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Why, might you ask? Well, Financial Aid vouchers for the fall term go into effect. That would be all well and good, but the process itself got borked, so I - with absolutely NO experience or knowledge of how this process works - have to try and pinpoint the errors if I can, while working with both campus IT, my company IT, students, my boss, and the Student business office here on campus. allow me to explain:
The way it's SUPPOSED to work:
1. We send an email to Sean (head of campus IT), who handles the upload every semester. We tell him start dates, expiration dates, and the term code every student with qualifying financial aid gets set under. In this case, Fall 2012. Start date is today, runs until sometime in september, say...the 15th. So. Sean gets an email that says "Please upload financial aid voucher information for all students fall 2012, with a start date of 07/19/2012 and and expiration date of 09/15/2012. Thanks so much, hugs and kisses and Reese's!"
2. Sean's task, then, is to contact the Student Business office, who gives a list of students with their ID numbers, and excess aid allotted for the fall term. This amount never exceeds a set number, say $600.
3. Sean uploads the list into our system the morning of the start date (i.e. TODAY)
4. Students come in to the store with their ID, we plug in the number, and it pops up saying "available balance, $453" or $600, etc, etc.
5. We run the transaction, student signs the paperwork, walks out with books and we submit the papers to the Student Business office at the end date, and we get a check cut in the amount of the total charges.
What happened today
1. I arrive at 10 am. Boss tells me "Financial aid didn't load correctly, Sean is looking into it" I pull up an account and sure enough, account after account, there is either a $0 balance or a NEGATIVE balance for student fall aid accounts. Oh. GOODY.
2. Sean calls around 11, asking us to check if the accounts are now correct in our system. I pull up an account...and it's reflecting a balance of $8662.45. Further, the dates were set for 07/18/2011 and expiration is 12/08/2011. WTF!?!?!
3. Boss and I faint. Upon coming to, we realize this is so very much wrong. Sean sounds puzzled. This has never happened before, did WE do something?? We explain how it's been in the past. Either it works perfectly, or it doesn't work. We have NEVER seen this kind of issue before. Ok, says Sean, I'll look at it.
4. Explain to students coming in that they can't use said vouchers until they go to the Student Business office to obtain bright pink sheets of paper saying they can. Cue unhappy students.
5. Call the IT Support desk for my company, to make sure it isn't a glitch on our end, and wait for that team to start working on it. Meanwhile, wait for Sean to call back.
6. Get calls from everyone on the chain in Student Business AND the financial aid office to call and ask why in the hell we're sending students over there...the upload went in today! Explain the situation and take several screen prints showing the issue over and get berated, in person, yay!! Then, get a call from Sean when I'm at my desk again asking for a screencap, to "verify what you say is happening is really happening, because we're looking at the code and <long list of technical language I don't understand>, you see?"
...no...
7. Go through the transactions we DID process today, only to find ANOTHER glitch. Student has a $600 limit, which we manually enter. We ring them through for a $220 purchase, etc, etc, life is good, and print the receipts, only to check the bottom where the remaining balance is supposed to be listed...and see there is only $54 remaining balance.
....
8. Repeat all of the above steps involving Sean, Student Business, IT Support for my company.
9. Contemplate crawling under the desk and hiding for the rest of the day.
10. Finally, FINALLY sit down for a lunch break, right as boss walks out and says "I think we might have another issue with the FA upload..."
11. Whimper.
12. Whimper again.
13. Really REALLY wish you hadn't finished all the chai already.
14. Eat lunch and pretend you're invisible so no one can see you, while writing up a post for fellow CSers to commiserate with.
That's been my day, how's yours...?
The way it's SUPPOSED to work:
1. We send an email to Sean (head of campus IT), who handles the upload every semester. We tell him start dates, expiration dates, and the term code every student with qualifying financial aid gets set under. In this case, Fall 2012. Start date is today, runs until sometime in september, say...the 15th. So. Sean gets an email that says "Please upload financial aid voucher information for all students fall 2012, with a start date of 07/19/2012 and and expiration date of 09/15/2012. Thanks so much, hugs and kisses and Reese's!"
2. Sean's task, then, is to contact the Student Business office, who gives a list of students with their ID numbers, and excess aid allotted for the fall term. This amount never exceeds a set number, say $600.
3. Sean uploads the list into our system the morning of the start date (i.e. TODAY)
4. Students come in to the store with their ID, we plug in the number, and it pops up saying "available balance, $453" or $600, etc, etc.
5. We run the transaction, student signs the paperwork, walks out with books and we submit the papers to the Student Business office at the end date, and we get a check cut in the amount of the total charges.
What happened today
1. I arrive at 10 am. Boss tells me "Financial aid didn't load correctly, Sean is looking into it" I pull up an account and sure enough, account after account, there is either a $0 balance or a NEGATIVE balance for student fall aid accounts. Oh. GOODY.
2. Sean calls around 11, asking us to check if the accounts are now correct in our system. I pull up an account...and it's reflecting a balance of $8662.45. Further, the dates were set for 07/18/2011 and expiration is 12/08/2011. WTF!?!?!
3. Boss and I faint. Upon coming to, we realize this is so very much wrong. Sean sounds puzzled. This has never happened before, did WE do something?? We explain how it's been in the past. Either it works perfectly, or it doesn't work. We have NEVER seen this kind of issue before. Ok, says Sean, I'll look at it.
4. Explain to students coming in that they can't use said vouchers until they go to the Student Business office to obtain bright pink sheets of paper saying they can. Cue unhappy students.
5. Call the IT Support desk for my company, to make sure it isn't a glitch on our end, and wait for that team to start working on it. Meanwhile, wait for Sean to call back.
6. Get calls from everyone on the chain in Student Business AND the financial aid office to call and ask why in the hell we're sending students over there...the upload went in today! Explain the situation and take several screen prints showing the issue over and get berated, in person, yay!! Then, get a call from Sean when I'm at my desk again asking for a screencap, to "verify what you say is happening is really happening, because we're looking at the code and <long list of technical language I don't understand>, you see?"
...no...
7. Go through the transactions we DID process today, only to find ANOTHER glitch. Student has a $600 limit, which we manually enter. We ring them through for a $220 purchase, etc, etc, life is good, and print the receipts, only to check the bottom where the remaining balance is supposed to be listed...and see there is only $54 remaining balance.
....
8. Repeat all of the above steps involving Sean, Student Business, IT Support for my company.
9. Contemplate crawling under the desk and hiding for the rest of the day.
10. Finally, FINALLY sit down for a lunch break, right as boss walks out and says "I think we might have another issue with the FA upload..."
11. Whimper.
12. Whimper again.
13. Really REALLY wish you hadn't finished all the chai already.
14. Eat lunch and pretend you're invisible so no one can see you, while writing up a post for fellow CSers to commiserate with.
That's been my day, how's yours...?
and Chai w/ Bailey's
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