Aid Year Activation Fundamentals

This article contains background information and other helpful reminders regarding the aid year activation process.

What:

• The process of initializing a student's aid eligibility by turning on certain tables and options in PeopleSoft

When: 

• This process is needed to run most FA processes and should be one of the first processes in the FinAid technical process.
• For more detail see: Ops Calendar

Where:

• Process Financial Aid Years: Menu > Financial Aid > Aid Year Activation

Why:

• The logic behind selecting which students to aid year activate instead of running with the system wide open is primarily to drive system efficiency. For example, if we are preparing award packages for financial aid year 2026 there is no need to have the system try to award a student who graduated in 2002.  

How:

• For each year we have 4 run controls that run sequentially each workday to try and catch all scenarios in which a student should be activated. In general it catches any admitted students with AC, PM, AD program statuses, all students who are listed as enrolled in the enrollment table, all students who are listed as active on the academic program table, and any students who exist on the career term table. (All selection criteria limited to the current aid year/terms)

Who:

• The aid year activation process is currently run through IT under the SA_SCHED account. System analysts typically will coordinate with IT when run controls need to be stopped, started, or updated.

Other Notes:

• The queries rely on AY_ACTIVE_BUILD_ODD, AY_ACTIVE_BUILD_EVEN tree nodes and they will need to be updated each year.