Desktop Financial Aid - Archive
Tip
Only releases with enhancements or resolved issues for this module have content below.
Enhancements
The 2023-2024 financial aid award year is available in the Award Year Definition window.
Select the Active? checkbox when you are ready to work with it. You can also deselect Display in Dropdown? to remove it for now until the application system opens.
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN31515 | The Complete Match process no longer produces an array boundary exceeded error and matches are now successfully communicated to PowerFAIDS. |
RN31617 | Scheduled Create Student Update process runs now addresses all window parameter changes and completes as expected. |
Enhancements
The Create Student Update for Financial Aid process now transfers First Time Degree Seeking students to JFA as part of the FAM_CreateStudentUpdateAsXML stored procedure. This data is important for IPEDS reporting.
When successfully transferred, the Registration tab in JFA displays YES or NO in the First Time Degree Seeking field according to the associated Academic Year and Term Name.
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For more information about Create Student Update, see the Create Student Update for JFA Process Guide on MyJenzabar.net.
For more information about configuring J1 with JFA as your financial aid system, see the FAM with JFA Configuration Guide on MyJenzabar.net.
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN31617 | Scheduled Create Student Update process runs now addresses all window parameter changes and completes as expected. |
FAM with JFA Enhancements
Create Student Update now transfers student data by individual student IDs or groups of IDs. You can now work with the specific data you need and drill down into individual student records.
To transfer students using individual ID instead of a query:
Click the By Individual radio button in the Select Options section.
Search and select the student ID you want to transfer.
Click the Add ID button.
Repeat as needed until you have selected the student IDs you want to work with. Added IDs appear in the ID Numbers to Process section.
Note
If you accidentally included an ID you didn’t mean to transfer, select it and click the Remove Selected ID Number button.
Continue with the Create Student Update for Financial Aid process when you have finished adding student IDs.
There’s a new window to help you work with the student data sent to JFA using the Create Student Update for Financial Aid process. The Create Student Update Configuration window allows you to control which specific student data elements are transferred to JFA using the Create Student Update process. You can turn off or on certain tags sent in the Student Data Load (Academic Extract) API to narrow down what data is sent each time you run the Create Student Update process.
Note
As of the 2021.2 release, the Create Student Update Configuration window allows you to control the House Type tag and view the ATB (Ability to Benefit) tag placeholder. More data actions will be available in future releases.
Currently, you can choose to send or not send the following tag set:
Housing Choice
<Housing Type>
You can also view:
Ability to Benefit (ATB)
Note
The Ability to Benefit tag is a placeholder configuration. In a future release, you will be able to work with the tag set.
Caution
When you select DONTSEND, these tags are not included in Create Student Update and instead, JFA uses the ISIR data. When you choose SENDDATA, the tags are set based on the data your school collects and the ISIR data is not used. If later, you change the configuration to DONTSEND, the ISIR data is only used for new students from that point forward.
When transferring student data to JFA using the Create Student Update process, you may want to view the information being sent. This is helpful for troubleshooting purposes, or for instances where you might transfer data to meet a temporary need. Select the new SAVE XML File checkbox to create a file and choose a location where your file will be saved to.
Note
You can only create an XML file when processing individual or group IDs.
The <Housing Choice> tag is now transferred to JFA as part of the Student Data Load API when you run the Create Student Update process. In Desktop, the housing status details are tracked in the Residence Life tab of the Student Information window.
This data informs your school's Financial Aid office about a student’s residency. It’s important for setting COA (Cost of Attendance) and tracking where students live in relation to campus, such as if they are an Off Campus attendee.
Use the Institutional Reporting Definitions window to map the residency values you use in J1 to the three Housing Type codes used in JFA.
When successfully transferred, this information appears in the Housing tab of the student's Profile in JFA.
When processing financial aid transaction groups in Accounts Receivable (AR) generated by Disbursements and Adjustments in Financial Aid Manager (FAM), JFA updates student accounts to reflect funded awards. This update is now communicated in sets of 100 to correspond with the default ARPAYLOADSIZE value of 100 in JFA's Configuration Values, API settings.
This eliminates the need for your school to monitor the size of the Billing Batch Export against the ARPAYLOADSIZE setting to ensure that all disbursements are successfully updated in JFA.
Notice
For example, if you are posting an FA batch with 549 transactions, JFA will receive them as five sets of 100 transactions and one set of 49 transactions. You will not need to change the ARPAYLOADSIZE to 549 from the default size of 100.
Caution
As a best practice, limit batches of disbursement transactions to 30,000.
The Disbursements and Adjustments and Anticipated Aid processes now run with a student’s ID number instead of Social Security Number. Some students may not have been required to submit a Social Security Number in their records, but still have aid that needs to be applied to their account.
FAM with JFA Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN24194 | Disbursement rosters were not created in their configured location after the billing batch was created and the Post button was clicked in JFA. |
RN25587 | Anticipated Aid reports included aid for periods of education (POE) when students weren't registered. |
RN25826 | On the Financial Aid Inquiry window, General Info tab, the Address was partially obscured when users expanded the window to the right. |
RN26233 | A second run of an Anticipated Aid report inadvertently removed transactions. |
RN26755 | The Anticipated Aid process failed when the student's last name had more than 16 letters. |
RN26759 | The Anticipated Aid process was running only the first 6 selected POEs. |
RN27527 | The Create Student Update for Financial Aid process ran too slowly. |
FAM with PowerFAIDS Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN26147 | NAME_MASTER and ADDRESS_MASTER enhancements introduced in 2021.1 caused a performance issue to the match records process. NOTE: The View Report button may produce an inaccurate report of Jenzabar potential matches. This will be corrected in a future release. |
RN26759 | The Anticipated Aid process was running only the first 6 selected POEs. |
FAM Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN24023 | From the Student Information window, users in groups without permission were able to access the Hazlewood Recipient Information window, and, from there, the Student Billing Exemption window. |
Enhancements
The Calculate Satisfactory Progress window has a new Perform an official calculation of satisfactory progress checkbox. When calculating SAP, designating the run as official identifies that the SAP being sent is finalized and transferred in an official capacity. This new box is checked by default so that all SAP calculations now transfer as official.
Warning
When you upgrade to 2021.1, any previous year’s SAP runs update to official. If there are old SAP runs in your system that you do not consider official, you need to remove them prior to updating to 2021.1.
A new setting on the Financial Aid Configuration window tracks when the most recent official SAP information was last calculated for both Award Year and POE SAP Basis options in the Most Recent Official SAP Information sections.
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If you decide to calculate SAP information on the Basis selection of Award Year, Calculation date and Year appear.
If you decide to calculate SAP information on the Basis selection of POE, Calculation date and Year/Term fields appear.
You will also see a pop-up reminder of your most recent official SAP run when you process SAP in the Calculate Satisfactory Progress window.
The Create Student Update for Financial Aid process now sends additional student information to JFA using the Student Data Load (Academic Extract) API. Review the sections below for specifics on the transferred tag groups.
Note
For more information about how the Student Data Load (Academic Extract) API transfers Desktop data to JFA, see the Create Student Update Data Map in the appendix section of the FAM with JFA Configuration Guide.
FAM now transfers SAP Status information (<SAPstatus>) to JFA as part of the Student Data Load (Academic Extract) API. For each term, the previous latest official SAP status is sent. This provides additional context in JFA about a student’s probationary status which might impact financial aid eligibility.
Official SAP time period is determined by the Basis setting on the Financial Aid Configuration window.
If the selected Basis is POE, the previous SAP History term status is sent to JFA.
Notice
Sam is doing well academically at the start of his sophomore year. He completed his freshman year (Fall 2020 and Spring 2021) but didn't take any courses in Summer 2021. He is registered for Fall 2021 courses.
Therefore, because his SAP is reported by previous term, he would have no SAP status to report for Fall 2020 but would have a status of GOOD for Spring 2021. His status going into the 2021 Fall term would also be GOOD.
If the selected Basis is Award Year, then the previous SAP History year status is sent to JFA.
Notice
Jack is beginning the Spring 2021 term of his sophomore year. He attended each Fall and Spring term since he enrolled in Fall 2019 but struggled during his freshman year and was placed on SAP probation.
Therefore, because his SAP is calculated by year, he would have no SAP status for his freshman year as no previous year was available to reference. His current SAP Status is PROB based on his performance from the 2019 year code.
View a student’s SAP status in the Academic History section of the Registration Information page in JFA.
The following tags within the <EnrollmentTerms> tag group are now transferred to JFA as part of the Student Data Load (Academic Extract) API.
Note
To correctly transfer data for Enrollment Terms, the Part Time/Full Time update and Calculate Satisfactory Progress processes need to be run.
<LastDateOfAttendance>: last day the student attended a course or participated academically
<Withdraw Date>: date the student withdraws from all financial aid eligible courses
<Date of Determination>: date school becomes aware student ceased attendance, or student was withdrawn
<Intent to Return>: indicates a student has decided to return (True/False)
FAM with JFA Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN15278 | Create Student Update did not successfully execute scheduled process runs. |
RN16107 | Disbursements & Adjustments reported inaccurate error messages about special characters found for student records that were missing SSN. |
RN19240 | Create Student Update returned an error indicating seq_number was an invalid column. |
RN20223 | Create Student Update produced empty Audit and Error reports. These reports will now be hidden. The ability to review the transferred students and any messages about the data is now available through the Academic Extract Work Queue in Jenzabar Financial Aid. This can be turned on in Administration, Configuration Values, General, ENABLE_EXTRACT_WORK_QUEUE. |
RN20630 | Create Student Update reported Academic Program information incorrectly if the ID had a Candidacy record for the same year and term as one of their Enrollment Terms |
RN22458 | Financial Aid Inquiry's Financial Aid tab was not properly initializing and refreshing data when selecting an award year. The FAFSA Date now displays the actual date or "No FAFSA Received". |
FAM with PowerFAIDS Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
189238 | Disbursements & Adjustments now truncates cents in net amount calculation for Direct Loan funds with Percent to Deduct value. Please note that schools are expected to configure Direct Loan funds to net disburse from PowerFAIDS to ensure the correct net amount is applied to student accounts. |
RN15665 | Credit Hours Update returned an error due to students with non-numeric SSN values in PowerFAIDS. |
RN20649 | Anticipated Aid did not process Pending awards when selected. Pending awards are now included when selected. Schools that include awards at a pending status should run Anticipated Aid after applying this patch to include those in student accounts. |
RN21154 | CommonLine Loan Disbursements was not populating the Eligible 1098-T value set for the fund on the student account. |
Resolved Issues
Enhancements
The 2022-2023 financial aid award year is available in the Award Year Definition window. Select the Active? checkbox when you are ready to work with it. You can also deselect Display in Dropdown? to remove it for now until the application system opens.

Financial Aid is now a defined category in the Document Storage Setup window. When you select the Financial Aid row, you can then click the Document Category tab and the Document Type Definition tab to further define the document type, select owners, or create default categories within the document type.
The Financial Aid Inquiry window is now fully integrated with Jenzabar Financial Aid (JFA). With JFA as your selected financial aid system, you can retrieve important financial aid information about candidates and students. Click the tabs to navigate the sections.

Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN9971 | Performance issue when trying to insert or update rows in a large TRANS_HIST table. |
RN10994 | POE Definition incorrectly displayed POE ID with commas. |
RN11071 | A database error message appeared when accessing an ID associated with a name that exceeded 11 characters on the Financial Aid Inquiry window. |
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN9696 | When running the Anticipated Aid process, the Transaction History table locked, causing performance issues |
RN9974 | The Anticipated Aid process produced transactions for POEs that were not selected. |
RN10992 | Awards were not properly created when running the Anticipated Aid process using POE IDs longer than 5 digits. |
RN11165 | The Anticipated Aid transaction report pulled Pending, Estimated, and other award statuses when only the Pending Status was selected. |
RN14264 | Data passed to JFA from the Create Student Update caused issues with COD processing. |
RN15817 | When Financial Aid (FA) transaction groups were posted by Business Office via Transaction Groups, any adjustments that reduced previously disbursed funds were not returned back to JFA tagged as reversals. |
Issue | Description |
---|---|
RN11054 | The Create Student Update process produced an error when running students with First Names longer than 11 characters. |
RN11174 | The Configure Optional Student Data Elements for Transfer window returned an error when Legal Names were selected or deselected. |
RN12108 | When running Match Records, a database select error appeared if the student had a Questionable SSN match and multiple legal name rows in the Additional Names window. |
Enhancements
Several FAM processes now distinguish between a student’s Campus Name (name_master) and legal name.
The Campus Name feature allows students to designate a name they prefer to use on campus. This name appears in name fields, processes, searches, and reports throughout Desktop, J1 Web, and Campus Portal, except where legal name is required. To keep legal name information private, new permissions have been added that control which user groups can view it. Depending on your role and permissions in J1, you might see Campus Name, legal name, or both.
Important
Permission for legal name is granted in the Additional Name Types window.

From the Financial Aid Configuration window, you can choose how the Create Student Update process transfers student data by using either their Campus or legal name. The default is set to Legal because most federal financial aid processes require a student’s legal name.
Note
Jenzabar recommends using legal name, especially if your school loads ISIRs on the basis of name matches.

If you choose to transfer student data using Campus Name, the student Name fields are updated, not the Preferred Name. Future releases will include enhancements to Create Student Update to support PowerFAIDS Cloud.

If your ISIR Match Configuration is set to true, then the student’s First Name is part of your Match. You can change this setting in JFA’s Administration window. From the Configuration Values screen, click to expand the Imports section and edit the value.

The Match Record process matches the PowerFAIDS student name to the legal name used in Desktop. It also now includes information regarding any existing Campus Name matches in the Possible J1 Matches.
The Financial Aid Inquiry window no longer displays the PowerFAIDS student name associated with the ID number.
The Create Student Update process now transfers a student’s name according to your school’s choice to use Campus or legal name. You can change this setting in the Financial Aid Configuration window.
The Create Student Refund Invoices process now supports schools using JFA with Open Items. A school configured for award funds that are non-refundable to the student awards a maximum amount and the fund is configured to be applied to specific charge fees. If the student does not use the maximum award amount, the Create Student Refund process updates the Financial Aid disbursement transactions on their receivable account and the student’s record in JFA accordingly.
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
192587 | Anticipated Aid was not being reported for the disbursement in a payment period for sites using JFA. |
199281 | A "window unavailable" error message appeared when PowerFAIDS users configured as active FAST were processing disbursement reconciliations (Disbursement Reconciliation window). |
199288 | The Create Student Update for JFA customers was including address records from outside the selected Address Priority List group. The Update now looks at only the address codes included in the selected Address Priority List. |
199365 | An error message appeared when PowerFAIDS users attempted to customize the Original Candidate Select query on the Create Student Update to Financial Aid window. |
199368 | Legend text on the Match Records screen is positioned incorrectly and overlaps names on the grid. |
199542 | The Create Student Update for JFA customers would send an empty Postal Address if an address record for the student included only phone number and no address information. |
199543 | The Create Student Update for JFA customers did not transfer addresses and phone numbers according to the priority order of the Address Priority List selected. |
199649 | For schools with multiple POEs mapped to the same year and term, the Credit Hours Update was calculating all registered students instead of just those assigned to the selected POE in PowerFAIDS. As a result, the impacted students were assigned extra POEs in the Financial Aid Master table, which can cause critical problems when they are exported to PowerFAIDS. If your school doesn’t map multiple POEs to the same year and term or hasn’t run Credit Hours Update since installing J1 2019.5+, this issue should not impact you. You can now run Credit Hours Update successfully. If you ran Credit Hours Update with multiple POEs and think you might have transferred that data to PowerFAIDS, there are different steps to take depending on if you ran External Update and loaded the student records. We strongly advise contacting Jenzabar’s Help Desk to resolve this issue. If you ran Credit Hours Update with multiple POEs, but did not transfer any POEs to PowerFAIDS, you need to clear existing POE data rows in Financial Aid Master before running Credit Hours Update again. Sample Sql: delete from pf_stdnt_mstr where poe_id in (enter all affected poe ids) ; Once you’ve cleared the rows, the Credit Hours Update fix now calculates only the students with the following criteria:
For full details and additional help resolving this issue, contact Jenzabar’s Help Desk. |
199767 | Anticipated Aid POEs to process display was experiencing several formatting issues which have been resolved. |
202597 | The Create Student Update feature was not adding leading zeros to the SSN as needed. |
202677 | Students were excluded during the AcademicExtract XML transmission to JFA because the original process had one student per XML . The transmission was updated to include all students. |
203270 | The Selection Query window was not showing newly created queries without closing and reopening the window. |
204941 | Initial State Grant Award for the student's initial semester were not always correct, as the calculation did not always filter the appropriate the transactions. |
Enhancements
Some windows are only used depending on which financial aid system type (FAST) is active in your module. If you are working in a FAST-dependent window, you may be presented with a pop-up message if you don’t have the relevant financial aid system active or if your system doesn’t use that window.

Note
To activate, deactivate, or change your financial aid system type, access your settings in the Financial Aid Configuration window.
The 2021-2022 financial aid award year is available in the Award Year Definition window. Select the Active? checkbox when you are ready to work with it. You can also deselect Display in Dropdown? to remove it for now until the application system opens.

When exporting student data to your financial aid system, the Create Student Update process will now use Database Transfer by default. PowerFAIDS J1 Desktop customers should no longer use the File Transfer option, as it does not include many of the required data options and is not supported by College Board.

For JFA users, the window continues to work as usual.
You can designate an award year as Inactive if you’ve finished working with it, or if it’s a future award year you don’t need to use yet. In the Award Year Definition window, deselect the Active? checkbox next to the award year you want to label as inactive.
In the POE Definition window, award years not in use will now appear in the Award Year drop-down as “Inactive.”
Note
You can make inactive award years active again by selecting the Active? checkbox in the Award Year Definition window.
The Credit Hours Update no longer calculates only students with a SSN.
For JFA, all registered students in the year and term mapped to the selected POE are calculated, not just the ones with a SSN.
For PowerFAIDS, all registered students that have been assigned the selected POE in PowerFAIDS are calculated, not just the ones with a SSN.
Previously, the Fund Master window cleared the 1098-T field and automatically assigned values based on the fund payment type. The column no longer operates this way. Now you should select the required value in the 1098-T Eligibility column of the Fund Master window when creating or editing a fund. Work with your business office to confirm that the fund code assigned is the appropriate code for 1098-T reporting.
Note
This change impacts users with both PowerFAIDS and JFA systems.
In the Financial Aid Configuration window, the Jenzabar Financial Aid tab now includes a location to set the disbursement roster. This is the file created with the Billing Batch Export runs in JFA.

Note
For users with both PowerFAIDS and JFA set as active, set the disbursement roster files in separate locations to keep their sources distinct. This will improve any troubleshooting steps when you run the process.
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
180728 | Delays and slow responses were occurring in certain situations. |
189550 | The Student Update Scheduler query was changed if a manual update with a different query was made between scheduled runs. |
192586 | Anticipated Aid was not processing records where the JFA alternate identifier had alphabetic characters. |
195193 | The College ID value was formatted with leading zeros, and needed to be spaces. |
195989 | The issue relates to JFA's handling of SSO. If there were no credentials passed in the initial call to the API, then the site redirected to the SSO page immediately instead of responding with a code. |
Enhancements
Use the Award Year Definition window to view, activate, or deactivate federal award years for financial aid applications. Activated award years are used to complete important processes or run reports.

You can also choose which award years you want to appear in the Award Year drop-down on other relevant windows, such as the POE Definition window. Click Display in Dropdown? to add a selected year.
Jenzabar Financial Aid (JFA) users can now run Credit Hours Update process in the Credit Hours Update/Report window. The process uses student records with POE mapped Year/Term codes in Student Course History instead of the ODBC connection checks used by PowerFAIDS.
The Fund Master window includes new fields, Fund Source and Federal Fund ID, to provide additional information about the type of funds that exist in PowerFAIDS and Jenzabar Financial Aid. Select options from the drop-down to identify funds for use in reports such as NSC – Enrollment Reporting and IPEDS.
You can also use the new Include in Anticipated Aid checkbox to indicate a fund should be reported for that process.
Jenzabar Financial Aid customers can now review all students who have been processed using Calculate Satisfactory Progress. Based upon how you evaluate SAP, select options in the Retrieval Criteria section to view the details. You will select the Year if your basis is Award Year, and if your basis is POE, as shown below, you will select the Year and Term.

Note
Choose how you would like to define the SAP calculation basis by adjusting your settings in the Financial Aid Configuration window. In the SAP Options section, select Award Year or POE from the Basis drop-down.
Data will now populate automatically for both PowerFAIDS and Jenzabar Financial Aid customers as soon as you enter in the Retrieval Criteria prompts. The Retrieve button no longer appears on the window.
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
139916 | The Gainful Employment Report was not correctly calculating and reporting the program length with the proper leading/trailing zeroes. |
174512 | The Create Student Update was transferring six spaces for POE Update ID fields in PowerFAIDS instead of NULL. |
175937 | In the Texas Financial Aid Database (FADB) Report, the Total Hours Attempted was including dropped courses and excluding dropped courses when it should be doing the opposite. |
179392 | Jenzabar Financial Aid customers received an error when Anticipated Aid didn’t have at least one Tracking Status. |
179393 | In Create Student Update, some students with JFA alternate identifier records were not updated. This issue only impacted Jenzabar Financial Aid customers. |
179763 | Jenzabar Financial Aid customers who did not have PowerFAIDS implemented prior to Jenzabar One received a missing folder location error when running the Create Student Update process. |
179765 | From the Financial Aid Configuration window, PowerFAIDS Tab, it was not possible to edit the folder directory fields. |
Enhancements
In J1 Desktop, Financial Aid Manager (FAM) now supports integration with Jenzabar Financial Aid (JFA). In the Financial Aid Configuration window, you can set which financial aid systems you actively use. You can change your existing financial aid system to JFA, or add it as an additional system to PowerFAIDS. Tabs that define values specific to each financial aid system are available.
The existing configuration radio button options have been replaced with drop-down fields. These values are shared by both systems.
Note
For users continuing to implement Financial Aid Manager (FAM) with PowerFAIDS as their only financial aid system, this change will not impact your established settings.
The following additional windows have been updated to reflect optional JFA integration:
Create Student Update for Financial Aid
Disbursements & Adjustments
POE Definition
Anticipated Aid
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
171097 | Create Student Update checks all CIP codes defined as Used In Regulatory Reporting in CIP Definition and checks to ensure that all of the required NSC Credential Level data is populated prior to collecting student data to export. This check erroneously included programs identified as minors only. This is now corrected to exclude minor only programs. |
154300 | Invoices paying only a partial amount on a purchase order would occasionally unencumber the entire amount. When the invoice was saved, an additional line item would appear on the invoice detail which needed to be deleted. |
2019.3
Resolved Issues
Issue | Description |
---|---|
117712 | The students' Cumulative GPA was not being correctly calculated for schools configured to Calculate Satisfactory Progress by Award Year. |
144453 | The Fund Master window was returning errors related to the Restricted?, Exemption/Waiver?, and Lower COA? columns and was not assigning the default value of 'N' for No. |