Skip to main content
Documentation
Documentation
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2024-03-08
Setup Considerations: ISIR Processing

Setup Considerations: ISIR Processing

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) processing. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

ISIR processing communicates a student's financial aid information between Workday and the FAFSA Processing System (FPS). Workday has 2 integrations for ISIR processing:
  • An inbound integration that loads ISIRs from the FPS.
  • An outbound integration that outputs a file of corrected ISIRs to the FPS.
The Department of Education renamed the Central Processing System (CPS) as the FAFSA Processing System (FPS), effective from the 2024-2025 award year.

Business Benefits

Active ISIRs in Workday enable you to:
  • Assign financial aid action items to students. Example: upload documents.
  • Calculate cost of attendance.
  • Create financial aid packages.

Use Cases

ISIR processing enables you or your students to:
  • Load ISIRs for a specific financial aid award year.
  • Activate, inactivate, and correct ISIRs.
  • Match and merge incoming ISIRs to existing student or applicant records.
  • Submit FAFSA information to the FPS for a new financial aid award year.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
When do you want ISIRs to become active?
The earlier ISIRs are active, the sooner you can assign action items and financial aid awards to students and admitted applicants.
You can activate ISIRs when applicants are:
  • Internally admitted to your institution.
  • Publicly admitted to your institution.
  • Matriculated into Workday.
How can you use rejected ISIRs?
You can configure rejected ISIRs to assign action items to students. With these action items, students can correct information or provide any missing files on their ISIR. However, students can't receive financial aid packages or have their awards disbursed with a rejected ISIR.

Recommendations

To process financial aid before students matriculate, configure an ISIR processing policy to activate ISIRs for recently admitted and newly matriculated students. When you don't use an ISIR processing policy, Workday activates ISIRs when students matriculate.

Requirements

To interchange files with the FPS using ISIR integrations, you must transfer files from your Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) mailbox to your secure SFTP site. Workday integrations can only access these files once you transfer them to your Workday SFTP site. Identify where your integrations access inbound and outbound files to help your integrations teams with their configurations.
When you use TD Client, include Headers and Trailers in your outbound integration systems to import files to the Department of Education.

Limitations

  • You can use ISIR processing functionality only to process federal financial aid.
  • The
    ISIR File Inbound
     integration template doesn't support concatenated ISIR files.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Domain
Considerations
Integration Build
 in the Integration functional area.
Integration Security
 in the Integration functional area.
Enables you to configure ISIR integrations.
Integration Event
 in the Integration functional area.
Manage: ISIR - USA
 in the Financial Aid functional area.
Enables you to use the
ISIR File Inbound
 and
ISIR Correction Outbound
 templates when you create integration systems.
Manage: ISIR Processing Policy
 in the Financial Aid functional area.
Enables you to configure ISIR processing policies.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Find Students Created via ISIR Load
Enables you to view imported ISIR records that don't match preexisting student records.
Review Pending ISIRs
Enables you to compare pending and active ISIR transactions to decide which ones to activate or inactivate.
View Changed Fields for 2024-2025 Consolidated Appropriations Act
Enables you to view new, removed, and replaced ISIR report fields in response to the FAFSA Simplification Act, effective as of the 2024-2025 financial aid award year. You can use this report to identify ISIR report fields are no longer valid but used on your:
  • Business processes.
  • Custom reports.
  • Financial aid calculations.
  • Student engagements. Example: ISIR-related student messages.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Workday provides these financial aid connector templates that you can use to exchange data with the U.S. Department of Education:
  • ISIR Correction Outbound
  • ISIR File Inbound
You can schedule an ISIR integration event to manage data transmission times.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.