Publication Date: November 28, 2005 Author: G. Kay Jacks, General Manager, FSA Application, School Eligibility and Delivery Services Summary: COD School Testing for the 2006-2007 Award Year Posted on 11-28-2005 The COD School Relations Center will conduct school testing for the 2006-2007 Award Year from January 2, 2006 through June 30, 2006. School testing provides schools, third-party servicers, and software vendors an opportunity to test business processes and system software with the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System prior to the transmission and processing of actual production data. It also allows the opportunity to make corrections or enhancements to software applications prior to entering into the "live" production environment. All entities that wish to participate in COD School Testing must submit the "COD School Testing 2006-2007 Sign-Up Sheet" to the COD School Relations Center. Schools, third-party servicers, and software vendors can submit the sign-up document beginning Monday, December 5, 2005. The sign-up document is located in the School Testing Guide, Volume V, Section 1 of the 2006-2007 COD Technical Reference posted on the IFAP Web site at http://ifap.ed.gov/cod/0607CODTechRef.html and is also available on the COD Web site, www.cod.ed.gov, by clicking on the "Today's Update" link. The following Questions and Answers provide useful high-level information about COD School Testing for the 2006-2007 Award Year: Who should participate in COD School Testing for the 2006-2007 Award Year? All schools new to the Direct Loan and/or Pell Grant programs must complete school testing with COD before sending data into production. The only exception to this is new schools using software from software providers or third-party servicers. While other schools are not required to test with COD, all schools, software providers, and third-party servicers may participate in testing. We encourage schools that use a solution developed in house (mainframe system, server, software, or other) to send and receive the Extensible Mark Up Language (XML) Common Record to test with COD. Software providers and third-party servicers may perform their own product testing on behalf of their customers. For example, the Department will test the EDExpress software before releasing it to schools. Schools should contact their software provider or third-party servicer to discuss testing plans/concerns. What are the testing phases? School testing is comprised of two phases-Phase I for Common Record Manual Verification and Phase II for Structured Application Testing. Schools must complete Phase I testing before participating in Phase II testing. Following the completion of Phase I and Phase II testing, schools may participate in Unstructured Testing. Phase I - Common Record Manual Verification The purpose of Common Record Manual Verification testing is to ensure that the school's XML Common Record is well formed and properly structured according to the rules of the 2.0d XML Common Record Schema. The 2.0d XML Common Record Schema is available on the IFAP Web site at http://www.ifap.ed.gov/cod/COD0405CRXMLSchema20d.html/. During this testing phase, the COD team manually reviews a Common Record document that the school e-mails to the COD School Relations Center and assists the school in the identification of potential updates to its Common Record submissions. This testing phase will be available from January 2, 2006 through June 2, 2006. To participate in Phase I testing, a school must sign up by May 5, 2006. Phase II - Structured Application Testing The purpose of Structured Application Testing is to ensure that a school can send, receive, and process batches of records using comprehensive input instructions with detailed expected results issued by COD. The school uses a test Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) file supplied by COD that creates a test data set of students to use with the structured test cases. During this phase, the school sends Common Record documents to the COD System and receives Receipt and Response documents back from the COD System. The school must verify that these files can be loaded and processed correctly in its system. This testing phase will be available from April 3, 2006 through June 30, 2006. To participate in Phase II testing, a school must complete Phase I testing first. The school must sign up for Phase II testing by May 5, 2006. Unstructured Testing The purpose of Unstructured Testing is to allow a school that has completed Phase I and Phase II testing to ensure that it can correctly create and submit all possible transactions needed for the future award year. The school uses the test ISIR file data and submits minor variations to test cases such as adjustments to the person information, award amounts, or disbursement amounts throughout the award year. This optional testing phase will be available starting April 10, 2006. To participate in Unstructured Testing, a school must sign up according to the instructions in the School Testing Guide. This testing phase is scheduled to end on November 30, 2006. How does a school sign up for COD School Testing? A school registers for testing by completing the "COD School Testing 2006-2007 Sign-up Sheet" located in the School Testing Guide, Volume V, Section 1 of the 2006-2007 COD Technical Reference or on the COD Web site by clicking on the "Today's Update" link. Once completed, the sign-up document should be submitted to the COD School Relations Center by faxing it to 877/623-5082 or e-mailing it to CODsupport@acs-inc.com with "School Testing Signup" in the subject line. After the sign-up document is received, the COD School Relations Center will contact the school via e-mail to obtain school-specific information and to schedule specific test dates with the school. Note: Upon receipt of the sign-up document, the COD team must complete a considerable setup process to establish the school in the COD test environment before testing can begin. This process may take several weeks to complete. Please take this setup process into account when planning your testing schedule. Who can a school contact for more information about COD School Testing? For more information, contact the COD School Relations Center at 800/848-0978 or 800/4PGRANT and ask for COD School Testing Support. You can also e-mail CODsupport@acs-inc.com with "COD School Testing Support" in the subject line. |