(GENERAL-22-76) NSLDS Professional Access – Additional Information About the Modernized Website #10

New! Enrollment Reporting Documentation for Auditors: We are researching identified issues with the Enrollment Reporting Summary Report (SCHER1). Schools have historically provided this report to auditors as documentation of timely enrollment reporting during a specified fiscal year. Given the issues with the SCHER1 report, this is a good time for schools to transition to using Enrollment Submittal Tracking information as their documentation for auditors. There are two options for obtaining this information—the Enrollment Submittal Tracking webpage and the Enrollment Submittal File Tracking Report (SCHET1).

Enrollment Submittal Tracking Page – To access this webpage, select Enrollment Submittal Tracking from the dropdown menu under the Enrollment tab of the NSLDS Professional Access website. A user should complete the query fields—Retrieve School Location, Date Processed Begin Date, and Date Processed End Date—as directed on the screens, and then click on Apply. Once generated, the user can view the report data online or click on the Export to CSV link to save the report data in Excel format.

Enrollment Submittal File Tracking Report (SCHET1) – Another option would be to download the Enrollment Submittal File Tracking Report (SCHET1), which is available on the NSLDS Reports Tool. It provides an on-demand Excel-formatted report with enrollment submittal tracking information for the requested time period at the file-level and school-level.

Notes:

Updated! Enrollment Spreadsheet Submittal Errors: A school preparing to submit an Enrollment Spreadsheet via the NSLDS Professional Access Website has the option to complete a preliminary file-level check before submitting the file for the required system-level checks.

Validate – This check is optional and does not need to be completed. If a school chooses to complete this check by clicking on Validate, file-level edits are run to confirm column completion and readiness for upload. This optional check does not compare the contents of the spreadsheet to the data within NSLDS.

Validate and Submit – This check is required and must be completed. Upon clicking on Validate and Submit, the spreadsheet contents are validated against the data within NSLDS. This validation could take a while to complete. Completion is signified by the appearance of a message stating that the file has been processed. If no errors were identified, only the processing completion statement will appear. If errors were identified, a link to a results file will appear with the processing completion statement. Upon receipt of the results file, contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center for assistance with resolving the errors and proper resubmission.

Updated! Enrollment History Update Functionality Suspension: We continue to research issues impacting Enrollment History Update functionality.  Until we resolve these issues, we must continue to suspend Enrollment History Update functionality.

Schools, school servicers, and enrollment providers can continue to submit updates to current enrollment information via the Enrollment Maintenance page and the Update Enrollment page on the NSLDS Professional Access website. However, updates to historical enrollment records cannot be submitted during the functionality suspension.

Note: Our focus when we resolve the identified issues will be to ensure that a student’s current enrollment is correct on NSLDS Professional Access. As a result, there may be some gaps in the enrollment histories of affected students on NSLDS Professional Access. In preparation, schools should retain copies of this announcement and our Aug. 31 announcement as documentation for audit purposes. After Enrollment History Update functionality is again operational, we will provide schools with guidance for documenting any gaps in enrollment histories.

Updated! Enrollment Rosters: We continue to prepare for roster dissemination. We will inform the community when we are ready to do so.

Roster Schedule Preferences: We identified inconsistencies with roster schedule preferences within NSLDS Professional Access affecting a small number of schools. We have identified the cause of the issue and are working to fix it as soon as possible.

Online Alerts: Messages are appearing on the NSLDS Professional Access website alerting a school that it has been more than 65 days since the school last reported enrollment or that a school is otherwise late in responding to a roster. Schools should disregard these messages as they are not applicable at this time.

Program Duplication: We 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 have identified the cause of the issue affecting a small number of schools and are working to fix it as soon as possible.

Online Warning Messages: Some messaging previously appeared on the NSLDS Professional Access website warning that a school was delinquent or otherwise non-compliant with enrollment reporting requirements. That online messaging was released inadvertently and subsequently removed from the website.

Enrollment Roster Headers: As previously reported, after we disseminated outstanding July and August Rosters we discovered an inadvertent error related to the rosters sent to enrollment providers who manage different OPE IDs. We corrected the issue to prevent it from happening going forward. In addition, we recreated and resent corrected versions of the July and August Rosters in response to enrollment provider requests.

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.

Cancellation of Enrollment Spreadsheet Submittals Made July 20 – Aug. 8: All spreadsheet submittals during this period were canceled and show as “Failed” on the NSLDS Professional Access website. We emailed affected schools about the canceled spreadsheets on Aug. 11. It was necessary for affected schools to re-upload the spreadsheets for processing.

Perkins Submittal Files: We are delayed in processing Perkins Submittal Files for schools that use a commercial Perkins servicer. We are working this backlog as expeditiously as possible.

Reopening! TRNINFIN Files: There has been an increase in the number of schools contacting us about school submissions of TRNINFIN files, Financial Aid History requests, and Transfer Student Monitoring inform files. We have reopened our investigation of this issue and will share our findings as soon as possible. In the meantime, a school waiting to receive a response or that has questions about a response it receives should continue to contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center so we can research the situation.

Updated! School Portfolio Report Files: We have continued to send School Portfolio Report files (SCHRPFOP) to schools via SAIG from the wrong TG mailbox. When files are sent from the wrong mailbox, customers receive error messages directing them to contact CPS/SAIG Support. Because this is a known issue and we are in the process of resolving it, we ask that customers refrain from contacting CPS/SAIG Support for this reason. We will notify the community when we resend these files from the correct TG mailbox.

New! Borrower Demographics – Fixed Width Report Files: We have sent Borrower Demographics – Fixed Width Report files (DEMOFWOP) to schools via SAIG from the wrong TG mailbox. When files are sent from the wrong mailbox, customers receive error messages directing them to contact CPS/SAIG Support. Because this is a known issue and we are in the process of resolving it, we ask that customers refrain from contacting CPS/SAIG Support for this reason. We will notify the community when we resend these files from the correct TG mailbox.

Updated! Reports: We diligently continue efforts to clear the backlog in sending reports that are delivered via Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) to schools. We are processing such report requests 24 hours per day with the expectation of full resolution by the end of October. If a school needs more current data after reviewing a report, please submit a new request. If a school does not receive a requested report by the end of October, please contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center so we can research the situation.

Updated! Aggregate Limits: We identified issues during our post implementation validation period that caused the NSLDS prescreening process to incorrectly flag a student as exceeding one of the aggregate loan limits. We recently implemented fixes for these issues and expect that the aggregate calculations for a student will be corrected in the first October postscreening during the week of Oct. 10, 2022.

Resolved! Printing: Previously, the internal formatting parameters of the NSLDS Professional Access website made printing webpage content using a computer’s browser print function prohibitive because the amount of content that printed on each page was limited to such an extent that thousands of pages generated for printing. We updated print parameters throughout the website, and schools can now use a computer’s browser print function to print webpage content needed for documentation purposes.

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.