| PublicationDate: 2/1/2000 Summary: Unveiling a New Home Page for IFAP Author: General Manager: SFA School Channel February 2000 Dear Partners: SFA is pleased to announce the unveiling of a new Home Page for the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website (http://ifap.ed.gov). This slimmer and trimmer Home Page was developed in response to many of your recommendations. We believe it will be easier to navigate the IFAP site through this new page. In addition to making the IFAP Home Page less busy, we have included several features requested by you, our partners. IFAP now presents a "What's New" area from the Home page. This feature currently reflects the same information that is sent to you via the IFAP subscription option, a comprehensive listing of all of the previous weeks' postings to IFAP. We plan to further enhance this area to have it reflect daily updates as well. We have added an "About CSB" area to the IFAP website. We've found that many of our partners aren't aware that the SFA Customer Support Branch (CSB) maintains and manages the IFAP website. We also provide assistance to our partners through a toll-free (1-800-433-7327) telephone number you may call with questions concerning SFA policies and procedures. We have also created a "Customer Feedback" area on IFAP. Our partners may send comments and suggestions related to the IFAP website and/or our services, to the SFA Customer Support Branch. Your comments can be sent to us anonymously. The Customer Support Branch will consider all comments and suggestions as we continue to enhance the services we provide. We are continuing work on some additional enhancements we are planning for the IFAP website. These improvements include an enhanced search engine with more useful "returns" and better on-line help; topical indexing of the publications offered on IFAP; and developing a distinction (for browsing and searching) between current publications and historical publications (older than three years). Ultimately, the information available to you via the IFAP website, will be incorporated into the future web portal for Schools. The web portals, as described by SFA's CIO Stephen Hawald at last fall's EAC conferences, will provide a common look and feel for the SFA web pages. Look for more exciting enhancements as SFA moves forward with our modernization efforts. This new Home Page is a direct result of SFA responding to your suggestions about the IFAP website. We encourage you to continue to let us know how we can improve this service for your benefit. Sincerely, Kay Jacks General Manager, Schools Channel Student Financial Assistance |