(GENERAL-22-61) NSLDS Professional Access – Additional Information About the Modernized Website #6 (Updated Aug. 31, 2022)

Author
Federal Student Aid
Electronic Announcement ID
GENERAL-22-61
Subject
NSLDS Professional Access – Additional Information About the Modernized Website #6 (Updated Aug. 31, 2022)

Note

We published an announcement on Aug. 31, 2022, that provides documentation of NSLDS enrollment reporting and postscreening delays for audit purposes.

We have provided additional information for users of the modernized National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS®) Professional Access website since it became available for Federal Student Aid’s (FSA’s) professional partners on July 25, 2022. The initiative has been referred to as a modernization of the NSLDS Professional Access website; however, it was in fact a complete transition and overhaul of underlying system platform and architecture as well as the implementation of a brand new contact center to support daily operations and customer service. We continue to thank the financial aid community for bearing with us and our new contact center during the past weeks and over the next weeks as we continue to validate and fine tune this enormous and important undertaking.

Note: All customer service tickets under the former contact center that were in an Open status when we transitioned were re-opened in the new system and acknowledged to customers. Please inform the NSLDS Customer Support Center of any outstanding tickets that have not yet been acknowledged.

In this announcement, we provide further updated information about NSLDS enrollment functionality, NSLDS postscreening, issues identified since launch, and resources.

For more information, please refer to the sections below.

Updated Information for NSLDS Enrollment Functionality

We continue to finalize enrollment functionality in the modernized NSLDS Professional Access and would like to update several key pieces of information for users:

Catching Up

  • We continue to make significant progress catching up with the processing of batch enrollment files. If a school is still waiting to receive acknowledgement of a batch enrollment file, contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center so we can research the situation.

  • We have identified an issue with enrollment processing that is causing a student’s program to appear in duplicate and the certification of that student’s enrollment to be disallowed. We are fully researching this issue and will share more information as soon as possible.

  • As previously reported, after we disseminated outstanding July and August Rosters we discovered an inadvertent error related to the Rosters we sent to enrollment providers who manage different OPE IDs. We have now corrected the issue to prevent it from happening going forward. In addition, we have been recreating and resending corrected versions of the July and August Rosters in response to enrollment provider requests. If an enrollment provider wants to receive corrected versions of affected Rosters, contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center so we can make that happen.

    Note: In most cases, the Enrollment Roster Header includes a school’s OPE ID in the File Content ID (an optional field); however, the Rosters we sent included “SERVICER” instead of the school’s OPE ID. There has been no change to the Roster layout, and it is okay for affected enrollment providers to send OPE ID in Headers and Trailers despite the inadvertent error.

  • All Enrollment Spreadsheet Submittals made from July 20 through Aug. 8 have been canceled and show as “Failed” on the NSLDS Professional Access website. We emailed affected schools about the canceled spreadsheets on Aug. 11. As a reminder, an affected school must re-upload the spreadsheet for processing and can do so now.

Going Forward

  • Schools can now submit batch enrollment files, upload Enrollment Spreadsheet Submittals, and perform online enrollment reporting updates via Enrollment Maintenance on the NSLDS Professional Access website. Please continue to inform us if you experience any issues.

  • We are continuing our suspension of all NSLDS enrollment reporting compliance notifications, including Late Roster notifications. We will notify the community when we are ready to resume the notifications.

Alert

Please disregard any messaging that previously appeared on the NSLDS Professional Access website warning that a school is delinquent or otherwise non-compliant with enrollment reporting requirements. Some online messaging was released inadvertently and has now been removed from the website.

Reports and Guide

  • NSLDS enrollment reports targeted to be available on July 25, as described in the July 22, 2022 Electronic Announcement, are available on the NSLDS Professional Access website.

  • We will notify the community when the forthcoming NSLDS Enrollment Reporting Guide is available.

Updated Information for NSLDS Postscreening

We have processed postscreening for the 2021-22 award year and are beginning to process postscreening for the 2022-23 award year. We expect to resume the normal weekly postscreening cadence the week of Aug. 29, 2022. In the meantime, a school could execute an online lookup via the website; however, we acknowledge that the online lookup option is not practical for large volumes of students.

Issues Identified Since Launch

We would like to provide the following information about issues that have been identified since launch. We regret the inconvenience any issues have caused and appreciate your patience and understanding while we resolve them.

Being Worked

  • Printing: We have identified an issue with the internal formatting parameters of the NSLDS Professional Access website that makes printing webpage content using a computer’s browser print function prohibitive. The content that prints on each page is limited to such an extent that thousands of pages generate for printing. Until we resolve the issue, schools should use a computer’s Print Screen (PrtScr) or a software product’s Screenshot (for example, Microsoft’s Snipping Tool) functionality to capture and print webpage content needed for documentation purposes. Print screens and screenshots can be saved as PDF and encrypted if they need to be retained electronically.

  • TRNINFIN Files: We are progressing with responding to school submissions of TRNINFIN files, Financial Aid History requests, and Transfer Student Monitoring inform files. We know that schools need this supplemental information to complete financial aid packaging for students. We continue to work the backlog in the order received and as expeditiously as possible. In the meantime, a school could execute an online lookup via the website; however, we acknowledge that the online lookup option is not practical for large volumes of students.

  • Reports: We are delayed in sending reports that are delivered via Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) to schools. We are working this backlog as expeditiously as possible. In the meantime, a school could request a report on-demand via the website; however, we acknowledge that the on-demand option may not provide the data in the format a school needs.

  • Aggregate Limits: During our post implementation validation period, we have identified a couple of issues that are causing the NSLDS prescreening process to incorrectly flag a student as exceeding one of the aggregate limits. We are working to fix the issues as soon as possible.

Resolved

  • ISIR Comment Code 132: As we previously reported, we corrected the NSLDS prescreening process that was incorrectly flagging a student as being in default on a federal student loan when the student is the beneficiary of a parent’s PLUS loan that is in default. The erroneous status no longer reflects as a Defaulted Student warning icon on the NSLDS Professional Access website. On Aug. 19, 2022, we resolved the ISIR Comment Code 132s produced across the 2022 and 2023 award years (~5,000 records) by processing and sending NSLDS Postscreening Reason Code 99 records to affected schools.

  • Perkins File Level Edits Files: We previously sent Perkins File Level Edits files (SHSNTFOP) to schools via SAIG from the wrong TG mailbox. To correct this issue, we resent the files from the correct TG mailbox. Unfortunately, we cannot remove the files that were sent originally; please ignore those files.

  • Transfer Student Monitoring Files: We previously sent Transfer Student Monitoring files (TRNINFOP, TRLTRPOP, and TRALRTOP) to schools via SAIG from the wrong TG mailbox. To correct this issue, we resent the files from the correct TG mailbox. Unfortunately, we cannot remove the files that were sent originally; please ignore those files.

  • School Perkins Loan Error Files: We previously sent School Perkins Loan Error files (SLDERROP) to schools via SAIG from the wrong TG mailbox. To correct this issue, we resent the files from the correct TG mailbox. Unfortunately, we cannot remove the files that were sent originally; please ignore those files.

  • Access: During the period Aug. 5 – 8, we experienced an issue affecting access to the NSLDS Professional Access and FSA Partner Connect websites by loan servicer and guaranty agency authorized users. We communicated resolution of this issue on Aug. 8; however, to resolve it, we needed to revert the Participation Management Database to a previous version. As such, any transactions completed from Thursday, Aug. 4 through Saturday, Aug. 6 will have to be re-entered into the system. We emailed impacted users associated with those transactions.

  • Access: During the period July 25 – Aug. 3, we experienced intermittent server issues that prohibited authorized users from logging in to the new NSLDS website. We resolved the server issues as of Aug. 3, and authorized users have not experienced access issues for this reason since then.

NSLDS Professional Access Resources

We previously provided information about the new NSLDS Professional Access on June 24, 2022, July 15, 2022, July 22, 2022, July 25, 2022, Aug. 3, 2022, Aug. 8, 2022, Aug. 11, 2022, Aug. 15, 2022, and Aug. 19, 2022.

In addition, we published a new NSLDS Reports for Schools Guide. This resource provides detailed information to help school users better understand the reports that are available, the various report formats, and how to request each type of report.

We will continue to update NSLDS user resources, including user guides and documentation. For a period of time, some resources will contain images and instructions that do not correspond to the updated website. However, in most cases users may continue to refer to the guide or reference until an updated version is available because the resource describes an existing process that has not changed. Please contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center using the contact information below if you have questions about a particular user resource.

As a reminder, a library of brief training videos for NSLDS Professional Access users is available on the FSA Training Center. Each narrated walk-through focuses on frequently-used functionality and provides users with a high-level review of the website’s key features. To view the complete list of topics and to access the training videos, log into the FSA Training Center, choose “Systems Training” from the main menu bar, and then select “NSLDS Training.”

Contact Information

If you have questions, please contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center at 1-800-999-8219 or nslds@ed.gov.

Last Modified: 08/31/2022