINAID-L and FINNET-L: Now that SFATECH is available, we will no longer respond to RFMS technical inquiries posted to FINAID-L or FINNET-L. On June 18th, when we open SFATECH up to technical questions about all Department SFA systems and software, we will not respond to any technical questions on FINAID-L or FINNET-L. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS - If you have questions, comments, or concerns about RFMS, please call Pell Customer Service at 1-800/474-7268 (select option 2) or send an e-mail to #Pell_Systems@ed.gov. - If you have questions about the 1999-2000 EDExpress Pell software, contact the Central Processing System customer service staff at 1-800/330-5947 or send an e-mail to CPS@NCS.COM. - If you have questions about RFMS message classes or problems connecting to the network, contact the TIVWAN customer service staff at 1-800/615-1189 or send an e-mail to T4WAN@NCS.COM. Reminder: Your TIVWAN EDConnect Desk Reference contains all the information you need about getting help by telephone or on the Internet. |