Summary: Impact on COD Processing February 18-19, 2007

Publication Date: February 8, 2007

Author: G. Kay Jacks, General Manager, Application, Operations and Delivery Services, Federal Student Aid

Summary: Impact on COD Processing February 18-19, 2007

Posted on 02-08-2007

We are planning to execute an extended Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System maintenance activity on February 18, 2007. This activity will result in outages of certain COD System functionality for an extended period of time. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we complete this important activity. In addition, funding requests will not be processed on February 19, 2007, the Washington’s Birthday Federal holiday.

Below we explain how this activity and the holiday will impact COD System availability and processing. Please review this information to determine if processing at your school will be affected.

COD System Maintenance

On Sunday, February 18, 2007, we will perform extended system maintenance on the COD System. In addition, the Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) will be unavailable from 3:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. (ET) on February 18 th due to its regular Sunday morning maintenance.

For Grant and Direct Loan Participants—

• The COD Web site will be unavailable for users to submit or retrieve data from 2:00 A.M. until 2:00 P.M. (ET).
• Batches submitted by schools via the SAIG between 2:00 A.M. and 3:00 A.M. (ET) will be held and not acknowledged back to schools until after the COD System comes back up at 2:00 P.M. (ET).
• Schools attempting to transmit batches via the SAIG between 3:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M. (ET) will receive an error message informing them that the SAIG is unavailable and that the data must be transmitted at a later time.
• Batches submitted by schools via the SAIG between 11:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. (ET) will be held and not acknowledged back to schools until after the COD System comes back up at 2:00 P.M. (ET).

For Direct Loan Participants—

• The Direct Loan Electronic Master Promissory Note (MPN) Web site will be unavailable for an extended period of time from 2:00 A.M. until 2:00 P.M. (ET). Borrowers will not be able to complete or retrieve MPNs during this extended period.
• As a reminder, the Direct Loan Electronic MPN Web site is unavailable every Sunday morning from 5:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. (ET) while routine maintenance is performed. During this period, borrowers are not able to complete new MPNs electronically or retrieve existing MPNs that were completed electronically.

Washington’s Birthday Federal Holiday

Monday, February 19, 2007 is the Washington’s Birthday Federal holiday.

For Grant and Direct Loan Participants—

• The COD School Relations Center will be open from 8:00 A.M. until 8:00 P.M. (ET).
• The COD System will accept and process data from schools and send back responses/acknowledgements, but schools will not be able to receive any Federal funds on that day. Requests for changes in funding levels and for funds will not be processed until Tuesday, February 20th.

Complete information regarding processing and customer service hours for COD and other Federal Student Aid/Department of Education call centers on the holiday is posted in the "Washington's Birthday Federal Holiday Processing and Customer Service Hours" Electronic Announcement.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about this announcement, contact the COD School Relations Center at 800/4PGRANT for ACG, National SMART Grant, and Pell Grant (800/474-7268) or 800/848-0978 for Direct Loan. You may also e-mail CODSupport@acs-inc.com.