| PublicationDate: 8/2/99 Summary: Update on the Recipient and Financial Management System Author: PSS - Program Systems Service To: All Destination Points From: Tom Pestka, Acting Director Program Systems Service, Office of Student Financial Assistance Subject: Update on the Recipient and Financial Management System (RFMS) This message -- Announces that RFMS can receive Special Disbursements Alerts you to a problem with importing Pell acknowledgement records RFMS BEGINS PROCESSING SPECIAL DISBURSEMENTS We are very pleased to announce that beginning today, July 30, 1999, RFMS will begin processing Special Disbursement records. After completing rigorous testing, the system is ready to pass into production and receive your Special Disbursement records. We look forward to seeing another portion of the system in production. PROBLEMS WITH IMPORTING PELL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has come to our attention that some schools are having difficulties in importing Pell acknowledgement records. A portion of the functionality of the new RFMS system, the ability to process multiple batches in a single transmission, is not working properly and not all of the records are being successfully recognized and imported by schools. We ask that as we work to resolve this issue that schools only send a single batch of records per day. Until this issue is resolved, please submit a single batch in a single transmission, and a single transmission per day. Please do not send multiple batches in a day. We are implementing a fix for this problem with a slight modification to the RFMS. This should not affect your processing of Pell records. To ensure that the fix does not impact institutions, we will be conducting a beta test with several schools, including schools using EDExpress, mainframe, and third party software. This beta test will confirm that our fix is working properly and that no new problems have arisen from the change. After the completion of the beta test, we will put the change into production and will lift all restrictions on the submission of records. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and assure you that we are working as quickly as we can to resolve this situation. In the interim, we ask that any institution that has experienced problems in importing acknowledgements, or has not received acknowledgements after submitting Origination or Disbursement records, contact their customer service representative for assistance in resolving this issue. Pell Customer Service can be reached at 1-800/474-7268 (select option 2) or send an e-mail to #Pell_Systems@ed.gov. We thank you for your understanding and patience. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEND YOU WEEKLY STATUS REPORTS 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 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. |