Considerations, Best Practices & Recommendations in Electronic Transcript Exchange

1. Considerations, Best Practices & Recommendations in Electronic Transcript Exchange: EDI, XML, PDF Presented by: Matt Bemis, University of Southern California Sue Reyes, San Diego State University

2. Etiquette Please silence your electronic devices Please complete the session evaluation using the AACRAO mobile app If you must leave the session early, please do so as discreetly as possible Please avoid side conversation during the session

3. Agenda A brief history and considerations of various methods of transcript exchange to include: PDF Transcripts EDI Transcripts XML Transcripts Additional information and resources SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

4. Learning Outcomes of this session: First Learning Outcome: Understand the current technologies enabling the electronic exchange of transcripts  Second Learning Outcome: Understand the current trends are influencing institutional decisions to send and receive electronic transcripts Third Learning Outcome: Gain insight into whether the best electronic transcript format for you to use is EDI, XML, PDF or some combination SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

5. PDF History & Overview Portable Document Format (PDF) released by Adobe Systems in 1993 Cooperated with ISO for standardized subsets Released as an open standard in 2008 – Adobe Reader is free, plus others Electronic image vs. electronic data Sending – Extract a dataset from SIS and spool to PDF document Receiving – Institution must determine how to get data into system Authentication – Secure PDF signed and certified as authentic using digital signature Encryption – Provides a secure method of transmission using sender and receiver keys PDF files can have attachments, both at document-level and page-level. SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

6. PDF Transcript Challenges Email issues: Email directed to spam filters Bad email addresses Feature questions: Security features can cause issues for uploading, expirations, etc. Do recipients accept PDF transcripts? Receiving efficiently SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

7. PDF Transcripts Benefits Create electronic transcript complete with colors, images and watermarks that mirror the official paper transcript Quickly and affordably deliver transcripts to institutions and businesses to verify degrees and coursework Customer service and expectations Cost reduction Fairly quick and easy implementation Supported by a variety of vendors Requires little technical knowledge at the institutional level SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

8. Sample PDF Transcript SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

9. Sample PDF Transcript SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

10. PDF Sending Best Practices Utilize security within the PDF Blue Ribbon Security Digital signatures Watermark background Document expiration? Use secure transmission methods Vendor networks Multiple-step authentication No direct email attachments Don’t lock it down so tight the receiving institution cannot process the transcript SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

11. PDF Receiving Best Practices Maximize the benefit of electronic OCR Templates Don’t print, then manual data entry Little improvement over paper! Coordinate with primary trading partners Use other methods for institution-to-institution transmission Best Option! SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

12. Do PDFs Save Time & Money? Sending PDFs: Yes. Reduced paper, printing, mailing times Receiving PDFs: Yes. Time is saved in the receiving of a PDF vs Transcript in the mail. Processing PDF transcripts is not as efficient as receiving data since PDF transcripts must be imaged and data entered into the student information system. Some institutions have systems that can automatically load images into imaging systems, but in general, PDF transcripts must still be manually entered or OCR’ed into your SIS. Example: One University’s Transcript Processing Paper – Up to 5 days to be received via mail + up to 30 business days to post to SIS PDF – Arrive within 1 day of order + up to 30 business days to post to SIS EDI – Arrive within 1 day of order & post to imaging system and SIS by next morning SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

13. EDI History The AACRAO Standardization of Postsecondary Education Electronic Data Exchange Committee (SPEEDE) began developing national standard in 1989 AACRAO SPEEDE developed the initial format for the College Transcript US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began developing a national standard during same timeframe NCES developed the format for the K-12 Transcript SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

14. EDI History (cont’d) Both groups worked with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 to develop standard formats ANSI ASC X12 Transaction Set 130 for the Student Educational Record (Transcript) approved in early 1990’s, with the most current version being published in 1998 Followed by EDI standards for several other education-related documents Adopted as approved PESC (P20W Education Standards Council) standards around 2008, where they are now maintained by PESC’s Education Record User Group (ERUG) Current version is TS130 Version 4.0, May 2009 SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

15. EDI Format Delimited – like a CSV file Named “segment” Mixture of Optional and Required fields and segments Multiple occurring and nested segments Followed by EDI standards for several other education-related documents SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

16. EDI Format Example Delimiter SES|200507|1|||Fall 2005; SUM|U|4|N|||1|||3.33; CRS|R|U||1|01|B+||||82|0014.000|3.33||CECN|801|Principles of Eng Economics; SES|200601|1|||Winter 2006; SUM|U|U|N|||1|||3.67; CRS|R|U||1|01|A-||||||3.67||CVL|425|Hydrology and Hydraulic Eng; SES|200609|1|||Fall 2006; SUM|U|U|N|||1|||3.67; CRS|R|U||1|01|A-||||||3.67||CVL|324|Geotech Properties of Soil I; Segment Terminator Empty – i.e. Optional Fields Named Segment SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

17. EDI Institutional Considerations Capabilities of the organization IT resources available Interest level of senior management Compatibility with SIS Cost/benefit analysis In house vs. vendor sponsored solution Efficiency gains Process reengineering Strategic goals Preferred trading partner methodologies SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

18. EDI Process Considerations Technical complexity limits some institutions Need for translation software or SIS compatibility to recognize full benefits Data mapping can be cumbersome Perception of complexity or lack of IT resources Many small important setup details, but it’s only done once SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

19. EDI Process Benefits • Standards are consistent • Resources are available • Processes can be batched and automated • Large volume of current institutions using standard • Efficient transmission of data with the least amount of characters necessary • State/Province and district initiatives • Sender and receiver are identified • Automated acknowledgements of both delivery and receipt possible • Transmission through SPEEDE Server benefits trading partners • Costs decrease • Speede delivery  SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

20. What is XML ? XML stands for eXtensibleMarkup Language XML is a markup language much like HTML XML was designed to carry data, not to display data XML is designed to be self-descriptive XML references a schema – a description including constraints and content Started with the development of Standardised Generalised Markup Language (SGML) in the 1970s at IBM. The concept was to create vocabularies which could be used to mark up documents with structural tags. SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

21. XML Example </TransmissionData> - <Student> - <Person> <SchoolAssignedPersonID>309032191</SchoolAssignedPersonID> <AgencyAssignedID>582425187</AgencyAssignedID> <RecipientAssignedID>123456789</RecipientAssignedID> <Birth> <BirthDate>1989-06-12</BirthDate> </Birth> - <Name> <FirstName>Kristen</FirstName> <MiddleName /> <LastName>Young</LastName> </Name> - <Gender> <GenderCode>Female</GenderCode> </Gender> </Person> SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

22. PESC XML example – High School Transcript Schema SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

23. XML Considerations XML syntax is large relative to EDI representations of similar data This results in higher storage, transmission and processing costs Example 2K EDI = 30k XML (compression in Office 07) XML syntax is verbose, especially for human readers, relative to other alternative 'text-based' data Number of tags = more to sift through to determine what you need for your SIS as a receiver, and to process on-going (performance impacts) Requires an electronic acknowledgement and reconciliation SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

24. Key Benefits of XML Content identification Enforced structure International standard Industry standardization SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

25. Additional XML Benefits It supports Unicode, allowing almost any information in any written human language to be communicated Format uses English and less abbreviations making it less technical to read than EDI format It is platform-independent, thus relatively immune to changes in technology As with EDI, reduce data entry time and improves data quality SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

26. Additional XML Benefits (cont’d) Forward and backward compatibility are relatively easy to maintain despite changes in Schema Compatible with SEVIS, IPEDS and NCATE (for teachers) Postsecondary Education Standards Council (PESC) standards for both High School and Postsecondary transcripts XML usage is increasing in North America and internationally – SPEEDE Servers support transmission of XML or EDI Crosswalks are available between EDI and XML Major vendors support inbound and outbound XML SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

27. Security Risk of identity theft, compromise of sensitive data, and financial obligation Penalties and legal liability under laws such as FERPA, Social Security Act and HIPAA Potential impact to reputation of your institution SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

28. Three Components to Data Transmission Security Encryption – coding to be unreadable, except by authorized recipient (PGP, SFTP, SSL) Authentication – proves that the user is who they say they are (security key, digital certificate) Non-repudiation – verification that transmission was received and an acknowledgement of receipt was sent back (transcript acknowledgement) SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

29. Security Methodology Bilateral exchange – two organizations set up an exchange with each other and follow mutually agreed upon security protocols (e.g. Maricopa Community College sends to ASU) Hub and spoke – organizations register with and transmit to a central authority that routes to partners (e.g. SPEEDE Server) SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

30. Resources https://speedeserver.org/ SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

31. SPEEDE Server Registrant Lists and Activity Reports SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

32. Reports

33. Other Resources of Interest SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

34. Additional Resources AACRAO Professional Development AACRAO offers professional development opportunities through meetings, online classes and webinars. For more information, please visit http://www.aacrao.org/professional-development Publications AACRAO offers a valuable library of resources on transfer and other higher education topics. For a listing of our recent publications, please visit http://aacrao.org/resources/publications AACRAO Best Practices for PDF Transcript Exchange Compiled list of best practices for PDF transcript exchange. For more information, please see http://www.aacrao.org/about/committees/aacrao-speede-committee/best-practices-pdf-transcript-exchange SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

35. Questions? SPEEDE – A Professional Development Committee of AACRAOAmerican Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

36. EDX Resource available via AACRAO Publications!