2024.2

Released on April 5, 2024

Manage your disbursement processes directly in PowerFAIDS with the Disbursement Authorization, Disbursement Rules, and Anticipated Aid features

Three key disbursement-related features are now available in PowerFAIDS:

• Disbursement Authorization - Disburse aid within PowerFAIDS, create files with disbursement details for use in other systems, and review results reports from completed processes.

• Disbursement Rules - Set rules to ensure aid is disbursed according to your own institution-defined parameters.

• Anticipated Aid - Create files documenting estimated financial aid that can be shared with your business office.

Additional features and functionality related to Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) as well as disbursement reconciliation will also be coming soon!

24-25 ISIRs are here

Updates continue to be made across the application to support the extensive changes from the Department of Education (ED) to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the 2024-2025 award year. These are changes are collectively known as FAFSA Simplification.

Caution: Currently implemented system enhancements adhere to draft specifications provided by ED at the time of release; final specifications have not yet been provided. Federal Student Aid (FSA) recently announced that additional updates to the ISIR layout will be coming sometime in April. An update to the 2024.2 release will be made available after FSA provides final ISIR specifications to software developers.

For more information about enhancements made across the system to support FAFSA Simplification, see our detailed guide here. To receive additional support from both College Board staff and your financial aid colleagues as you navigate FAFSA-related changes, make sure to join the PowerFAIDS User Community.

Common Data Set (CDS) Reporting now available

A newly added PowerFAIDS standard report is available that includes all financial aid data specified by the Common Data Set (CDS) initiative. See Common Data Set (CDS) Report for more information.

System-Wide

• Navigating away from a page should now always result in a warning message being displayed if there are unsaved changes.

Search

• When initiating a selection set search while already viewing another student record, the current student record no longer remains on the screen.
• Academic Year fields now return correct results in advanced searches and selection sets.
• Custom data fields created after the release on 1/19/24 are now returning correct results in advanced searches and selection sets.

Student module

• When saving an update to a private loan, contextual error messages for field-level validations are now displayed correctly and removed once resolved.
• When searching within the timeline, the results table is no longer hidden behind a vertical scrollbar.
• The Need Analysis engine is now correctly calculating a student's SAI when the student or parent family size is not received on the ISIR.
• The Need Analysis engine is now correctly using the Education Credits field when that data is received from the ISIR.
• Scheduled Award amounts for Federal Pell Grants awards now correctly round to the nearest $5 amount.
• The minimum Federal Pell Grant award amount for the 24-25 award year has now been updated to reflect the newly announced minimum amount of $740.
• Federal Pell Grants are now correctly being awarded to eligible bachelor's degree students who are pursuing teacher certification programs.
• When the award for the Federal Pell Grant is calculated at $0, an erroneous message is no longer displayed under the Distribution Details section of the Federal Pell Grants page.
• Federal Pell Grants are now correctly awarded to students as Pending when the Federal Pell Grant fund has been set up with a Default Award Status of Pending.
• Federal Pell Grant awards now have the Estimated field set correctly based on the fund settings.
• When there's a system error that prevents adding an award successfully, an appropriate error message is now shown in the results details.
• The Original Unmet Need field on the Aid Package is now correctly populated when a student's only award is a Federal Pell Grant.
• When an ISIR transaction is posted that includes an updated SAI value, the student's tracking status now automatically updates to Requires Review.
• The Department of Education made additional updates to the ISIR comment codes on April 11, 2024. PowerFAIDS has now been updated to reflect these changes.

Batch Processing module

• Selection sets containing more than 100 students can now be successfully used for the batch packaging process.

Import/Export module

• The Student Information Import results table in the dashboard now correctly displays an Export/Download button to export the data shown.
• Properly escaped commas included within a text field in the Student Information Import file no longer result in an error on import.
• The Student Information Import process no longer fails with an erroneous error message referencing a RejectedRecords table.
• When searching for records from the ISIR Import Dashboard, the table can now be sorted by column headers other than the default.
• The ISIR Import results table in the dashboard now correctly displays an Export/Download button to export the data shown.
• 2024-2025 ISIRs no longer display an erroneous error message on import if the file is actually imported successfully.
• ISIR Correction dependent student changes are now correctly being sent for fields that have the comparison setting set to Bypass for Independent.
• When a selection set with more than 50 students is used to select the population to export for an anticipated aid export file, duplicate rows are no longer included for some disbursements in the exported file and the results report.
• When the NSLDS export process is run, only students in the selection set who meet the eligibility requirements are included in the export.
• When a Transfer Student Monitoring Alert/Financial Aid History record is successfully imported into PowerFAIDS, the Alert Received Date and FAH Received Date fields are now correctly updated on the associated student records.
• When exporting a file to COD, foreign addresses are now correctly populating in the file.

Reporting module

• Creating a custom report with the Custom Data Name, Custom Data Description, and Custom Data Field Type fields now functions as expected.

System Administration module

• After viewing the results of a selection set in the System Administration module, the results no longer override existing search results in the Student module.
• An error is no longer received when attempting to save a security group.
• All entities reviewed and copied within the new year setup process are now displayed in the results report.
• Custom process range functions looking at the value of the Dependency Model field (ISIRCalculated.DependencyModel) now return correct results.
• All edits made to an existing selection set now properly enable the Save button.

Student Portal administration module

• Attempting to assign an important information notice to a page type that does not currently have any important notices available now functions as expected.

• ISIR Import: After importing an ISIR file, the new results report is not displayed in the list. Use the in-application Refresh option.
• Batch Processing: After creating a new entity (such as a fund or academic year) in System Administration, it is not available to select within a batch processing flow. After creating the entity, clear your browser cache and then use the browser Refresh option before moving to the Batching Processing module.
• Custom Reports: Custom reports cannot be run successfully if they contain any cost of attendance fields.

See all current Known Issues