User Import fields: Transitioning from EFC to SAI (Banner/Ellucian)

Mallorie Fonseca

Hello BBAM and Banner/Ellucian users! We are trying to think ahead over here at EIU and wondered how many other BBAM users are in a similar situation as us and how you are all planning for the EFC to SAI change.

Have any of you using BBAM with Banner/Ellucian been in contact with them already about how the EFC will change to SAI? If it is as simple as a text change, great! User import fields can be updated to say “SAI” instead of “EFC”. But I'm sure there will be more to it. Are any of you further in your planning and would like to share thoughts or ideas? I'd love to have some conversation about what everyone else is planning to make this transition as easy as possible for all of us!

Gail Sherron

@Mallorie Fonseca I have been watching to see if anyone chimed in. I “guess” no one is concerned about SAI? LOL

Mallorie Fonseca

@Gail Sherron haha, perhaps that is the case and I'm worrying too much. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be no more work than changing the “EFC” field title to say “SAI” instead. But there are a lot of things to think about if it's not that simple. I'll stay hopeful in the meantime!

Jonathan Blevins

Hello, @Mallorie Fonseca!

I've been in contact with our Strategic Technology team and Ellucian is still working on updating their system for the transition - we don't know what that will look like. Hoping to hear something in July 2023.

We provide two years worth of FAFSA information in BBAM since most of our awarding is done for the upcoming academic year. So, for example, this application cycle we imported both the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 FAFSA information. I'm hoping in our upcoming cycle we will be able to still provide the 2023-2024 EFC and also the 2024-2025 SAI. We're working with our Financial Aid Services team to make sure we have enough written material and workshop opportunities to share updates with our campus partners - but nothing in stone just yet.

I would say it's a tad too early to worry since Ellucian has decided their course of action!

JB

Michael Elliott

@Mallorie Fonseca we are a PeopleSoft school and anxiously awaiting more information from Oracle on this same topic. Any other P.S Schools out there that find out more please share here! We also pull some FAFSA data from our import file for first generation and that question is changing on the new FAFSA too.

Mallorie Fonseca

@Jonathan Blevins
Good to know! Thank you for sharing.

Gail Sherron

@Michael Elliott we are a Peoplesoft school, too. Let's stay in touch!

Mallorie Fonseca

@Michael Elliott I'm not sure if it helps, but we ask students to enter their first-gen status along with other information (like pronouns, alternative names, etc. as an optional question) when they send their admissions application. Perhaps that would be an option for you as well if the FAFSA is being tricky about it?

Michael Elliott

@Gail Sherron Hi Gail, have you made any progress on this change to SAI for your import file from PeopleSoft to BAM? I'd like to touch base with you if so! mwelliott@salisbury.edu or anyone else for that matter! feel free to reach out!

Ken Fick

@Jonathan Blevins Although we're a PeopleSoft school (like @Michael Elliott and @Gail Sherron), we also will have two aid years/FAFSAs data to load. We have not yet determined how we will actually differentiate, but I am open to any suggestions (and will gladly share any solution we land upon).

Maria Solis

@Ken Fick, we are a PeopleSoft institution as well. We have been bringing in two years of FAFSA data for a couple of years now. We bring in current years as well as the upcoming aid year, which we label the fields as NEXT. Let me know if you'd like to connect to learn more.

Mallorie Fonseca

@Ken Fick
For our system, we use “Current” and “Upcoming” and include an Aid Year field to help us confirm the information. As long as the student is still active, it will change every August. So right now, our “Current” fields are 23-24 information and our “upcoming” fields will begin pulling in the 24-25 information when we have it ready.

Victor Swindell

@Mallorie Fonseca what is ‘SAI’ and 'EFC;
I send data to Banner from BBAM and back. I use the AidYear ID

here is the file header
"award_period_name","user_uid","portfolio_code","disbursement_amount","initial_application_category_id","id","award_period_id","form_field_10473"
"2324","20215957","IDLCH","2000.0","7","520956","11","true"
"2324","20162938","IDLKDU","1500.0","7","520957","11","true"

the first field is the aid year…which allows for multiple aidyears

Mallorie Fonseca

@Victor Swindell Apologies, I suppose I should have been more clear in my post. The FAFSA is no longer using the EFC (estimated family contribution) calculation for aid and is instead using an SAI (student aid index) calculation. It's a big change coming up this year but we haven't received a lot of information from the FAFSA/Department of Education about some of those technicalities. So my original question was more about if Banner would replace the “EFC” fields with “SAI” fields or if we'd have a whole new import field. Our cycle began on November 1, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that it's that easy!

Victor Swindell

@Mallorie Fonseca
thanks… This was the email I saw in June….with no follow-up



The U.S. Department of Education has announced major changes to FAFSA regulatory requirements for the 2024-2025 Aid Year. Ellucian is actively tracking and working to meet these regulatory changes as guidance is released to ensure our customers are prepared to implement updates.

The changes will introduce new fields and logic, including calculations for Pell and Student Aid Index (formerly known as Estimated Family Contribution (EFC)), which are used to determine aid eligibility for students.

To support these regulatory updates and changes, Ellucian will be leveraging modernized, cloud-based services to accommodate the Pell and Student Aid Index updates. With the cloud deployment, customers will be able to quickly leverage regulatory updates and reduce burden on IT departments. These two calculations will be available in December 2023.

Customers who currently host Ellucian Financial Aid Federal Methodology (FM) Calculation on-premise will be moved to the new cloud services in December 2023 to support the 2024-2025 aid year. For prior aid years, customers can continue to use software as delivered.

Our records indicate that your institution is currently hosting the FM Calculation service on-premise and therefore will be changed to a web service starting in December.

As Ellucian continues to modernize our cloud-based services, we will no longer be supporting IP-based firewall rules. Customers that are on-premise may need to update their network to accommodate connecting to the new web service. To help you prepare for this change, we ask you to review our knowledge article for more information on required changes: KB000502931: Pell and Student Aid Index (SAI) Calculation: Static IP Addresses are not supported

We will continue to provide updates and direction to our customers as the FAFSA regulatory requirements continue to roll out. Please subscribe to the Banner 2024-2025 FAFSA Simplification Updates blog for more information.

Best,

Customer Success Services | Ellucian

Mallorie Fonseca

@Victor Swindell
Thank you for sharing this! I'll share it with my team and be on the lookout in December.

Victor Swindell

@Victor Swindell - we are just awaiting for Ellucian to do it's thing… and then we can adjust