2025.1

Enhancements made to Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) workflows within PowerFAIDS

The COD Document ID is now displayed on the Results Report list when you import a COD file. If this is a response file, you can match it to the exported file from COD Export with this value.

Additionally, handling of rejects has been improved:

• If you receive a response from COD specifying that a file you sent was rejected, the Details column of the results report now displays the reason for rejection.
• If you receive a response from COD specifying that an award or disbursement was rejected, the Details column of the results report now indicates that and directs to the Federal Loans page of the student record for more information.
• When importing a response or web-based response file from COD, there is now an option to view a version of the results report that only includes rejects and errors. For more information, see COD Import Rejects & Errors Report.

ACTION REQUIRED: Update to resolve Federal Pell Grant calculation issue

PowerFAIDS had previously been awarding a Federal Pell Grant award to students with a calculated Student Aid Index (SAI) of 6658 or 6659. Based upon clarified guidance from Federal Student Aid, these students are not Federal Pell Grant eligible in the 2024-2025 award year.

The Federal Pell Grant calculations have been updated to account for this moving forward, but existing students will need to be updated manually to resolve this issue. To find any impacted students, create the following selection set:

(ISIRCalculated.CalculatedSAI == 6658 OR ISIRCalculated.CalculatedSAI == 6659) AND ISIRCalculated.CalculatedMetPovertyGuidelines == "No"

For any students identified by this selection set, navigate to the Academic Years & Payment Periods page of their student record and find the Pell Enabled field for the payment period. Set this field to Yes, then back to No, and save the update. Repeat this action for all payment periods associated with 2024-2025 award year. This should remove the Federal Pell Grant award from the student. If the award was already reported to COD, the award will be reduced to 0 and a correction will need to be sent.

ACTION REQUIRED: Update to disbursement rules

Two new system-defined customizable disbursement rules have been added:

• Disbursement Accepted at COD: by default this rule is enforced for disbursement authorization and not enforced for COD.
• ISIR Update Not Required: by default this rule is enforced for both disbursement authorization and COD.

Please review both rules and update the enforcement settings if needed. The ISIR Update Not Required rule was previously automatically enforced by the system but is now customizable per institution.

Batch print letters now creates individual PDF files for each student included in the selected population

Instead of a single merged PDF file, the Batch Print Letters process now creates a ZIP file containing individual PDF files for each student, allowing for easier distribution.

Minor enhancement to search using selection sets

The name of the selection set you used to perform a search now appears at the top of the left panel containing the search results.

Updates to support new federal Entrance Counseling terminology

Fields on the Communication Preferences and Federal Loans pages related to Entrance Counseling have updated names and field aliases to match new federal terminology.

List of Updated Fields

Location	Old Field Name	New Field Name	New Field Alias
System Administration > Communication Preferences	Undergraduate Entrance Counseling	Subsidized/Unsubsidized Entrance Counseling	SystemAdministration.CommunicationPreferencesRequirementTrackingSubsidizedUnsubsidizedEntranceCounseling
System Administration > Communication Preferences	Graduate Entrance Counseling	Subsidized/Unsubsidized/PLUS Entrance Counseling	SystemAdministration.CommunicationPreferencesRequirementTrackingSubsidizedUnsubsidizedPLUSEntranceCounseling
Student > Packaging > Federal Loans	Graduate Entrance Counseling Date	Subsidized/Unsubsidized/PLUS Entrance Counseling Date	CODStudent.SubsidizedUnsubsidizedPLUSEntranceCounselingDate Associated field lock: CODStudent.SubsidizedUnsubsidizedPLUSEntranceCounselingDateLock
Student > Packaging > Federal Loans	Subsidized and Unsubsidized Entrance Counseling Date	Subsidized/Unsubsidized Entrance Counseling Date	CODStudent.SubsidizedUnsubsidizedEntranceCounselingDate Associated field lock: CODStudent.SubsidizedUnsubsidizedEntranceCounselingDateLock

System-Wide

• A user who has not been assigned to a security group can now successfully log into the system, but will only be able to access the home page of the application.

Search

• When running an advanced search, the list of students is now updates even if the search returns 0 results.
• Disbursement fields now display correct data in custom reports and selection sets even if awards have not yet been disbursed.
• Posting Status (TransactionData.PostingStatus) and Database Results Flag (NSLDS.DatabaseResultsFlag) fields now return correct results in advanced searches and selection sets.

Student module

• Selecting the Hold/Resume button next to a student's tracking status now causes the page to display a spinner until the value is updated.
• After making changes to any field or lock and then canceling them, a confirmation of unsaved changes message is no longer displayed when you navigate to another page.
• A previously shielded cost of attendance item is now immediately removed from the student once the shield is removed if the item has been removed from the associated payment period in System Administration.
• When an error occurs during formula based packaging, the tracking status is no longer advanced to Not Awarded status if the student was successfully awarded.
• The Aid Package page in the student record now continues to display the associated award information even when a high number of awards are added to the aid package.
• When more than one need-based award is updated on a student's aid package at the same time, the Unmet Need and Cost of Attendance limits are now able to calculate correctly.
• Setting the Increase Unsub Due to PLUS Denial packaging option for a student now automatically sets the Additional Unsubsidized Eligibility Indicator field to Yes.
• When an additional payment period is added to a student's record, a Federal Pell Grant award is now automatically awarded or increased where appropriate if the student is eligible for the award.
• When an additional payment period is added to a student's record, the Cost of Attendance value on the student's Aid Package page is no longer blank in some cases.
• When the Children of Fallen Heroes Flag, IASG Flag, or Parent Killed in Line of Duty fields are updated, a Federal Pell Grant award is now automatically awarded if the update causes the student to become eligible for the award.
• All award tabs on the Federal Pell Grants, Federal TEACH Grants, and Federal Loans pages now display correct data for the associated individual awards.
• The ISIR Update Required field on the Federal Pell Grant page now displays the correct value.
• Locking the Award Amount field for a Federal Pell Grant award now correctly prevents the amount from being updated by the system.
• Making changes to data on the Federal Pell Grant page no longer results in an error that Teacher Expert Indicator is a required field when it has already been set.
• The MPN ID field on the Federal Loans page can now be successfully locked.
• When an award is disbursed, the existing row for the award in the COD Disbursement Details table of the Federal Loans page is now updated.
• The NSLDS Loan Subsidy Status Date field is now displayed in the UI.
• 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 automatically updated on the associated student records.
• Effective Date value for requirements is now accurate to the time zone selected in the School Profile.
• The Need Analysis engine is now correctly using age 24 to determine a student's dependency status as Independent for students with a 24-25 ISIR.
• The Filter Data > Year > Academic Year filter in the timeline now displays the correct list of academic years.

Batch Processing module

• The associated academic year is now displayed in the batch update field value results report list.
• After creating a new entity (such as a fund or academic year) in System Administration, it is now immediately available to select within a batch processing flow.

Import/Export module

• The student information import now correctly processes values with more than two decimal places.
• Invalid characters are now handled correctly by the student information import if included in the Student ID field or Driver's License fields.
• The search feature on the Federal Award Processing (COD) Import dashboard is now functional.
• The Last Name column now correctly populates on the Federal Award Processing (COD) Import dashboard if the data is included in the imported file.
• The Meeting Federal SAP disbursement rule is no longer incorrectly flagging students as ineligible when Federal SAP is blank.
• When the Private Loan Disbursement Roster Received disbursement rule is enabled and a private loan fails to disburse due to this rule, the Current Status field for the impacted loan no longer moves to Disbursed.
• Submit Date value on the NSLDS dashboard is now accurate to the time zone selected in the School Profile.
• The COD export process no longer excludes the Pell Grant award after setting the Pell Enabled field to No for one or more payment period.
• Federal PLUS loans can now be disbursed for students who have a denied PLUS application recorded on their student record, as long as the denied application is not associated with the award being disbursed.
• Graduate PLUS Application files can now be successfully imported even if they do not contain a Citizenship Code value.
• The Disbursement Amount Received value in the disbursement roster is now being correctly converted to include a decimal point, so there should no longer be a discrepancy between the Award.DistributionAmount and the PrivateLoan.DisbursementAmountReceived values.
• Disbursement reconciliation files that contain more than 4,000 rows can now be processed successfully.
• Posting ISIR transactions with the Update Existing Student Names option set to Yes now also updates the student's middle name on the Student Profile page of the student record, in addition to first and last.

Reporting module

• When exporting a custom report, the file name now correctly matches what is shown on the user interface.
• The Award Analysis Report (by payment period) now contains accurate total amounts and displays the same data regardless of output selected.
• The Award Source Summary Report now displays accurate values in the Unduplicated Number of Awards column.
• Disbursement Reconciliation Report can now be generated successfully.
• Disbursement fields now display correct data in custom reports and selection sets even if awards have not yet been disbursed.

System Administration module

• Adding a Pell formula and associated Pell cost of attendance information to an academic year now prompts you to save changes if you navigate to another page.
• Updating the Disbursement Date field of a payment period that has already been assigned to students now correctly updates the associated Disbursement Date field on impacted student records.
• An incorrect message regarding unsaved changes is no longer received when navigating away from a payment period.
• ISIR contact information fields can now be used as student data values in a communication template.
• Funds are now correctly sorted by fund name.
• When editing the name of a fund, the cursor no longer moves to the end of the text after entering each character.
• When creating or editing a fund, setting the First-Time Borrower field to Yes now applies the appropriate first-time borrower rules to the fund.
• Newly created private loan programs, lenders, and guarantors are now immediately available for use in the fund setup.
• Copying a formatted phone number into the Phone Number field when creating a new user no longer prevents the data from being saved successfully.
• Attempting to deactivate a system administrator user now results in a more specific message about why the user cannot be deactivated.