From: FSA Customer Support (FSA.Customer.Support@ed.gov)
Date: Sat Apr 27 2002 - 01:52:11 EDT
Dear Partner:
The following Electronic Announcement was posted to the IFAP web site at
http://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/042602CODlive.html . It is being
cross-posted to FINAID-L for your information.
FSA Customer Service Call Center
U.S. Department of Education
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Posted on: April 25, 2002
TO: All Destination Points
FROM: U.S. Department of Education
RE: Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002
The Common Origination and Disbursement system (COD) is the new financial
aid delivery system for Pell Grants and Direct Loans. COD replaces the
Recipient Financial Management System (RFMS) and the Direct Loan Origination
System (DLOS) beginning in Award Year 2002-2003. This message contains
important information on accessing the COD system. This message also
provides a schedule of releases for the COD system in Award Year 2002-2003,
and an overview of features available within each release.
I. Accessing the COD System
On April 29, 2002 the COD system and website will be operational. All
schools will be able to access Award Year 2002-2003 Pell Grant and Direct
Loan information on the COD website at <http://cod.ed.gov>. Access to the
website will be managed by Security Administrators, who are established by
each school. These administrators are responsible for creating user profiles
(including user IDs, passwords, and security access levels for the COD
website) for their schools. More information and specific instructions about
establishing Administrators can be found in the February 27, 2002 IFAP
announcement "Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) User ID Setup for
Website." Administrators will receive additional information to establish
user accounts.
There is also a new COD Customer Service center available beginning April
29, 2002 to address your calls - use the current customer service phone
numbers to reach these staff members - 1(800) 4PGRANT for Pell Grants and
1(800) 848-0978 for Direct Loans. Staff is available Monday through Friday,
8am-8pm Eastern Time. You will be prompted to enter the Award Year that
pertains to your question and your School ID. All Award Year 2002-2003
questions will be handled by the new COD Customer Service Center. Questions
for prior years will be routed to the existing Pell and Loan Origination
Centers.
COD will be processing continuously during the day. To ensure that your
records process by the next morning, you will need to have your overnight
batch files in the COD mailbox by 8:30pm Eastern Time. Full Participants[1]
must use the COD message classes, while Phase-In Participants[2] should
continue using the Pell and Direct Loan message classes.
COD will be made available through a series of system releases. The next
section describes the key features available on the COD system beginning in
Award Year 2002-2003.
II. Description of COD Release 1.0 - April 29, 2002
The COD system will perform the following processing functions in Release
1.0:
* Receive, edit and process Common Records for Full Participants, and
origination, change and disbursement records for Phase-In Participants.
Note: COD Release 1.0 will accept Direct Loan subsidized and unsubsidized
records, and Pell origination and edit-only records only
* Send receipt and response records to Full Participants, and
acknowledgements to Phase-In Participants
* Generate pending Promissory Note acknowledgements (responses) for
Direct Loan subsidized and unsubsidized loans
Note: For the 2002-2003 award year, Promissory Note Manifests and the
corresponding MPNs and PLUS Promissory Notes should be mailed to the Loan
Origination Center (LOC) at P.O. Box 5692, Montgomery, AL 36103-5692 as in
past award years. However, the electronic acknowledgement file (DIPA03OP)
sent in response will be received from the COD system. The status of MPNs
and PLUS Promissory Notes can be found on <http://lo-online.ed.gov> (the
LOC's website).
* Generate Direct Loan disclosure statements
* Calculate Current Finding Level (CFL) increases and decreases for
Direct Loan records
Note: CFL will not be available for Pell Grant records until
early June 2002
* Print and mail Promissory Notes for Direct Loan subsidized and
unsubsidized loans
* Allow users to access and update information on the COD website
(described below)
Some areas of the COD application will function differently in Release 1.0
than they will in future releases. These areas include: COD website
security, reports, Pell Grant information on the web and credit checks for
PLUS loans. Each area is described in more detail below.
COD Website Security
COD will ultimately support five (5) levels of security for schools and five
(5) levels for third party organizations. In Release 1.0, two (2) security
levels will be available for schools and third party organizations - the
School Administrator and the School User 2 levels.
Users that are assigned as School User 2 will be able to perform the
following functions on the COD website:
* Search for a user, batch of records, student, award, credit check,
school, Promissory Note or rejected record
* View details about users, batches, students, awards, disbursements,
Promissory Notes and rejected records
* View and update your own user profile
In addition to the School User 2 capabilities, School Administrator(s) will
be able to perform the following additional functions:
* Establish users as School User 2 within his/her institution for the
COD website
* Change information on students and awards
* Request credit checks via link to LO Online
* View reconciliation and drawdown information
* Maintain school processing options on the website(reference the
"School Processing Options" section of the Implementation Guide in the COD
Technical Reference for more information and specific instructions):
COD Release 1.0 Website Features
Full Participants Phase-In Participants
COD Website Features in Release 1.0 School Administrator School User
2 School Administrator School User 2
Search for a user, batch of records, student, award, credit check, school,
Promissory Note or rejected record X X X X
View details about users, batches, students, awards, disbursements,
Promissory Notes and rejected records X X X X
View and update own profile X X X X
Establish users with School User 2 privileges to access COD website X
X
Change information on students and awards X X
Request credit checks (via link to LO Online) X X
View reconciliation and drawdown information X X
Maintain school processing options on COD website X X
Correct rejected records X
Release records X
Request Ad Hoc reports from COD Customer Service X X X
X
Reports
In Release 1.0 of COD, there are nine (9) reports available to schools. The
following six (6) reports will be automatically sent to schools through
their SAIG mailbox:
Direct Loan Reports
* Pending Disbursement List
* Funded Disbursement List
* Duplicate Student Borrower Report
* 30 Day Warning Report
* Inactive Loans Report
Direct Loan and Pell Reports
* SSN/ Name/ DOB Change Report
These reports are also available by request - schools can contact the COD
Customer Service center to have these reports sent to them. These requests
will provide an identical version of the report(s) already sent - these
report(s) will not be re-run.
Three (3) other reports will be available to schools only by directly
contacting the COD Customer Service center. These requests will be processed
in batch and delivered to schools in the next day's processing cycle:
Pell Reports
* ESOA - for origination data only
* MRR - for origination data only
* Reconciliation File
These three reports will not be available on the COD website during Release
1.0. The report formats will not change from previous years. Schools may
also contact the COD Customer Service center to request ad hoc reports.
Pell Grant Information on the Web
Currently, schools can access detailed information on the homepage of the
Pell Grant website at <http://www.pellgrantsonline.ed.gov> without entering
a User ID or Password. This information includes accounting balances,
disbursement summaries, batch status and institution information. For COD
Release 1.0, this data will not be available on the homepage of the COD
website. Users must log onto the COD website in order to access Award Year
2002-2003 Pell Grant information.
Credit Checks for PLUS Loans
In Release 1.0, credit checks will continue to be processed through
LO-Online. There are two ways to request credit checks for PLUS loans:
Option 1
1. From the COD website, select 'Person' in the main banner bar.
2. Click on the 'Credit Check Search' link on the left navigation
bar. This link will direct you to the LO-Online website.
3. Follow instructions on LO-Online to request a credit check.
OR
Option 2
1. Access LO-Online directly through the URL
<http://lo-online.ed.gov>.
2. Follow instructions on the website to request a credit check.
III. Description of COD Release 1.1 - early June 2002
The COD system will be enhanced for Release 1.1 in early June 2002 to
include the following functions:
* Process requests for credit checks on the COD website
* Process PLUS loans
* Generate pending Promissory Note responses (acknowledgements) for
PLUS loans
* Process Actual and Pending Disbursement records for Pell Grants
* Process Potential Overaward Process (POP) situations for Pell Grants
In addition to the above features, a few areas will function differently in
Release 1.1. These areas include: COD website security and reports. Each
area is described in more detail below.
COD Website Security
The COD system will support five (5) levels of school users and five (5)
levels of third party users beginning in Release 1.1. You will receive more
information soon about the privileges of each level, and how the School
Administrator and Third Party Administrator can establish user levels on the
COD website.
Reports
The six (6) reports that were available to schools through their SAIG
mailboxes in Release 1.0 can be accessed directly through the COD website in
Release 1.1. The website will be enhanced to allow users to view and print
these reports.
Additional reports are scheduled for Release 1.1. A list of these reports
will be available shortly.
IV. Description of COD Release 1.2 - Mid July 2002
Beginning in Release 1.2, Campus-Based program data will be accepted for
reporting purposes. Pell Grant schools will be able to access detailed Pell
Grant information on the COD website homepage without entering a User ID or
Password. The COD website will also include comprehensive help text and a
single view of school summary statistics. COD will also begin reporting
Award Year 2002-2003 Pell Grant data to NSLDS.
You will receive more details about these releases, including implementation
dates, in the near future.
V. COD Customer Service Support
We recommend you subscribe to SFATECH for answers to many of the questions
you may have regarding COD and encourage you to use this resource before
calling the COD Customer Service Call Center. Additionally, before
submitting the question to the e-mail listserv please review the SFATECH
e-mail messages you have received or the FAQ's link on the SFA Technical
Support website.
To subscribe follow these steps:
1. Visit the SFA Technical Support website at
<http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/sfatech/>.
2. Click on the word SFATECH.
3. Click on the link Subscribe to display instructions for how to subscribe
to the e-mail listserv.
Note: If you do not want to receive a lot of separate e-mail messages from
SFATECH, you can use the daily digest feature, which allows you to receive
all of the previous day's messages in a single e-mail. To activate this
feature after subscribing to SFATECH, click on the link Receive messages in
a daily digest.
Although we encourage you to utilize the SFATECH e-mail listserv, you can
also contact the COD Customer Service Center at 1(800) 4PGRANT for Pell
Grants and 1(800) 848-0978 for Direct Loans. Staff is available Monday
through Friday, 8am-8pm Eastern Time.
[1] A Full Participant is a school that submits the new Common Record in the
XML format to the COD System for origination and disbursement of the Pell
Grant and/or Direct Loan programs. Full Participants also have the option of
submitting award data from Campus-Based programs to the COD System.
[2] Phase-In Participant is a school that submits fixed length record
layouts to the COD System for origination and disbursement of the Pell Grant
and/or Direct Loan programs. Phase-In Participants should refer to the
2002-2003 Pell Grant Technical Reference and the 2002-2003 Direct Loan
Technical Reference for the defined record layouts.
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