Welcome to our Webinar on the Commencement Date Revision Submission process.
This new functionality was included in version 16 of HEPCAT.
The Commencement Date Revision submission gives you the ability to revise a
student’s course of study commencement date.
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Our overview today includes;
•Why you might need to use the Commencement Date Revision submission
•How this revision process actually works
•How you check your updated data and what reports are available to assist you
•Other changes that have been included in this release, in particular the updates to
OS-HELP
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The Commencement Date Revision Submission is an administrative tool that enables
you to update any errors or inconsistencies you may identify with a student’s course
of study commencement date. So it’s not a file that you are likely to use frequently.
For example, you would not usually be reporting this submission every time you
submit your regular student data.
Generally you will be alerted to errors in a student’s course of study commencement
date when you are checking:
• your submission reports - HEIMS provides you with a warning message to let you
know the course of study commencement date you are reporting for a student is
different from the date you have previously reported for the student in the same
course. The message also lets you know that the new commencement date has
not been loaded to HEIMS.
• your Data View and Verification Reports in HEIMS Online. You may notice that
your commencing students numbers for example do not match the commencing
student numbers in HEIMS.
You may also have your own administrative processes that will identify these types
of errors.
You can now directly update any incorrect commencement dates that need to be
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changed through this new submission. Previously you could only update this value
by notifying the department and requesting the change.
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This is the file structure for the Commencement Date Revision submission. It’s a
very simple structure - you will notice that there are only 3 elements required for
this submission. These are:
• Student identification code E313
• Course code E307
• Course of Study commencement Date E534 [this is the new value for the
student’s commencement date]
The structure also includes the standard 50 character filler which is for your own
administrative use if required.
As with all our file structures in HEPCAT, you have the option to manually enter these
fields - most appropriate if you have only a small number of records to update, or
you can import a file if you have a larger number of records to correct.
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New validation rules have been introduced for this submission.
The key HEPCAT validations include checks for:
• invalid or blank codes
• duplicate student records in the submission
For VET providers, HEPCAT will also check that the new course of study
commencement date is prior to the course NTIS expiry date
The key HEIMS validations include checks that:
• There is an existing record for the student in the course
• the new course of study commencement date occurs before the census date for
all existing units of study in the course.
All the validations are available on HEIMSHELP.
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The first step to revising a students course of study commencement date is to create
a Commencement Date Revision Submission in HEPCAT.
You will need to enter the key elements to identify the record to be revised and
these must match the original record.
The key elements for this submission type are;
Student identification code (element 313)
Course code (element 307)
The next step is to add the students correct course of study commencement date
and then validate and submit your revision.
After your submission has been accepted by HEIMS it is important that you check
the results in the HEIMS Online Summary Reports to ensure that data has been
updated as intended.
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We will now have a look at this submission type in HEPCAT.
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Select the submission from the submission type lists.
Note that this submission will only appear if you have installed the latest version of
HEPCAT.
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Here is the file structure, as we mentioned there are only 3 data elements.
You will notice that the abbreviation for the file is RC for higher education providers
and VRC for VET Providers.
The file naming convention document has been updated on HEIMSHELP to include
these new file types.
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After you have submitted your revision it is really important to review the Summary
Report.
Here is an example of the summary reports.
As you can see the report displays the key elements and lists the old value which was
the first date reported. And the new value is the revised course of study
commencement date that was provided in the revision submission.
By checking your report you can confirm that the values have been updated as
intended.
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If you need assistance with reporting here are our contact details.
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