Update 21B

Revision History

This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates appear in the following table:

Date	Product	Feature	Notes
19 MAR 2021			Created initial document.

Overview

Student Management delivers cloud based, flexible, extensible best practice business flows to support how you enroll your students, maintain their personal information, and manage their payments. From a learner taking anon-credit course to the degree-seeking student, Oracle’s Student Management enables institutions to anticipate students’ needs, illuminate their academic path, and empower them to succeed.

This guide outlines the information you need to know about new or improved functionality in this update, and describes any tasks you might need to perform for the update. Each section includes a brief description of the feature, the steps you need to take to enable or begin using the feature, any tips or considerations that you should keep in mind, and the resources available to help you.

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Feature Summary

Campus Community

Oracle Campus Community includes everything that is shared among different Student Management product areas, whether person records or common setup objects for implementing Student Management.

Status Scheme Export and Import Processing

Export status schemes set up on one student environment and import them into another student environment. This functionality is available through Functional Setup Manager, and the Manage Status Schemes setup task is found in the Student Structures work area.

This functionality enables the easy migration of status scheme setup definitions between environments. Typically, you configure your settings in a Stage environment, but must carry forward similar or the same configurations to Production. This new task removes the need to manually enter the same setup data in different environments.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Role Information

You need the Application Implementation Consultant role to perform setup tasks.

Student Management Category Configuration

Create categories that can be associated with academic tools such as communications, events, tasks, and checklists. For example, when an administrator creates a task related to admissions, they can associate this task with the admissions category. Administrators can also easily map events to student management categories using a user-friendly, responsive search.

This screenshot shows the page to create a new category:

New Category Page

This functionality provides a mechanism to logically associate features such as communications, checklists, and tasks with categories. The events mapping allows administrators to specify which events can trigger a communication in the specified category.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

To create or edit categories:

1. Click Navigator > Others > Setup and Maintenance.
2. In the Setup list, select Student Management.
3. In the Student Structures functional area, click the Manage Student Management Categories task.

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator role or the Application Implementation Consultant role to use this feature.

Global Time Zone Configuration

Define the time zones available to use in your Oracle Student Management Cloud implementation.

Use the new Manage Time Zone Settings page to define multiple global time zones for your institution: Academics > Curriculum > Actions > Manage Time Zone Settings.

Manage Time Zone Settings

You can then use these time zones when you schedule courses. For example, your institution might offer courses at different campuses across multiple time zones. Students can see the time zone information for each scheduled course in the Storefront.

Refer to the related release readiness features:

• Course Schedule Meeting Details Time Zone Configuration
• Time Zone Display for Storefront

You must enter at least one default time zone on the Manage Time Zone Settings page to be able to create or load (via Rapid Implementation) courses and scheduled courses.

Before you set up your time zones, make sure that a site level profile value for FND_TIMEZONE exists:

1. Navigate to the Manage Administrator Profile Values page (Setup and Maintenance and search for the page).
2. Search for a Profile Option Code of FND_TIMEZONE.
3. For the Site profile level, make sure a value is selected. For example, US Eastern Time.

When you access the Manage Time Zone Settings page, you're asked whether you want to use that time zone as the default.

Steps to Enable

If you haven’t created course schedule meeting data prior to 21B and intend to create new courses and course schedule meetings from release 21B, ensure that a site level profile value for FND_TIMEZONE exists.

NOTE: If you have course schedule meeting data created prior to 21B, you must follow the steps outlined in this document on My Oracle Support: 

               Oracle Student Management Cloud Service: Student Management Time Zone Feature (Doc ID 2750794.1).

Don't change any course data until you complete the steps in the document.

Security

Mandatory Consent for Learners or Other Proxies to Join a Proxy Group

Consent is now always required for adding a learner or additional proxy user to a proxy group. Administrators can no longer turn off the requirement for consent for users of any age.

Proxy Group Settings

The user experience has been optimized to detect if the user is adding an existing user to a proxy group or instead needs to create a new user for adding to the proxy group.

With this release, this feature always requires consent from members to be added to a proxy group. It also removes the ability for a proxy to create new user accounts at will; instead, the option to create new user account is presented only if the user doesn't already exist.

Institutions can mitigate the risk of allowing proxies to perform actions on behalf of a learner without the consent from the learner. They can also prevent proxies from creating duplicate user accounts.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

The Require consent from learner invited to group option is hidden from the Proxy Group Settings list for administrators in the current release. If the administrator selected that option in the previous release, a communication template would have been defined for the learner consent event, causing no impact to the learner consent requests in the current release. If that option wasn't selected in the previous release, a communication template will need to be defined before rolling out the current release to production.

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator or IT Security Manager role to use this feature.

Student Financials

Oracle Student Financials is a tool for higher education institutions to manage student receivables, billing, and payment collection. Using Student Financials, both staff and students can quickly find and use the financial information they need to make critical decisions. Staff can actively manage student accounts by performing functions such as creating charges, accepting payments, processing refunds, and generating receipts.

Fee Group Type Configuration

Administrators can now create fee groups that can be used for payment application processing. Prior to this release, fee groups are used to group only academic period fees for tuition calculation purposes.

Institutions will still be able to use fee groups for calculating traditional tuition fees. But now, they can assign a Payment Application group type to a fee group. This value distinguishes tuition calculation fee groups from payment application fee groups.

To access this feature, go to Navigator > Academics > Finances > Actions > Manage Fee Groups.

Create Fee Group

With this feature, you can now group similar fees of any fee type. For example, you can create a group of miscellaneous fees such as housing, meal plans, gym, and so on. You will need to add payment application fee groups to one or more charge priority mappings so that you can use it when applying payments. This gives your institution flexible payment application rules that you can modify based on your business needs.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

• Once you assign a group type and save the record, you can no longer change it. 

• To use this feature, you must have fees set up in the system.

• To leverage the updated payment application process in 21B, you need to add fee groups used for payment application processing to a charge priority mapping group.

• Currently, you won't be able to use these services to set up fee groups for payment application:
  • Export and import of CSV file packages through Functional Setup Manager (FSM)
  • Rapid Implementation

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator or Bursar role to use this feature.

Charge Priority Mapping

Prior to this release, there was no way to automatically prioritize how payments were applied to charges. With this feature, administrators can assign a priority to the fees you add to a charge priority mapping group. Then when you create student credits, use a mapping group so that the payment application process knows which fees to pay off first using the student credit.

A charge priority mapping stores information about how your institution prioritizes the application of payments to individual fees or fee groups. Individual fees can be curriculum fees, academic period fees, or miscellaneous fees. Fee groups, on the other hand, are a collection of individual fees.

When creating a charge priority mapping, you select a mapping method to group fees or fee groups. This means that you can create a mapping that groups specific fees, fee groups, or a grouping of different types of fees. To create a charge priority mapping, go to Navigator > Academics > Finances > Actions > Manage Charge Priority Mapping, then click Create Charge Priority Mapping.

These are the mapping methods you can select:

• Fees. With this method, you can group fees of any type.

• All Fees. When you select this, you don't have to add any fees to the list. This mapping method lets you apply payments to any charge in students' accounts. But you can override the priority for a particular fee. To do this, click Override Attributes. Add the fee you want to override, then assign a priority.

• Fee Group. With this method, you can group only fee groups that are of the Payment Application type.

Here’s an example of a charge priority mapping for a fee group. If you don't assign a priority to a fee or fee group, the default value is always set to 9999.

Create Charge Priority Mapping

With this feature, you have a flexible configuration to support your own payment application processing needs.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

• This feature is used in the related feature Receipt Method Assignment for Student Credits.

• When you add fees to the record, you can set priorities for each fee. This priority controls the order in which the payment application process applies payments to outstanding charges. By default, the priority is set to 9,999. The higher the number, the lower the priority.

• At this time, you don't need to associate a mapping attribute to a charge priority mapping, that is, mapping attributes can be blank. The payment application process currently disregards the values in the mapping attributes (from the Finances work area, Actions > Manage Mapping Attributes). And because mapping attributes aren't considered, the actual amount applied to a charge is any one of these amounts, whichever is lower:
  • The remaining unapplied credit.
  • The outstanding charge.

• Click the Set as Default slider to indicate a default mapping that Student Management should use.

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator or Bursar role to use this feature.

Receipt Method Assignment for Student Credits

Bursars can now create student credits and link them to the payment receipt methods your institution set up in Student Financials System Options. This association, together with the charge priority mapping you assigned to the student credit, instructs the payment application process how to apply payments to charges in a student’s account.

Here’s an example of payment receipt methods that are configured in Student Financials System Options.

Student Financials System Options

To create a student credit, go to Navigator > Academics > Finances > Actions > Manage Student Credits. On the Manage Student Credits page, click the arrow next to Create Sponsorship Credit, then select Create Receipt Credit.

Manage Student Credits

Create Student Credit - Details Page

When creating a credit, take note of these fields on the Details page:

• Credit Code is a short name for the credit. You can enter non-alphanumeric characters.

• In Source of the Credit, select the appropriate value. You provide the list of values that appear on this list. To add your lookup or search codes to the lookup type ORA_CREDIT_SOURCE_CODE, in the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the Manage Student Management Lookups task:
  • Offering: Student Management
  • Functional Area: Student Structures

• In Charge Priority Mapping, select the mapping you want to assign to this credit. This mapping contains the types of fees or fee groups that this credit pays off. 

• The default value in Credit Priority is 9999. The higher the value, the lower its priority. The priority you assign to student credits determines which credit is first used to pay off a charge. This becomes relevant when students have more than one available credit that can be used to pay off the same fees.

On the Receipt Method page, add a receipt method. Choose one of the receipt methods you set up on Student Financials System Options > Self Service. This is where you create the association between this student credit and one or more receipt methods. You can group different receipt methods in the same credit. This means that the receipt methods use the same payment rules and priority.

NOTE: When you create a student credit, you can save the credit even without adding a receipt method. However, the Active slider is disabled until you add a receipt method.

Credit Student Credit - Receipt Method Page

With this feature, your institution can use specific charge priority mappings for each student credit. You can also define the priority in which these credits are applied based on what your institution requires.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

• You need to use charge priority mappings to maximize the use of this feature.

• Make sure you set up your receipt methods in Oracle Financials, and in Student Financials System Options accordingly.

• If you haven't set up a student credit, the payment application process uses the default charge priority mapping to allocate payments to charges. And if you haven't set up a charge priority mapping, the payment application process uses the current logic of applying payments to charges with oldest due date first. If the due dates are the same, the payment is applied based on the ascending order of the invoice number.

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator or Bursar role to use this feature.

Application of Payments and Other Student Credits to Charges

With this feature, when bursars create a receipt on a student's account, Student Management uses the charge priority mapping that’s associated with the receipt method to identify the list of charges for which the payment/receipt is applicable. This eliminates the need for bursars to know when to administer the institution’s rules regarding the type of charges to which certain payments can be applied.

Here are some things that occur in this update to the automatic payment process:

• When bursars apply a payment to students’ accounts by creating a receipt, the receipt methods they see are now limited to the methods set up by their institution in Student Financials System Options as well as in Manage Student Credits. 

• When creating receipts or updating the charges a receipt is applied to, bursars see only the applicable fees or charges that are part of the charge priority mapping that’s associated with the student credit. The process automatically populates the amounts that are applied to each charge based on the configuration of the charge priority mapping.

• If students have any unused credit in their accounts:
  • Bursars see an Apply Payments button on the account summary page. The Apply Payments button appears only if there's any unapplied amount and outstanding charge. When bursars click Apply Payments, the payment application process automatically applies unused credits to any outstanding charge based on the charge priority payment rules. 
  • When bursars manually create a charge in students’ accounts, the payment application process automatically applies the unused credits against the newly created charges.

Receipt Methods on Create Receipt Page

Example of Payment Automatically Allocated to Charges

Apply Payment Button on Student's Account Summary Page

Bursars are now able to apply payments to specific fees or charges using the charge priority mapping that's linked to a student credit. The payment application process automatically assigns the applicable amounts to specific charges.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

• To use this feature, you need to set up these items:
  • Fee groups that are used specifically for payment application
  • Charge priority mappings
  • Student credits

• Ensure that the student credit is active so that you can use the receipt method associated to it.

• When you create a student credit, you can assign a priority. The default value is 9999, which is the lowest priority.

• If you don't create student credits that use the receipt methods your institution uses, the payment application process uses the default charge priority mapping as the basis for identifying which charges to pay first. If you don't have a default charge priority mapping, then the payment application process uses the existing logic of paying charges with the oldest due date first. If the due dates are the same, the payment is applied based on the ascending order of the invoice number.

• If the Apply Payments button doesn't appear to be doing anything, a rule may be preventing the payment from being applied. To determine if a payment can be applied to a charge, the payment application process looks at the receipt method to see if there's a corresponding student credit:
  • If the student credit exists, then the system looks up the associated charge priority mapping. If the charge/fee is not found in the charge priority mapping, then the payment can't be applied to the charge.
  • If the student credit doesn't exist, the process looks for a default charge priority mapping. If there's one, but the charge isn't listed in the charge priority mapping, then the payment isn't applied.

Role Information

You need the Higher Education Application Administrator or Bursar role to use this feature.

Student Records

Oracle Student Records enables you to set up and maintain your academic structures, curriculum structures and items, and academic calendars. You can enter, track, and process all academic information – from the course catalog and schedule of courses to student programs. You can enroll, grade, and evaluate students.

Integrated Search and Update for Course List Configuration

Add elements, for example courses, to a course list with an integrated search component. Administrators can use the targeted search to better find elements to add to the course list. Additionally, for Smart Lists, they can view and edit the detail for existing course list elements without navigating away from the course list.

The Course List page now has three tabs:

• Details
• Structure
• Parameters and Results

INTEGRATED SEARCH

Use the Structure tab to create and edit the list of courses, course lists, and smart lists attached to a course list. 

Structure Tab

When you click Add Course or List, the UI switches to search mode.

Search Mode

After you search for and select your course list items, click Add to List. The UI returns to the create and edit mode. You can see the newly added items.

To remain in search mode and continue to search for and select more items, select the Continue adding check box before you click Add to List. The items you select are added to the course list, but the UI remains in search mode. 

Add to List

SMART LISTS

You can now view and edit smart lists.

In create and edit mode, click View Courses in List.

View Courses in List

The UI switches to search mode and you can review the smart list items. To edit the smart list, click Revise Search.

Revise Search

Add further criteria, such as catalog number, to refine your search. You can also edit the list name. Then click Update Smart List.

Update Smart List

The UI returns to create and edit mode. The course list includes the updated smart list.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Student Statistics Recalculation

Student statistics, for example cumulative GPA, that were calculated in earlier releases can be recalculated when needed. Registrars can run a batch calculation process to identify students to have statistics recalculated and see updated statistics that include more granular result types delivered in the 21A release.

Use the new Recalculate Student Academic Statistics process (Navigator > Tools > Scheduled Processes > Schedule New Process) to recalculate student statistics data that was created prior to the 21A update.

You can then use the process to recalculate student statistics as needed. You can recalculate statistics for one or all students.

Academic statistics are calculated for students with an active academic program who enroll in courses where the result set attached to the course (that is, the grading option such as Letter Grade, Pass or Fail) can earn credit.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Course Schedule Meeting Details Time Zone Configuration

Configure the time zone for course schedule meeting details in the curriculum registry. For example, Start Time: 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. Administrators control the time, date, and time zone displayed in the course catalog. They can also update course schedule time zones that already exist in the curriculum registry using a batch process.

Use the new Time Zone field in the Meeting Details section when you schedule a course.

Meeting Details

You must enter at least one default time zone on the new Manage Time Zone Settings page to be able to create or load (via Rapid Implementation) courses and scheduled courses. Refer to the related release readiness feature: Global Time Zone Configuration.

UPDATE EXISTING COURSE SCHEDULE TIME ZONES

NOTE: The information in this section applies only if you have course schedule meeting data created prior to 21B.

NOTE: This is an overview only. You must follow the detailed steps in the related document on My Oracle Support as explained in the Steps to Enable section.

A new process is available: Update Course Schedule Time Zones (Tools > Scheduled Processes > Update Course Schedule Time Zones).

You must run this process before using the environment; otherwise incorrect meeting schedule times will be displayed. You must test this process in a test environment to ensure that the times and dates of the existing meetings are being displayed as expected.

Steps to Enable

If you haven’t created course schedule meeting data prior to 21B and intend to create new courses and course schedule meetings from release 21B, follow the setup steps in the related release readiness feature: Global Time Zone Configuration.

NOTE: If you have course schedule meeting data created prior to 21B, you must follow the steps outlined in this document on My Oracle Support:

              Oracle Student Management Cloud Service: Student Management Time Zone Feature (Doc ID 2750794.1)

Don't change any course data until you complete the steps in the document.

Time Zone Display for Storefront

Time zone information is displayed alongside scheduled course meeting times in the storefront. For example: ART 100 - Introduction to Art, Mondays, 9:00 AM - 10:00AM PST.

This information is available to students because time zone is now stored as part of the course schedule meeting.

Refer to the related release readiness features:

• Global Time Zone Configuration
• Course Schedule Meeting Details Time Zone Configuration

Course schedules in the storefront display the time zone abbreviation, for example, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST.

For authenticated users, the format is determined by the regional user preference. For non-authenticated users, the format is determined by the user browser settings.

Steps to Enable

If you haven’t created course schedule meeting data prior to 21B and intend to create new courses and course schedule meetings from release 21B, follow the setup steps in the related release readiness feature: Global Time Zone Configuration.

NOTE: If you have course schedule meeting data created prior to 21B, you must follow the steps outlined in this document on My Oracle Support:

              Oracle Student Management Cloud Service: Student Management Time Zone Feature (Doc ID 2750794.1).

Don't change any course data until you complete the steps in this document.

Full-Time Load Definition for Academic Level

Define a full-time minimum unit load for each academic level, such as undergraduate or graduate where students are admitted to credit bearing programs or enroll in credit bearing courses.

Use these new fields on the Academic Levels page:

• For credit
• Minimum Full Time Units

Academic Levels

Select the For credit check box to indicate that courses and programs at this academic level are considered for credit and can lead to a degree or other formally recognized qualification. If you select the check box, enter a value for Minimum Full Time Units.

NOTE: Here's what you need to do if you have set up academic levels prior to 21B:

1. The new For credit check box will be selected by default for all academic levels. Clear the check box for your non-credit academic levels.
2. For the academic levels for which you keep the For credit check box selected, enter a Minimum Full Time Units value.

USAGE METRICS

The new Academic Level attributes can be used to calculate and report Student Management usage metrics.

Only those users designated as Service Administrators can generate usage metrics.

Select: Tools > Scheduled Processes > Schedule New Process: Generate Cloud Usage Metrics. Metric Name: Student Management Cloud Service - Hosted FTE Student.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Student Admissions

Oracle Student Admissions enables users to enter, track, and process the submission of the admissions applications.

Billing Address Restrictions for Admissions Application Form

A billing address can no longer be removed when filling out an admissions application form. If an applicant attempts to remove a billing address, the Remove button is unavailable.

Bill To Address

This feature helps a user avoid a preventable error by preventing them from removing an address of type Bill To from an admissions application form.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Role Information

An Admissions Coordinator, or self-service applicant, can use this feature.

Additional Academic History Fields on the Admissions Online Application Form

You can add these new fields to the Academic History section of an admissions form:

• GPA Weighting
• Student ID

Applicants can now provide additional academic history information on their admissions application.

An admissions coordinator and admissions operations staff are now able to review additional relevant information directly on an applicant's admissions application form, without having to open additional attachments. An applicant can now add additional relevant information on their admissions application form.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Role Information

You need the admissions coordinator or admissions manager role to use this feature.

Automatic Task Status Update on Admission Application Cancel, Withdraw, or Revert

Automatically pause tasks that aren't completed for an admissions application when the application is canceled or withdrawn. Automatically mark tasks that were paused as incomplete when a previously canceled or withdrawn admission application is reverted out of those states.

This feature removes the need for administrators to manually update task statuses associated with an admissions application that has been canceled, withdrawn, or reverted.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Role Information

You need the Admissions Administrator or Coordinator role to use this feature.