Great Expectations: What to Expect and How to Prepare for Common App Integration

There we go.

And they come.

All right.

Our numbers are still climbing. I'm just going to give it another couple seconds.

All right, we're going to get started. Thank you, everyone for joining us for today's Slate Presents webinar entitled Great Expectations. I couldn't refuse a literary reference what to expect and how to prepare for the common app integration with Slate.

First and foremost, some housekeeping tips. This webinar is being recorded and will be made available through a Knowledge Base article link for future viewing.

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Questions may be posted in the chat. We will address questions submitted through today's call. At the end of our planned presentation, we will be addressing the pre submitted questions during the course of the rest of our content.

Today's agenda looks like this. We're going to address the timeline of the overall common A process, what the PDF Global configuration is comprised of. That's the scheduled delivery service from Common app. What your daily file process looks like.

Mapping tips and pitfalls to avoid as well as the testing process and of course Q&A. So welcome once again to everyone. My name is Charlene Robbie. I'm a Senior Client Success Manager joined by Technical Engineer Tim Dunning and our resident common app expert.

Hi everyone.

I want to remind all of you who may not be aware that the webinar we held a few weeks ago was designed for first year integrators. So if this is your first year using the common app integration with Slate, you may want to go take a peek at that webinar for a much more introductory view and explanation of the overall process. We've condensed a lot of that information in today's, but really the intent of today's.

Just to dive a little bit deeper into specific file types, source formats and mapping, Tim is going to place the link to the July webinar in the chat, and you can also get to that from the knowledge base.

So first and foremost, what does this process timeline look like for all clients using the Slate global process? It's important to remember that this is a global process in conjunction with common app and technicians. As you all know, the Common App launched August 1st.

And starting the week of August 14th, next week the SDS service will begin.

Note that this does not mean.

Every school will be getting files next week. It will start off in small batch deliveries.

We will take a look at the Files Common app. We'll take a look at the files of course that are live files being sent.

And then continual batches will be released over the coming weeks, which means into the rest of August and September you're going to continue testing, mapping, and activating your source formats.

Some quick background about roles and responsibilities. I think it's important for everybody to understand that there is involvement and responsibility on the part of common app technicians and you as the colleges and universities on the receiving end of this data.

1st, and some of this has been done already based on where we are in August, the common A configures the global D So what does the overall structure of the common app data look like that's going to be delivered on behalf of all schools?

They will clone that configuration to all of the Slate school databases.

And then of course they're going to deliver test files to us, which they've already done and we've signed off on.

And together we resolve any issues or outstanding questions with those files.

And then common app is going to activate production feeds. So we're roughly between items four and five right now chronologically.

Technicians roles and responsibilities of course. Kind of the mirror or receiving image of what common app is passing to us. We're going to help coordinate those global configurations for the delivery service. We have already evaluated test files and built the global remappings for the various source formats.

We have also inactivated the remap active setting in the source format and updated the remap as of date O. The period that we are sitting in right now is sort of what I've called the lockdown period. There isn't anything happening right now with files being delivered.

Not until next week will that process kick off.

So a lot of you ask or wonder, well, what is it we should be doing and what can we be doing?

Once you start receiving files, of course you can begin the remapping process. For those of you that are in your second or later years of doing this, last year's mappings are preserved. So you can of course make any date specific term specific adjustments to any of those field mappings. For those of you doing this for the first time, you will have to complete an entire mapping of your file.

So that you can, with wide with eyes wide open, fully understand all the data coming in, make the concrete decision about what custom fields may need to be created in your slate database.

And modify any remappings.

We emphasize that you do so for essential fields only, because it's not likely that you want every data point anyway. So do this with the mindset that you're going to make use of all the data points coming in.

Testing mappings, we'll get into a little bit more detail about how specifically to do that.

And of course, once you've tested to your heart's content, you will set the Remap Active setting to Active, which will actually allow the data to flow into your database and populate your application records.

The file process, just like the overall global delivery process, we're talking about a multi step, multi party process involved with this.

Each of these blue box represents all of the source formats that are available through your database.

For the incoming files from the common app.

So all of you are going to at least receive files for three of these source formats or file types. Your applications of course.

Your recommendations?

And your materials, your apps and your recommendations are data files. Your materials, of course, contain PDFs.

The payments courses and writing supplement files are going to depend, so this may vary from school to school, if you charge a fee, of course.

You will have a payment file. It's going to contain various statuses of your payments, including an IP status for in process payments pertaining to International Monetary payments.

Writing Supplement is optional, of course and courses. Some schools opt not to make use of the recommendations file and don't map those at all. It's your decision. Some organizations will only pluck, GPA and school rank from that file.

So keep in mind there's a source format for each of these files, and a corresponding knowledge base article explaining the nuances of each.

Here's essentially a bird's eye view of the entire process. So the common app is releasing files to the slate SFTP sites. That's the automated.

Delivery process.

You may have 1/3 or all of the file types in the sender box represented by all of the different file deliveries and source formats. And then of course they require your involvement with mapping in order to push that data to your slate application records. Once they are set up the data will automatically flow, so it is a one time setup process.

Couple of items we want to call out about common at materials and then Tim's going to discuss in greater detail the particular file types and source formats. But just to make you aware, there's several items we want to repeat a couple times throughout this. The common app material source format is really used to map the material translation values.

The PDF's are going to be processed in your production environment only once an app record exists for that person.

So your PDF can't be imported into the test environment.

Again, just to reiterate, this global daily process that happens there is a parallel downloading from the common app SFTP servers.

To your slate database.

Folder.

And the process begins two at 2:30 AM daily and will continue until 10:30 AM.

We do not know which school is batched at which time, and it's certainly not anything that we have control of. Quite often folks will ask us if they can have their time slot changed, not anything that we can control.

There is of course centralized monitoring of any issues by both common app and technicians.

Slightly different perspective on what's happening with your files. Once they are moved to your partner folder for pickup, the data files are automatically going to be uploaded.

Once your source formats are activated.

The files will be remapped according to the mappings that you've set up.

And the data and docks will automatically be imported. So this is happening on a daily basis.

Documentation. Our message here is to maximize it. I would say 90% of the questions that we receive every year are contained and answered in the documentation. I've got a quick screen shot of the updated common app library in the knowledge base. The very first webinar recording is the webinar from July. Take a look at that if you want a little bit more detail about background information.

And you'll notice there's an article for each file type and each source format.

Now Tim's going to take a look into 2324 changes specific to coming up this year.

Thank you, Charlene. Yeah, so I'm gonna start.

With some of the changes someone asked in the pre webinar questions if there were significant changes or major changes. I think that's open to interpretation.

These these options certainly have an impact on students and on your process, but I kind of leave it up to you to make that judgment kind of the two main changes And we do have an article that kind of highlights these changes. The common app you may recall has been this had this initiative called evolving the application and they've been kind of changing some of the wording for the sex question. They've also introduced a gender.

Question and they've kind of been changing both of those this year they are introducing the ex option for sex and so that's something we'll talk a little bit more about And then of course race and restricting race based on the Supreme Court decision and ruling. And so those are a couple of important things that you're going to have to be aware of and and make decisions.

About during this process.

Um, so one of the things with the sex of field and its associated prompts in Slate is out-of-the-box you receive them, there's male and female, they have index values of M&F associated with them and you really don't have to do anything outside of that. If you want to just use those two options, they're they're pre-existing and they're there. However, if you decide.

In this case, if you want to map that X value that's coming in from the common app, you do have to go and add the male and female prompts that are exist, but you'll have to go into the prompt tool and Slate and actually add those. There's instructions in the article that's kind of on the screen here that Char will put up a link to that basically tell you how to do that. It's it's key that you have to add things.

Exactly as I show here with the value for mail and the value for female as well as the index values. And then you could add some people have already added kind of non binary, they've added other and then you can also add the X option and so you can set up all of those all those prompts in Slate.

And you can then, umm, so you want to do. You can do that today. You can do that ahead of receiving files, but certainly once you receive your first.

Either it's suspect or prospect or application file. You can also make sure that you have those so you can start that process. And Peter McKay just assisted and put the Customizing Steering Standard Fields and Prompts option in there. So thank you Peter for that assist.

Umm, the next thing is, of course, like I mentioned, the race options. We're not attorneys. We don't play them on TV or in real life. So I definitely recommend that you're having discussions on your campus. There doesn't appear to be two kind of us lay people that there's anything.

So the question is can we add X to our list of sex options? Yes, I actually just went over that process and it's actually in the article that Peter just posted, Paul. So you'll follow that article and you'll actually add the the props as listed and certainly reach out via help or community forums if you have any additional questions. So getting back to the rates changes, like I said, you know you'll want to have discussions on your campus. You know there doesn't seem to be anything that prevents.

Um, you from capturing race or displaying it in certain circumstances, But how you do that? Who you allow access to is really going to be up to you. We do have an article written by our CEO and founder Alexander Clark, which is called Restricting Access to Race and Other Fields. You'll want to review that. You certainly can go into the the common App file source format mappings you can unwrap, Hispanic you can unmap.

The race options which are typically the background fields that are coming from the common app and so you can certainly do that. You can also contact the common app, ask them to exclude any of those kind of race options from the PDFs and so it's kind of an all or nothing. You could say we're fine with receiving them in the PDF or please don't include them. You currently already have that option for things like.

SSN and so this is just extending that functionality. Now to the to the race options. So.

There's that, um. And next I'm going to go into a little bit of details about mapping and kind of cover some of the things that I think are essential and mostly some don'ts. Usually you should kind of focus on the dues, but we do kind of have to stress some of the don'ts because if you don't kind of do things the way that we outline them, you can run into issues and we want to make sure that you have a good experience your applicants.

Have a good experience so.

If there are suppressant PDF, you don't get them in the PDF, you will receive them in the data file. So there's no way to suppress them in the data file. So that's a common apps decision, That's a global decision that's outside of our control. You can choose, like I said, to not map them. There's other ways to as described in that article to to handle that. So the first thing is if you are using a custom platform with the common app.

Uh, you can receive suspect in prospects If you're using the standard platform. They don't make those files available to you via the SDS process. You could go in if you are a standard platform school, you could go in and download those files and manually upload them. You just won't receive them through the automated process. If you have questions about that, or want to change your status, or want to know what your status or kind of your platform is, certainly reach out to the common app. That's not something that.

Heat control on the slate end. So when we're talking about suspects and prospects, these are kind of person scoped only in slate and that's important. You should not. We don't recommend mapping application fields. The student hasn't submitted an application yet and so these are just you know, these are fields that describe information about the student and their family and and other kind of data points.

A suspect A student becomes a suspect to your institution when they add your school to their My Colleges list and nothing else. They could complete no additional questions, None of your member screen questions, or they can complete several, but as soon as they take the action the next day, you'll receive them in a file and in the suspect file.

And then later when they complete your member questions, they will become a prospect to your institution and then you would receive them in the prospect file. And so those are kind of the two times that you received these pre applicants from the common app. And here's a link to the documentation that Charlene just posted. And so there's that.

So and another thing I want to stress and this is once we move on to the application is that we actually add a custom field to the mappings that you'll see and it's the slate common app ID that is a application scoped field. The common app doesn't send a app specific field. So if a student applies to your institution today and they apply next year as a transfer student.

If we didn't have an app scope field.

Things would automatically be confined. They don't distinguish and don't send a app scope ID. So we create one. It's. It changes each year. It's the common app ID and the year. So this year it will be 2024. Last year it was 2023. You also received the common app ID in the file, but just note that it is person skilled and so please it's pre mapped, you don't have to touch it.

And there was one year on a webinar, I think I mentioned 20 times not to change that coming up ID mapping, and about 30 schools did. I wish they didn't because then recommendation files don't import correctly, materials don't import correctly, and it really kind of messes up your process. So I'm happy. If there may be edge cases, I'm happy to talk to anyone about that. You could post in the community forums. We might if you have a very specific circumstance.

Trying to handle that through a service request, but really they're pre mapped, they're set, the process works. It's tried and true for several years that it works the way it's set up. So that's my soapbox for now. I hope everyone on here kind of adheres to that and that will cut down on. I just want it to be a smooth process and it really inhibits your ability to have a smooth process. So there's also another essential mapping which is for the application.

While the application round you have to map to an application round in slate that could be through a field that could be through a static value mapping. So if you're a rolling school, rolling admission school, you only have one round, it's fine to.

You know, set a static mapping so every applicant has the same round, because if you only have one round, it's fine.

And then the other thing is you have member specific questions. Some of them are common, but your choices are different than everyone else's or possibly different, and so you'll need to be aware of those. And in many cases you'll have to create fields in slate. Those could be personal scope field or application scope fields depending on what they are. And so that's something to keep in mind. You should be aware of your.

Of your member screen questions, you should be aware of really all of the data points at this point. I hope everyone's signed up. For a common app account. You can have a test account that's not a student and make sure you're aware of kind of what the data is. You can also look at the data catalog which has all the fields and all the kind of choices that go along with them.

And for a lot of you, your rounds are going to come from either the star term or the emission plan. So again, it's important that that you're aware of those and know what your choices are and kind of what data you're going to be receiving. So for example, this school is a rolling admission school. They probably only have one round in slate. They could literally set a static value for what for the fall 2024 if that's the only option.

For there and Brandon, I'd love to know kind of what your reasons are for adding additional mapping for the comment ID. I mean that you could have a good one, it's the but the slate coming up ID is the essential one. So the slate one is the app scope one and that's the one I recommend that you stay far away, but happy to talk about if you have some special circumstance.

And then I thought we would cover some of the some of the questions that you all brought up when you registered.

And this the first question was about document DACA and undocumented students and the and it was really you know what are some ideas for mapping citizenship for undocumented applicants. That's kind of a tough one because they they don't have a citizenship. There's and there's not a corresponding slate delivered or pre built field to store DACA or their undocumented status. So I think what a lot of schools end up doing is.

Is creating a custom field in Slate and adding, you know, the fact that they're undocumented students. So certainly there could be other approaches to that. If you have ideas and you want to, you know, create a community forum post, I think that that would be great and appreciated if if there's another way that you're kind of tracking those students. We also had a question about the mailing and permanent address so you're going to receive if the student.

You're always going to get a permanent address. If they also complete a mailing address, you'll receive that. And basically the question was what is the best practice for mapping address values? Should we always bring in permanent and mailing from the application?

How do we map the permanent to the mailing address only if no alternate address is provided. We don't currently have the ability to do conditional mapping in Slate, so my recommendation is keep the kind of defaults which are the permanent address from Slate now from Slate, the permanent address from the common app goes into the Slate permanent address and the mailing address, if it's provided from the common app, goes into the mailing address and that way you're capturing those data points.

And making sure they're getting added to sleep because they're obviously important. Important fields are are data points that that you want in your process.

The next question was related to common app parent address and the question was what happened to parent address. So historically the common app never sent the parent address if it was the same as the students.

And then along with their evolving the application, they also stopped sending it if it was different from the students and so prior to 2122.

The you know we we have that data point where we don't have it any longer. So since it's not available from the common app, it's it's nothing that we can can provide.

And then finally, we did have a question about parent order. This is something that I think always trips up schools, is that the common app has the student indicate a parent one and parent two or other parent or a or a step parent. But and the question was.

How do we map custom fields for relation data to make sure they match the slate relation table rankings? Sometimes there's confusion on what is seen for parent wants 2 step, parent 1-2, other and family data on the common application. For example, parent one could be a mother based on how the applicant entered the data, but parent one based on relation type and slate is the rank one and becomes the father.

Umm due to how slates relationship table ranking works And then it further went on some custom custom fields on parents and stepparents don't get mapped properly with the slate relation table ranking. How to do that? So Charlene posted a link to an article. It talks about the rankings for a lot of system objects including the parent or relationship rankings and it is true.

Slate does not use the common app order for parent one, parent two. Typically what ends up happening is that you know it's going, it goes alphabetical basically and father becomes parent one and slate mother becomes parent two if you want to maintain those common app.

Part one and parent two. You could create custom fields, that's probably.

You know or or you know a separate outside of the normal kind of parents and maintain and map map additional added an additional mapping so that you can retain how they come across and of course when you look at the PDF they are going to.

Appear how the student responded on the common application itself, so hopefully that makes sense. Take a look at the article and you know, I think there's there's been some discussion previously in the community forums and we can certainly have that discussion again.

But.

I don't, uh, so to answer a couple of the questions that have come in so far, I don't have a timeline on configurable mapping that was announced at the summit. I would say, you know, keep your eyes and ears open for that. I would welcome that for sure, but I don't have a timeline. And then any chance in the future we get a version of the recommender file that would update the organization contacts? We haven't really gotten to the recommendations yet, but.

Um, the recommendation file you receive is a student based file. It is the recommenders for the students. I think a lot of times what schools do is kind of throughout the process, they might go to the the common app side, export a similar file, and then upload that to organizations and organization contacts. But.

That's up to the common app. If they want to send a recommender based file. Currently they don't make one available and if they did then we could accommodate that.

So I'm going to move on to material mapping. This sometimes kind of confuses people and the reason is that the material source format, the common app material source format, it's not actually used to process materials. It's actually used to provide translation values from how the common app names and material until what you have in your slate instance. And that can be different for every school.

So what you're doing when you're completing those material mappings for the covenant material source format is you are providing those translations from what the common up has to what you have, and you do that strictly through the prompt value mappings. That's the only place you won't see any fields there. There's nothing wrong if you don't see any fields there. You can actually go ahead and complete those mappings. Now if you want, you can get a list of the materials from the common app, or you can wait.

Um until you start receiving them. But if you are a new school you're going to have to create materials. I always recommend creating a one to one relationship. So the common up has a School Report. I would recommend creating a School Report. They have a School Report transcript which is a separate material that you'll receive. Create one and slate for that material. You can also use a school scope transcript which is those sys transcripts.

Uh, the Common app provides and recommender ID in the file. What we actually do is go to the recommendation file. We look up the school that the counselor added. We look on the student record to see if there's a match and if there is, the material. The St. material would would fulfill that checklist item for the School Report transcript. If it doesn't match slate. We'll try for three days hoping that maybe you updated the school and then if it finds a match, it will.

Got it. If it doesn't, those materials will actually end up in batch material, so that's only if you're using the Score Report Transcript school scoped material.

And materials will always only import if there's an application, so you won't see anything. They'll start accumulating if you know that you'll have them as soon as kind of you start receiving files, but they'll sit there until you've activated the common app, the main common application source format. You have files and you have records, and you add them.

So that's a little bit confusing, but just know that kind of everything relates to that application. Once you get to the application process and it needs an application, meaning you need to map around and you need to see an application tab. Once you kind of have those, you'll know that you're on the right track.

We did have a couple questions related to materials. Um, one of the questions I didn't really understand. So if if this question sounds familiar, feel free to clarify in the chat. But it was asking about optimizing slate uploading of emission documents for school counselors, parents, and students.

For the common app, those materials are going to be collected on the common app side. So I'm not sure if this is related to maybe materials outside of that process, but I'm not sure what what the person who asked this question was actually looking for. They're asking about optimizing slate uploading of emission documents. And then we also had a question about document exports. They asked them is there a way to batch download transcript materials that.

Are imported. You can pull all of them from the process folder once they are processed.

And but you also could do a document export.

I think most schools use Slate for their review process. They might be eventually, maybe when the student gets to the decision time or matriculation time somewhere in there, export all the documents. But typically you're just kind of leaving them in Slate.

From there.

And then there are some other related files. There is the recommendation data file, so that file also corresponds with the materials. So when the teacher evaluations and the school reports on things filling being filled out by the counselors are completed, they also go into the data file. Schools do use this file to map things like GPA and rank and class size. You could certainly do so.

But again, as I mentioned earlier, keep in mind this is a student focused file and so it's really related to the student and these files will only import once you have an application.

Also, there's a payment file. This includes both fee waivers and payments. And so if you collect a fee, you will receive this file. If you don't collect a fee, you won't get the payment file. But you can map payments. And the way. I mean there's different ways to do that. I think there was a community forum post there, good community forum post about this if you have one kind of fee for everyone.

You could um when they have a successful payment transaction in that file, you could set a bit prompt and then you could go ahead based on the success of that payment and rules. You could add a payment activity and you could automatically fulfill it if you have a payment. If it's an incomplete payment, which are kind of those international payments, you could set it to pending or or you know not fulfilled. And then of course if they have a fee waiver, you can map to and and have it slate.

Add a checklist item for that fee waiver that you need to receive. And so again, there is a kind of a community forum post about that and so there's there could be many, many ways to do that.

All right. There's also the optional courses, um, source format. So if you are, if you're a school that requires students to complete that you would also receive that file again, once, kind of the common application records added, then you can go ahead and import that file as well.

And then if you have an option or a required writing supplement, this is different than the essay that's part of the common app. But if you have a writing supplement that's an additional to that essay, you would receive that file as well. So those are kind of all the files. Everyone's going to receive an application file, they'll receive a recommendation file and they'll receive materials. If you're on the custom platform, you get the suspects and prospects.

And then if you have, if you have a separate courses, you'll section you'll get that file and then if you have a writing something, you get that one. If you don't have courses and you don't have writing supplement, you're not going to receive them, obviously.

And then I'm just going to move along. Um.

Oh, I I guess I missed a couple questions. Someone asked about starting the process. I don't recommend starting the process. I recommend waiting until the common app stop starts the process. I mean, you could certainly opt out of the SDS process, but I I don't recommend it.

You you're going to have to do everything manually, and we want to make sure that kind of everything gets set up.

That way so.

And then there's a question about payments. Might there be some way for the coming up payment format to include all transact payment updates?

It's a manual process, yeah, I yeah, I understand that. That's certainly something that you want to bring up with the common app.

All right, so let's move along to testing.

We certainly want you to test your mappings, and this is certainly one approach. It's a tried and true approach. I recommend it. You could do other things, but really it's familiarize yourself with the data you're going to receive. I actually recommend you go into production. Don't go into clean slate. Don't go into a test environment. Go into production and update the mappings accordingly, and that means making all the changes.

Because nothing's going to import until you set the REMAP ACTIVE flag to active. And don't do that until you're ready. But you can go ahead and do all these mappings. We then recommend you refresh your test environment. Or you could provision a time warp right? It's kind of the same thing. One is kind of intended to be more permanent than the other, but get a test instance of your common app mappings that you just set up.

You can go ahead and set that remap ACTIVE flag. Uh, in test. Make sure you're in test. We've had people prematurely kind of set that flag in production, make sure you're in test. You should see a banner that you're in test or you're in a time warp. Go ahead and let the files import and test. You do have to use the Force Process Import option, right which is on the database menu under Data Import. Go ahead and let everything import and then start checking your data.

And check it, make sure everything is kind of what you expect and if if it's good, then you're ready to start the process in production. But if it's not good, go back to production, make the appropriate changes and then start this process over again and kind of once you go from.

Once you get to refreshing your test environment, you can continue to do that process until you're satisfied you are confident and kind of what's going to happen, and then you can go over to production. So do this for your suspects and prospects. Do this for your application files.

Um, and just note that in while you're doing that testing, you can't import materials automatically. They will import exactly how you set them up in those mappings. However, and definitely make sure you have set up the materials before you activate the the common app.

Course format, but that's the recommended process.

That is kind of worked successfully for many schools and like I said, I want you all to be successful. That's why I'm here. That's why I've been doing this for for several years at the Common App and now over 10 years here at Tech Evolutions have been helping schools with this process and managing this process so.

And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Charlene.

OK, some next sessions. Since you will be jumping into the deep end over the next couple of weeks, we have a couple community conversations scheduled for the 16th and the 23rd. They will not be recorded. They will be more informal than this. So bring your questions. Umm.

They will obviously be moderating that for you, and members of our engineering team will be there to help answer questions. But just as you're helping one another in today's chat, you'll be helping one another live on that call as well. Our third common app webinar will be September 6th, but that will focus on transfer files and the transfer process with common app exclusively.

So um, I would also encourage you. Tim has referred to this a couple of times to using the community forums as many of you know.

You can exchange suggestions, questions and answers recommendations there, much like you are in this chat and much like you will in community conversations. And you have the benefit of referring back to it and citing one another as you go. So do not forget that the forms are there as a key resource for you. Which brings us to our.

Our resource reminders if you will. So if you have questions about the data catalog, your member screen questions, dates and deadline configurations for your files. Obviously those are common app questions that we can't necessarily help you with. But do keep in mind that the resources technicians does provide are of course the knowledge base. The Learning Lab contains a new introduction to common app course.

So for those of you with a learning lab access.

That course was published maybe four to six weeks ago. If you are doing this for the first time this year, I would highly recommend you take a look at that course and you're here today and we've told you about the upcoming sessions as well as the community forums.

So we will take any additional questions from you today through the chat that we haven't gotten to.

Where and when can we sign up for the transfer session? The same place that you signed up for this one. If you go to Home Slate in the top right corner of your database and hover over Home Plate that comes up in the pop up menu, you will see a tab for I think it may be titled Slate Presents or Webinars in addition to the community conversations on the adjacent tab.

What else?

Pete's got a good question. When importing in tests to verify mapping, how long does it take to import?

I have local documentation that indicates it takes an hour or more.

So it tests. You'll want to use the force process import process which I've mentioned about 5 minutes ago, and that's going to so Slate. So just to back up Slate processes imports in a batch process, you can tell Slate you want to process the common app file immediately in production. Slate will handle that. I don't recommend using force process import in production unless absolutely necessary because.

They knows what's best and which import to run and it knows what files are locked, et cetera. So it kind of handles it automatically. But in test you can certainly run force process import and it's going to allow it to import basically immediately. It's going to schedule a batch process, but it's going to tell it to run and if obviously if you don't have a lot of activity in tests, it's just going to happen.

Yes, Don, this webinar will be available and published in the Knowledge base.

I don't think we addressed this one specifically, Tim from Michelle. Do we have advice on properly mapping parent e-mail and phone opt outs in slate when that's received from coming out?

Umm.

No, I don't actually. I'd have to think about that one.

Yeah.

So Nancy, just answer your question. So you're asking about refreshing test environment. The files will be in the SFTP test folders, so everything is basically going to be available and so what's going to happen is when you.

Set that REMAP active flag to active and you then basically tell Slate you're ready, and then you run force process import. It is going to grab those files from the SFTP folders. They're actually in the production folders, but it's going to grab them. It's going to upload the files and then you're going to be able to see the results, but it's going to keep them over and available in production.

Minus the materials. Nothing will happen with the materials.

Um, so Chrissy has a question is if our SAS isn't able to accept X from slate coming up and so do we just not map the prompt value? No, I don't offer any kind of formal advice on this. I'm just telling you how it's possible to match to map X. You don't have to do anything with that value. What will happen is if if a record has X and you haven't set up a prompt and or you haven't mapped that prompt, nothing will get added.

Of that data field. That's like every other piece of data in Slate that you're receiving through the common app. If I don't map something and another kind of notice, please don't map everything. There's over 2400 possible data elements from the common app.

We did have a school one year that was going through and trying to map all of them. You don't need, um, probably likely you don't need for example, you know, parent, twos, third college, 4th degree. Unless maybe it's your institution. But my point is there's a lot of data. If you don't maps either a field or if you don't map an associated prompt for a prompt based field, that data point won't get added to the student record.

And Brittany has a question about the SDS process. So yeah, so I guess I'll provide a little bit more information about that is we want to make sure things are successful. So the common app is going to start.

Usually with one or two schools, they'll start.

Kind of generating files, we will check them, we'll make sure everything is correct and we'll either everything will be great, which I anticipate based on the few changes this year that everything will be great. But every once in a while there's kind of some things that don't get configured correctly. We'll provide that feedback back to the the common app. They'll go ahead and make adjustments and if they need to, they would regenerate the files for the next day. So it kind of goes through the normal process.

Umm, they get picked up. We review them. Um.

But then they they're in control of the process. I don't have any information on kind of which schools are going to start activating. In the past they've kind of had a list based on when you approved your member screen questions, but I don't, I don't know specifically how they're doing that now. But you know you should have kind of it and you don't have to start the the slate process even if you start receiving files. So if you're not ready because you can't really test.

Anything into you receive files. So kind of. Once you receive files, you can start working in Slate, and then when you're ready in Slate you're in control of activating by doing that, this process here and setting the REMAP active flag for these data source formats. And again, there's nothing to turn on for materials they'll automatically import once there's an application for the record.

And Brian, there's nothing to do kind of for SFTP, we give you a tool called SFTP Explorer, but we go out to the common app, we pick up the files, we download them, we provision them kind of a for schools. And so there's you don't have to touch anything, they're going to be there and then kind of once that's kind of this process back here, right. So we're going to go out.

Can download files for every school.

And that process runs daily. There's every hour. So at 2:30 we click off multiple processes at 33430, et cetera. Most of them get there by like 6:00 AM. During kind of higher volume days, you'll notice maybe around early deadlines, certainly around the January 1st.

You might see a little bit of a delay, but for the most part most schools are going to receive things by, I would say, around 6:00 AM.

So that's kind of how that happens.

Um, so Bob Hemp Jenkins knows Bob H has a question later in the season or SFT process. Folders get a ton of files.

We go in there to look for files. The results will time out. Um.

Yeah.

Hmm.

You can try, you know, like if I'm looking for a certain students files like I'll use their common up ID, but I would put in a feedback request about that Bob, because I don't really have any control over that. Yeah. And you get a lot of files especially you know larger institutions are going to have hundreds of thousands of files and links and in many cases.

And Brittany Yas, as soon as you see your file and upload data set for suspects, prospects, applications, it's time for you to get to work and go through the mappings.

And pre work right now is that you can be reviewing the data catalog. You can go out, create an account on the common app. Make sure you're aware of all the data points where of your membership and questions. So if you haven't already done that, that's your homework for now. If you've done that then get yourself a nice beverage and relax. We do purge Bob, we do Purge SFTP folders. I think that process lesson you, I think it was either every 60 or 90.

Days.

Umm.

I want to say 90. I can look.

90, yeah.

It's changed a couple times over the years, but.

We're t -? 4 minutes to the top of the hour. Um. Any other questions?

Hopefully this is helpful.

Hopefully you'll if you have specific questions, definitely tune into our two community conversations that are next week and the week after. And of course Sharon and I will be back and maybe better than ever for the transfer webinar on September 6th. So I was saying September 7th for a while, but I'm pretty sure I'll be here on September 6th, so.

Yes.

OK.

And if you do anything else, if you take anything else away don't change the comment up ID the slate. I'm an app ID mapping. Please don't change it. I'd love to have a discussion with you if you think you have to change it and and I welcome, welcome that debate.

But I think you'll find that the process works great the way it is.

Hmm.

And I want everyone to be successful. And that's one of the main things. If you map your round, if you keep those mappings, if you set up everything and test everything, you're going to be very successful and you'll never have to talk to me or see me or get an answer either in the forums or on Slack or Facebook or in a Service Desk request. So.

Bob, great seeing you.

Thanks for coming everyone.

See Really Bob, But seeing your your existence here.

Anyway, thank you everyone.

Brandon, I didn't quite understand your question. I can e-mail you after.

All right. Thank you. Have a great rest of the day and week and have a successful coming up season.

Thanks everyone.