Summary: Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002

Publication Date: April 2002

Author: General Manager: FSA School Channel

Summary: Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002

 

Posted on: April 25, 2002

TO: All Destination Points

FROM: U.S. Department of Education

RE: Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002

The Common Origination and Disbursement system (COD) is the new financial aid delivery system for Pell Grants and Direct Loans. COD replaces the Recipient Financial Management System (RFMS) and the Direct Loan Origination System (DLOS) beginning in Award Year 2002-2003. This message contains important information on accessing the COD system. This message also provides a schedule of releases for the COD system in Award Year 2002-2003, and an overview of features available within each release.

I. Accessing the COD System

On April 29, 2002 the COD system and website will be operational. All schools will be able to access Award Year 2002-2003 Pell Grant and Direct Loan information on the COD website at http://cod.ed.gov. Access to the website will be managed by Security Administrators, who are established by each school. These administrators are responsible for creating user profiles (including user IDs, passwords, and security access levels for the COD website) for their schools. More information and specific instructions about establishing Administrators can be found in the February 27, 2002 IFAP announcement "Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) User ID Setup for Website." Administrators will receive additional information to establish user accounts.

There is also a new COD Customer Service center available beginning April 29, 2002 to address your calls - use the current customer service phone numbers to reach these staff members - 1(800) 4PGRANT for Pell Grants and 1(800) 848-0978 for Direct Loans. Staff is available Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm Eastern Time. You will be prompted to enter the Award Year that pertains to your question and your School ID. All Award Year 2002-2003 questions will be handled by the new COD Customer Service Center. Questions for prior years will be routed to the existing Pell and Loan Origination Centers.

COD will be processing continuously during the day. To ensure that your records process by the next morning, you will need to have your overnight batch files in the COD mailbox by 8:30pm Eastern Time. Full Participants[1] must use the COD message classes, while Phase-In Participants[2] should continue using the Pell and Direct Loan message classes.

COD will be made available through a series of system releases. The next section describes the key features available on the COD system beginning in Award Year 2002-2003.

II. Description of COD Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002

The COD system will perform the following processing functions in Release 1.0:

• Receive, edit and process Common Records for Full Participants, and origination, change and disbursement records for Phase-In Participants. Note: COD Release 1.0 will accept Direct Loan subsidized and unsubsidized records, and Pell origination and edit-only records only
• Send receipt and response records to Full Participants, and acknowledgements to Phase-In Participants
• Generate pending Promissory Note acknowledgements (responses) for Direct Loan subsidized and unsubsidized loans
  Note: For the 2002-2003 award year, Promissory Note Manifests and the corresponding MPNs and PLUS Promissory Notes should be mailed to the Loan Origination Center (LOC) at P.O. Box 5692, Montgomery, AL 36103-5692 as in past award years. However, the electronic acknowledgement file (DIPA03OP) sent in response will be received from the COD system. The status of MPNs and PLUS Promissory Notes can be found on http://lo-online.ed.gov (the LOC's website).
• Generate Direct Loan disclosure statements
• Calculate Current Finding Level (CFL) increases and decreases for Direct Loan records

  Note: CFL will not be available for Pell Grant records until early June 2002

• Print and mail Promissory Notes for Direct Loan subsidized and unsubsidized loans
• Allow users to access and update information on the COD website (described below)

Some areas of the COD application will function differently in Release 1.0 than they will in future releases. These areas include: COD website security, reports, Pell Grant information on the web and credit checks for PLUS loans. Each area is described in more detail below.

COD Website Security

COD will ultimately support five (5) levels of security for schools and five (5) levels for third party organizations. In Release 1.0, two (2) security levels will be available for schools and third party organizations - the School Administrator and the School User 2 levels.

Users that are assigned as School User 2 will be able to perform the following functions on the COD website:

• Search for a user, batch of records, student, award, credit check, school, Promissory Note or rejected record
• View details about users, batches, students, awards, disbursements, Promissory Notes and rejected records
• View and update your own user profile

In addition to the School User 2 capabilities, School Administrator(s) will be able to perform the following additional functions:

• Establish users as School User 2 within his/her institution for the COD website
• Change information on students and awards
• Request credit checks via link to LO Online
• View reconciliation and drawdown information
• Maintain school processing options on the website(reference the "School Processing Options" section of the Implementation Guide in the COD Technical Reference for more information and specific instructions):

COD Release 1.0 Website Features

Full Participants		Phase-In Participants
COD Website Features in Release 1.0	School Administrator	School User 2	School Administrator	School User 2
Search for a user, batch of records, student, award, credit check, school, Promissory Note or rejected record	X	X	X	X
View details about users, batches, students, awards, disbursements, Promissory Notes and rejected records	X	X	X	X
View and update own profile	X	X	X	X
Establish users with School User 2 privileges to access COD website	X	X
Change information on students and awards	X	X
Request credit checks (via link to LO Online)	X	X
View reconciliation and drawdown information	X	X
Maintain school processing options on COD website	X	X
Correct rejected records	X
Release records	X
Request Ad Hoc reports from COD Customer Service	X	X	X	X

Reports

In Release 1.0 of COD, there are nine (9) reports available to schools. The following six (6) reports will be automatically sent to schools through their SAIG mailbox:

Direct Loan Reports

• Pending Disbursement List
• Funded Disbursement List
• Duplicate Student Borrower Report
• 30 Day Warning Report
• Inactive Loans Report

Direct Loan and Pell Reports

• SSN/ Name/ DOB Change Report

These reports are also available by request - schools can contact the COD Customer Service center to have these reports sent to them. These requests will provide an identical version of the report(s) already sent - these report(s) will not be re-run.

Three (3) other reports will be available to schools only by directly contacting the COD Customer Service center. These requests will be processed in batch and delivered to schools in the next day's processing cycle:

Pell Reports

• ESOA - for origination data only
• MRR - for origination data only
• Reconciliation File

These three reports will not be available on the COD website during Release 1.0. The report formats will not change from previous years. Schools may also contact the COD Customer Service center to request ad hoc reports.

Pell Grant Information on the Web

Currently, schools can access detailed information on the homepage of the Pell Grant website at http://www.pellgrantsonline.ed.gov without entering a User ID or Password. This information includes accounting balances, disbursement summaries, batch status and institution information. For COD Release 1.0, this data will not be available on the homepage of the COD website. Users must log onto the COD website in order to access Award Year 2002-2003 Pell Grant information.

Credit Checks for PLUS Loans

In Release 1.0, credit checks will continue to be processed through LO-Online. There are two ways to request credit checks for PLUS loans:

Option 1

1. From the COD website, select 'Person' in the main banner bar.
2. Click on the 'Credit Check Search' link on the left navigation bar. This link will direct you to the LO-Online website.
3. Follow instructions on LO-Online to request a credit check.

OR

Option 2

1. Access LO-Online directly through the URL http://lo-online.ed.gov.
2. Follow instructions on the website to request a credit check.

III. Description of COD Release 1.1 - early June 2002

The COD system will be enhanced for Release 1.1 in early June 2002 to include the following functions:

• Process requests for credit checks on the COD website
• Process PLUS loans
• Generate pending Promissory Note responses (acknowledgements) for PLUS loans
• Process Actual and Pending Disbursement records for Pell Grants
• Process Potential Overaward Process (POP) situations for Pell Grants

In addition to the above features, a few areas will function differently in Release 1.1. These areas include: COD website security and reports. Each area is described in more detail below.

COD Website Security

The COD system will support five (5) levels of school users and five (5) levels of third party users beginning in Release 1.1. You will receive more information soon about the privileges of each level, and how the School Administrator and Third Party Administrator can establish user levels on the COD website.

Reports

The six (6) reports that were available to schools through their SAIG mailboxes in Release 1.0 can be accessed directly through the COD website in Release 1.1. The website will be enhanced to allow users to view and print these reports.

Additional reports are scheduled for Release 1.1. A list of these reports will be available shortly.

IV. Description of COD Release 1.2 - Mid July 2002

Beginning in Release 1.2, Campus-Based program data will be accepted for reporting purposes. Pell Grant schools will be able to access detailed Pell Grant information on the COD website homepage without entering a User ID or Password. The COD website will also include comprehensive help text and a single view of school summary statistics. COD will also begin reporting Award Year 2002-2003 Pell Grant data to NSLDS.

You will receive more details about these releases, including implementation dates, in the near future.

V. COD Customer Service Support

We recommend you subscribe to SFATECH for answers to many of the questions you may have regarding COD and encourage you to use this resource before calling the COD Customer Service Call Center. Additionally, before submitting the question to the e-mail listserv please review the SFATECH e-mail messages you have received or the FAQ's link on the SFA Technical Support website.

To subscribe follow these steps:

1. Visit the SFA Technical Support website at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/sfatech/.
2. Click on the word SFATECH.
3. Click on the link Subscribe to display instructions for how to subscribe to the e-mail listserv.

Note: If you do not want to receive a lot of separate e-mail messages from SFATECH, you can use the daily digest feature, which allows you to receive all of the previous day's messages in a single e-mail. To activate this feature after subscribing to SFATECH, click on the link Receive messages in a daily digest.

Although we encourage you to utilize the SFATECH e-mail listserv, you can also contact the COD Customer Service Center at 1(800) 4PGRANT for Pell Grants and 1(800) 848-0978 for Direct Loans. Staff is available Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm Eastern Time.