ctcLink Learning Opportunities & Support Roundup: March 13, 2024

To plan further ahead or find the latest learning opportunities, as well as notices of cancellation or schedule changes, see the complete calendar at the ctcLink Training page or on the SBCTC meetings and events calendar (apply filters).

 

All-Pillar Learning Opportunity: End of Fiscal Year Prep

Monday, April 15, 2024, 9 to 11 a.m.

Join Webex | Meeting number (access code): 2663 141 6695 | Password: tuN3bsnpp22

Save the date for an All-Pillar Learning Opportunity: End of Fiscal Year Prep!

In this session, SBCTC will present a high-level view of how all ctcLink pillars interconnect, with an emphasis on Fiscal Year End (FYE) preparation.

FYE prep includes

• Human Capital Management Transactions
• Campus Solutions Core Student Services
• Financial Aid Review
• Student Financials Reconciliation and Spring Cleaning
• Finance Tasks/Checklists and General Ledger

Learning objectives

• A high-level overview of how information flows within ctcLink pillars
• A high-level overview of each pillar and the resources and tools available for end of year cleanup, including queries, documents, reference guides, and process guides
• Where to access links to previous/upcoming trainings regarding reconciliation/end of fiscal year prep

Primary Audience: ctcLink system processing staff

Related QRGs: Intro to ctcLink and FIN - Closing Periods and Years Procedures

Prerequisite Course(s): ctcLink Training Registration. It is recommended you review and complete your pillar-related courses.

Enhancement Requests (ER) Deployed

• ER 265 – Campus Solutions Add Visa Type Value of “Unknown” -  Deployed Friday, March 8, 2024.
  • In PeopleSoft, when a student’s visa type is no longer known or accurate (e.g., student becomes a naturalized citizen), there is no way to reflect this status in the Visa/Permit table and to retain history.
    To avoid misrepresenting the student’s status and to support IPEDS reporting, the only current recourse is for a college to remove the data row. Increasing data accuracy by sacrificing historical data is not a reasonable solution.
    With this addition, the college will be able to add a row that accurately reflects the student’s prior visa status may have changed while preserving the historical rows.  Further, if this data point is the highest effective row on the Visa/Permit table and the student is enrolled at your institution, an active SINT Student Group will be inactivated by the Data Services’ Mass Assign job. BioDemo data, including Visa/Permit is global.
    A student who may no longer be attending your institution may be attending another college in the system. Please be mindful of that and do not make any updates to the students Visa/Permit data if the student is no longer enrolled at your institution.
    Relevant Quick Reference Guide: Enter Visa Permit Data

ER Work Underway

• ER 230 - Student Self-Service Links for Bank Mobile and Direct Deposit. Testing complete and ready for deployment early the week of March 11
• ER 238 – Campus Solutions OAAP Search Match – Two hour guided User Acceptance Testing sessions were held March 5 and 6.
• Campus Solutions ER 232 - (FYI) Adding Custom Self-Service Questions - Defining requirements and analyzing possible solution designs with Data Services and App Services
• Campus Solutions OAAP ERs 178, 184,169, 183, 212, and 237 - approved by ctcLink Working Group. Work is underway for Priority 1 (Residency & Citizenship) which includes some crossover between ERs 169, 184, and 237.
• Finance ER 189 - Stale Dating Checks - In progress – Working with Accounting and Business Services
• Finance ER 204 - Modifications to WAPAY – Reviewing test files and working with US Bank
• HCM ER 154 – Faculty Workload (FWL) Future Effective Dated Hire Row - Development is complete and system integration testing will begin soon.
• Campus Solutions ER 166 – CampusCE Search/Match Parameter – Student Financials analyzing payment, charge and discount configurations. C
• HCM ER 197 – New Hire Onboarding Improvements – In system integration testing.

You’re Invited: Campus Solutions Launchpad UAT

Colleges are encouraged to participate in an upcoming User Acceptance Testing (UAT) activity.  During UAT, Local Security Administrators (LSAs) and other users will review the upcoming changes and test functionality to confirm the Changes to Campus Solutions Launchpad are working as intended.

Learn more about the details on the new functionality at the 9.2 CS Security - Using Launchpad to Copy SACR Settings Quick Reference Guide (QRG).

SACR means Student Administrative Contributable Relations. SACR refers to the secure defaults set for student records. Authorized users pre-populate these fields with commonly used values. When student users first access Campus Solutions (CS), the SACR defaults and security must be set up properly.

Campus Solutions Launchpad Changes UAT Kickoff

Thursday, March 14, 2024, 9 a.m., Learn more and join session

What colleges need to do

To ensure user access to the test environment is set up before UAT begins, each college was to send a list of EMPLIDs of staff who plan to participate in the UAT to Caitlin Stein by March 11, 2024.  

Users participating in this UAT should include college Local Security Administrators (LSAs).

Timeline

UAT activities will end March 20, 2024, so any concerns or issues found need to be reported to SBCTC by submitting a service desk ticket by that date.

Feel free to contact Caitlin Stein if you have any questions or concerns.

CS Core Learning Opportunities

CS Core Training

CS Core Trainings are held on the third Wednesday of every month from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. The dates may change, and notifications will be sent in advance. The CS Core trainings alternate between refreshers and different process approaches. All end-users are welcome to attend these training courses, and you can find details about upcoming meetings on the SBCTC Calendar, CS Core Weeklyish CORErespondence, and CS Core listserv. Please visit the QRG Campus Solutions Learning Opportunities Recordings for a list of previous recordings.

CS Core Training: Term Withdrawals

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 8:30 – 10 a.m. Read more and join the session

Colleges must adhere to the Term Withdrawal process, which facilitates accurate recording of student withdrawals and ensures reporting requirements are met.

After the census date passes, every college must complete the Term Withdrawal process. This process involves recording the dates students drop all classes, resulting in zero units. The information will be reported to the National Student Clearinghouse and the financial aid office.

NOTE: This process applies to students withdrawing from all classes in a term. It does not include those who withdraw from only a portion of their classes.

Contact Tanjagay Martin, SBCTC Functional CS Core Trainer, with questions.

Sub-Plans and AARs: A Comprehensive Overview

Wednesday, June 5, 2024, 8:30 – 10 a.m., Learn more and join session

Academic sub-plans are areas of focus, concentration, specialty, or track directly related to an academic plan. The intended sub-plan can be designated on the admissions application and activated in the student records through the admissions matriculation process or manually entered by the staff.

Colleges decide whether to print sub-plans on transcripts. Plans and sub-plans can be included when creating Academic Advisement Reports (AARs). For instance, colleges may require a sub-plan for graduation, which means students must fulfill the sub-plan requirements in addition to the plan.

Are you interested in learning how to use sub-plans in AARS? Join us for a review of the process of adding sub-plans to a student record and discovering ways to incorporate them into AARs.

Objectives

• Add a Sub-Plan to a Student Record
• Attaching a Sub-Plan to an AAR

CS Core Work Sessions

Campus Solutions (CS) Core Work Sessions, open to ALL end users, are held the first Thursday of each month, from 1 to 3 p.m. The CS Functional Support team facilitates, alternating between functional team delivered content and college user delivered content with functional team support. Each meeting includes time for colleges to ask questions about other topics or service tickets.

Find details on the SBCTC Calendar and in the CS Core Weeklyish COREspondence (sent on Fridays to the CSSupport listserv).

Core Sessions: College System & SBCTC Calendar

Game, Set, MATCH!  Understanding Search/Match

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 1-3 pm., Learn more and join the session

Module/s: Student Admissions, PeopleTools

Primary Audience: Admissions

References: Searching for Records (Using Search/Match)

One of the biggest differences between ctcLink and Legacy is that there is only ONE Person Record, and that one record is shared between pillars and between institutions.  Colleges rely on each other to protect, and respect, data integrity.  You know that running Search/Match will help prevent duplicates.  Want to know more about why and how?  This session will explore how Search/Match Rules work, give you insights into our current configuration, and share strategies for avoiding duplicates. 

CS COREterly Open Q&A Sessions

• CS Core invites you to attend its quarterly Open Q&A sessions!  While these sessions are for learning and problem-solving, we want to emphasize that these are also part of our efforts to support community building. 
• Thursday, March 21, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session
• Thursday, May 16, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session
• Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session
• Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session

We want these sessions to provide an opportunity for college users to:

• Get assistance with any functionality they want to better understand or situation they are struggling to make work.
• Seek advice on anything they are trying to solve.
• Share best practices and lessons learned.
• Develop networks and build community.

To support the varied work areas of our users, each session will have a breakout room for each of the following modules: 

• Records & Enrollment, which includes Student Program/Plan, Term Activation, Enrollment Appointments, Enrollment, Transfer-In Credit, Transcripts, Graduation and so on.
• Campus Community, which includes 3Cs, BioDemo, Service Indicators and so on.
• Curriculum Management, which includes class building, course catalog management, enrollment requirements and so on

Along with your colleagues who can share their real-life experiences and the solutions they have employed; CS Core team experts will be present in each room.  We encourage you to submit your questions before the session (but doing so isn’t required).  Enter your questions on the CS COREterly Question Submissions tab. Knowing your questions ahead of time just helps us to be prepared and allows us to help as many people as possible. 

We hope you’ll join us even if you don’t have specific questions!  We look forward to connecting with you and for you to connect with each other.

The Lifecycle of a Transcript

Thursday, April 4, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session

Module/s: Records & Enrollment, Student Admissions

Primary Audience: Credential Evaluators

Related QRGs: Transfer Credit Chapter

From send to post, we’ll overview the electronic journey a transcript takes from both the Legacy Transcript Tool and ctcLink.  Some of those with a final destination of UW, WSU, CWU, EWU or WWU and we’ll talk about how they get there.  For the rest, those whose destination IS ctcLink, we’ll cover that as well as what credential evaluators need to know and some of the more common gotchas, tips and tricks. 

Stacking the Deck: Student Program/Plans

Thursday, June 6, 2024, 1-3 p.m., Learn more and join the session

Based on college feedback, this year we are creating more spaces for sharing lived experience.   I’m looking for a couple of colleges to join the party. Before you tell me you can’t because you’re still working things out, that’s fine! We just need folks willing to share what they are doing and how it’s going. If you’re up for it, please contact Michelle Kuwasaki.

Module/s: Records and Enrollment

Primary Audience: Admissions, Student Records

Related QRGs: Student Program and Information Chapter

Because the impact of the Student Program/Plan is wide, it is important to get them right!  We’ll warm up with a quick review of the building blocks involved:  effective-dating, adding rows, action reasons, and attributes.  Then, make connections with term activation, tuition calculation, FA, the AAR and the transcript. Of course, we need to save time for common conundrums like when to start a NEW stack vs adding a change row not to mention everyone’s favorite, those certificates earned “along the way.” 

Student Program/Plans also matter to QARS and NSC Reporting.  We will cover general best practices for ensuring data accuracy which also conveniently reduces NSC and QARS errors.  And we’ll close by strongly advocating for various maintenance activities such as keeping term activation tidy and minimizing the number of open Student Program/Plans.

FIN Learning Opportunities

FIN Training

Travel & Expense (T&E) Trainings

Travel admins and travel approvers are invited to dig in on the Travel & Expense module.

• March 14, 1-2 p.m., Travelers in ctcLink
• March 21, 1-2 p.m., Approvers in ctcLink
• March 28, 1-2 p.m., Travel Admins in ctcLink

GL Journal Import

Mar 27, 2 pm, FIN Training: GL Journal Import

All skill levels are welcome at this interactive workshop; whether to help new/current staff get up to speed, need a refresher, and/or possibly transitioning to a new role. Unsure how Journal Spreadsheet or Write to File works or how to customize your Spreadsheet Template? This training provides the basic information and steps to importing a spreadsheet of data into PeopleSoft, often referred to 'Journal Import' or Write to File. A

FIN Work Sessions

SMARTer Reports Review Sessions

The ctcLink Accounting Team will lead participants through reviews of the SMARTer reports and research options for corrections will be presented

March 21, 10 a.m., SMARTer Review on Reports 210 - 301

Apr 4, 10 a.m., SMARTer Reviews: Reports 302 - 401

Monthly Student Finance/General Ledger Open Forum

Every second Wednesday, 2 to 3 p.m. The next ctcLink Accounting Team: SF/GL Open Forum Meeting is March 14.

The ctcLink accounting team invites you to bring your questions (and solutions) to share during this open forum meeting space for all things Student Finance/General Ledger (SF/GL) related. There is no formal agenda as we welcome all questions about everything from item types and second journal sets to waivers, queries, or internal cash reconciliation.

See the SBCTC meetings and events calendar and look for ctcLink Accounting Team: SF/GL Open Forum Meeting.

Finance (FSCM) College Users Production Support Meetings

Meetings are held every Tuesday, from 2 to 3 p.m. These sessions are open to ALL Finance (FSCM) end users. The Finance Functional team provides updates on Service Tickets, PeopleSoft enhancements, and open forum time to ask questions or request future topics.

Next meetings: March 19, March 26, April 2

Chartstring Clean-Up Working Sessions & Special Topics

Join the ctcLink accounting team every Thursday from 10 to 11 a.m. for special topics and Chartstring clean-up working sessions.

• March 14, 2024, 10 a.m. ctcLink Accounting Team: Grants Training and Prep for One Washington *DATE CHANGE*
• March 21, 2024, 10 a.m. ctcLink Accounting Team: EPM Cloud Demo by Teri
• March 28, 2024, 10 a.m. ctcLink Accounting Team: Asset Management Clean-up & Conversion

The Aid Awarding Wait Continues

You may have been excited to see in the news that the Department of Education has begun to release ISIRs (Institutional Student Information Records) to colleges and universities nationwide.

While this sounds promising, given the outstanding back-end technical issues continuing to plague the new FAFSA, institutions will continue to be delayed making needed changes to their local software used to process and award aid.

As outlined in the Feb. 21 ctcLink Connect and repeated here:

Timeline

Two things need to happen before colleges can start to package financial aid for students:

• First, Oracle needs to release a system update — what it calls the revised Financial Aid Post-Regs 1 PRP3 (PeopleSoft Release Patchset or PRPs). Once we receive that, our staff will need to test and configure the changes to accept the new ISIRs.
• Second, despite promises from the Department of Education (ED) to release sample ISIRs for test purposes, including another today, we have found those to be flawed, making them unusable to help configure ctcLink for the mass release anticipated in mid-March.

While SBCTC waits for the update release from Oracle and for accurate ISIRs from ED, we estimate a timeline of late April/early May to complete testing.

SBCTC is aiming for the second week of May to move the technical changes to ctcLink production (the live ctcLink environment), which means the colleges can then start loading their ISIRs in batches as they are released by ED and work towards processing (awarding) of student files.

This timeline is subject to change depending on when we receive ISIRs and when Oracle sends updated PRPs. If we run into technical issues delivered from Oracle, that will be considered.

NASFAA News

Keep up with the latest news from the NASFAA FAFSA Simplification Web Center

• ED Details ISIR Delivery Rollout, Updated Issue Alerts, and New FAFSA Functionality
• ED Details Updated Technical Fix and Outstanding Issues for FAFSA Contributors Without SSNs

SF/FA Cross-Pillar Information Session: Keywords Update

Users who submit item type forms are invited to attend and hear what new values are coming to Keyword 1 and 3 fields.

Module/s: Student Financials & Financial Aid

Primary Audience: Item Type Approvers/Submitters

You will learn about each department's responsibilities with the review as well as the anticipated timeline.  We also have two drop-in sessions scheduled for any follow-up questions users may have on their keyword values.

Drop-In Q&As for Keywords Update

• March 21, 2024, 2 p.m., Learn more and join session
• March 26, 2024, 2 p.m., Learn more and join session

FA Learning Opportunities

Financial Aid Training

ISIR Processing Refresher (2023/24 Only)

Tuesday, March 12, 2024, 9–10:30 a.m., Learn more and join session

Audience:  Financial Aid Staff responsible for loading ISIRs into ctcLink

Although this training is for 23/24 FA, it provides foundational FA skills and grounding in knowledge which will be helpful to reinforce concepts for 24/25 processes when that time comes.

Objectives: 

• Understand how to set/update User Defaults for the new AY
• Understand the steps in ISIR Processing
• Upload/download process
• FA Inbound
• Process Imported ISIRs
• Understand how to load ISIRs using the File List Driven process and the Single File process

ISIR Corrections Fundamentals (2023/24 Only)

Tuesday, March 26, 2024, 9–10:30 a.m., Learn more and join session

Audience:  Fin Aid Staff responsible for performing file review and correcting ISIRs ctcLink

Although this training is for 23/24 FA, it provides foundational FA skills and grounding in knowledge which will be helpful to reinforce concepts for 24/25 processes when that time comes.

Objectives: 

• Understand how to make ISIR Corrections on specific scenarios
• Making Corrections on an Alien Registration Number
• Processing Dependency Override/Homeless Youth Determinations
• Processing Special Conditions/Circumstances/EFC Adjustment Request
• Understand how to Process ISIR Corrections in ctcLink using the following steps:
• Process ISIR Corrections
• Create Federal Data File
• Upload/Download File Process

Financial Aid (FA) Work Sessions

Financial Aid (FA) Work Session meetings are on the fourth Thursdays, from 1 to 3 p.m. The FA Functional Support team facilitates alternating between functional team delivered content and college user delivered content with the support of the FA functional team. The end of each meeting is open for colleges to ask questions about the topic presented. These sessions are open to ALL end users.

HCM Learning Opportunities

HCM Work Session Meetings

Human Capital Management (HCM) meetings are held every other Wednesday, from 1 to 3 p.m. The HCM Functional team along with the training team offers Work Sessions and Training Sessions around the different functionality in HCM.

HCM Work Session: Retirement Fields (rescheduled from March 13, 2024)

Wednesday, March 27, 2024, 1 p.m., Learn more and join session

This session is geared toward Payroll Administrators and HR Administrators.

SF/FA Cross-Pillar Information Session: Keywords Update

Users who submit item type forms are invited to attend and hear what new values are coming to Keyword 1 and 3 fields.

Module/s: Student Financials & Financial Aid

Primary Audience: Item Type Approvers/Submitters

You will learn about each department's responsibilities with the review as well as the anticipated timeline.  We also have two drop-in sessions scheduled for any follow-up questions users may have on their keyword values.

Drop-In Q&As for Keywords Update

March 21, 2024, 2 p.m., Learn more and join session

March 26, 2024, 2 p.m., Learn more and join session

SF Learning Opportunities

SF Training

Third-Party Reconciliation Tips

Monday, March 18, 2024, 9 a.m. Learn more and join session

Please join the SBCTC Student Financials Team to learn about:

• Payment Processing Tips
• Cleaning up Third-Party Accounts
• Payments
• Credits
• Maintaining internal tracking sheet

SF Work Sessions

SF Work Session: Tuition Rate Updates 

Friday, March 15, 2024, Learn more and join the session

Please join us to learn more about the annual fee updating processes.  We will review the many facets of ctcLink that need to be reviewed to ensure that students are charged properly after this crucial yearly update.

ctcLink Accessibility Monthly Open Forum

Join us!  The ctcLink Accessibility monthly forums engage Washington's community and technical college system in discussions around ctcLink accessibility and technology. We aim to improve communication and transparency while providing space for productive and solution-focused dialog. Our main objective is to deliver accessible technology for all our students, staff, and the larger community.

Meetings are held the second Tuesday of each month, 11 a.m. to noon.

The next ctcLink Accessibility Open Forum will be Tuesday, April 9, 2024, at 11 a.m. All are welcome to attend via Zoom.

In case you missed a meeting, please see materials from past Open Forums,