[Oasfaa] COD questions and answers from David Bartlett

[DanGHolt at aol.com]

Subj:    COD questions 
  Date:    12/13/2002 3:36:45 PM Eastern Standard Time 
  From:    "Bartlett, David" <David.Bartlett at ed.gov> 
  
All,

My apologies for taking so long to respond with the answers to your questions from the IASFAA COD session.  I was at the EAC last week and I was able to speak directly with the people who could answer the questions.  

1.  Do schools that use EDExpress, but are not Direct Loan and not Pell (i.e. Grad Schools) need to sign up to be full participants for 2003-04?


ED Express software v 9.1 will be for the DL and Pell programs and will be XML compatible w/ COD.  If the school is not submitting records to COD, They do not need to sign up for COD.  However, if they ever want to send records in the future to COD, and do not notify us that they are doing so, they will have all of their records reject.  

Remember, all schools must be signed up as a Full Participant in 04-05, regardless of what software they use.  If they do not signup, and submit records, they will reject. 

Its really up to the school.  If they feel there is any time in the future they may want to send something to COD, then they will need to sign up. If the school wants to report campus based info to COD, they will need to sign up to be able to send that data.

2.  What happens if the school's vendor software is not ready to support the common record for 03-04 and they use EDExpress in combination with their vendor's software?

EDExpress will continue to use flat ASCII files to exchange data with other systems.  

3.  After a school set up the security administrator for the COD website, they were supposed to receive an instruction packet on how to set up other school users and perform other functions.  Some schools did not receive that packet.  

Call COD and request that it be e-mailed to the security administrator.

4.  Schools indicated they have never talked with the same CSR twice.  Do schools have a specific CSR designated for them?

Yes, schools have designated customer service representatives.  COD informed me to invite schools to contact them and ask to speak to your CSR and you would be transferred to that person.  As an FYI, COD is divided into teams of 6-8 people who then work with a specific group of schools.

5.  There are still on-going issues, please provide an update on the order of acknowledgements when disbursements and origination records are sent at the same time.  (i.e. Disbursement is processed first and rejects, because there is no origination.)

COD is aware of the issue and they are in the processing of resolving it.  Please check the daily updates on the COD website at www.cod.ed.gov .  The link for the daily updates has been moved, so you no longer have to log-in to retrieve them.  COD invited me to instruct schools with this issue to contact their CSR and make sure the issue is recorded so the school can be notified when it is resolved.

6.  Please provide more guidance on "What's planned for 2003-04" slide 40 about responsibility for printing disclosure notices.  "If disbursement data is sent by school within five days of, or after, the disbursement date and the school does not indicate the disclosure has been printed, COD will print the disclosure and send a warning to the school."  The question was how will the warning be sent?

The warning will be sent via a new "warning" edit code on either the common record response. The 03-04 Technical Reference contains these new edit codes. Edit 110 will be returned on the response to origination data if the origination data does not include at least one anticipated disbursement (and the school doesn't indicate that they plan to print the disclosure notice). Edit 111 will be returned on the response to actual disbursement data if the disbursement is submitted to COD less than 5 days in advance of the disbursement date AND the school has not indicated that they have printed/will print the disclosure statement themselves. 

Since anticipated disbursements are required on "legacy" records, these edit codes will only be returned for Full Participants using the common record.



Those were the questions I recorded during the session or were handed to me.  If you have other questions or I missed some, please let me know.



David A. Bartlett
U.S. Department of Education
Federal Student Aid - School Relations Office
8930 Ward Parkway, Suite 2028
Kansas City, Missouri  64114
Phone:   816-268-0434
Fax:          816-268-0441