eTranscript Services

The vendor is required to provide comprehensive information technology (IT) professional services to support the design, configuration and implementation of the university‐ next‐gen transcript exchange (NGTE) platform in the form of a robust software solution.
- Key components of university ‐NGTE include:
1. Standardization of transcript data
• Define a university ‐wide standardized data schema for transcript content to ensure consistency and accuracy across all campuses, while maintaining the flexibility for each campus to control the look and feel of their pdf and printed transcripts.
• Build integration tools and workflows to support receiving transcripts as structured data and populating student profiles within existing student information systems (sis) and other administrative platforms
2. Automation and integration
• Automate the transcript request, generation, and delivery process to reduce manual intervention and associated errors.
• Ensure real‐time synchronization between the etranscript platform and student information systems (SIS) to automatically reflect student record updates, such as grade changes and degree conferrals.
• Implement automation to streamline transcript processing, detect anomalies, and prioritize urgent requests based on predefined institutional rules and policies.
3. Enhanced user experience
• Develop a unified, user‐friendly portal for students, alumni, and administrative staff to request, send, and manage transcripts.
• Provide a single ordering experience for students who have attended multiple university institutions, eliminating the need to order transcripts separately from each institution.
• Ensure mobile accessibility and an intuitive and accessible interface to improve user satisfaction.
4. enhanced administrative experience
• Develop a real‐time dashboard for administrators to monitor transcript processing statuses, pending approvals, and workflow performance metrics.
• Enable role‐based access controls, allowing institutions to define user roles and permissions for managing transcript approvals, exceptions, and processing rules.
5. Security and compliance
• Adhere to family educational rights and privacy act (FERPA) guidelines and other applicable privacy regulations to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and authenticity of academic records.
• Incorporate features such as encryption, digital signatures, and robust authentication mechanisms.
6. Scalability and sustainability
• Design the solution to scale with future growth in user base and technological advancements.
• Support environmental sustainability initiatives by reducing reliance on paper‐based processes.
7. Training and support
• Provide comprehensive training and support for end‐users, including registrars, admissions staff, and other administrative personnel.
• Include ongoing system maintenance, updates, and support for troubleshooting.
8. Migration and transition plan
• Comprehensive data migration ‐ develop a structured data migration plan to seamlessly transfer transcript records, student profiles, and historical data while ensuring accuracy through automated validation and reconciliation.
• Minimized downtime and legacy system integration ‐ implement a phased migration approach with off‐peak scheduling, rollback mechanisms, and API‐based integrations to ensure smooth transition while maintaining compatibility with legacy sis and administrative platforms.
• User training and parallel system testing ‐ provide comprehensive training programs, manuals, and support personnel while running parallel systems for testing, validation, and feedback collection before full deployment.
• Post‐migration support and continuous optimization ‐ offer ongoing system monitoring, performance tracking, and support to address post‐migration issues while establishing a roadmap for future enhancements based on user feedback and analytics.
- Functional requirements:  
1. Unified ordering platform with campus‐specific workflow control
• A unified portal must be implemented for students and alumni to request transcripts across all university institutions, ensuring a single point of access regardless of how many campuses they have attended.
• This platform must seamlessly integrate with the student‐facing portals and websites of each university institution to ensure ease of use and consistent access through familiar interfaces.
• The platform must allow campuses to configure transcript processing workflows, including approval steps, delivery methods, and institutional policies.
• Each campus must retain full control over its own transcript workflows, including processing, approval, and delivery mechanisms.
• Institution‐specific fees and processing times must be displayed transparently to students at the time of request, ensuring clarity in cost breakdowns.
• The platform should enable automated transcript request approvals and processing, reducing manual intervention and ensuring faster fulfillment of requests.
• Real‐time status tracking must be available for both students and administrative staff, providing visibility into the request lifecycle, including pending approvals, processing, and delivery.
• The system must support multiple campus‐specific billing options.
2. SIS/ERP/campus system integration
• The solution should integrate seamlessly with the student information systems (sis), enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and other campus systems of record used across university institutions to ensure efficient data exchange and workflow coordination.
• The platform should support bidirectional data exchange between the etranscript system and campus systems to enable:
o Automatic population of student profiles in the sis with transcript data received in structured formats (e.g., xml/EDI).
o Retrieval of student record data from the sis to generate accurate and complete transcripts.
o The platform should validate incoming and outgoing data to prevent mismatches or duplication during data exchange.
• Campus‐specific workflows for transcript processing and approval should be accommodated through integration with SIS and ERP workflow engines or equivalent tools.
• The platform should allow campuses to configure rules for transcript requests, including:
o Verification of student holds or outstanding payments in the sis.
o Prioritization of transcript processing based on campus policies.
o number of transcripts requested per day (students)
• The platform should enable real‐time synchronization with campus systems, ensuring that any updates to student records (e.g., grade changes or degree conferrals) are reflected immediately in transcript data.
• The platform should accommodate integrations with legacy systems used for alumni records, ensuring that historical transcript data is accessible and processable within the unified platform.  
o It should also support cloud‐based and on‐prem SIS and ERP platforms used for current student records, ensuring seamless integration across the diverse technological landscape of university campuses.
o Middleware or API solutions should be provided to bridge compatibility gaps where direct integration with legacy systems is not feasible.
3. Multi‐institution ordering  
• The platform should provide a consolidated ordering experience for students and alumni who have attended multiple university institutions, allowing them to submit a single order that encompasses all relevant campuses.
• The system should aggregate all institutional fees into a single payment interface while itemizing fees per campus for transparency.
• The platform should manage inter‐campus workflows, ensuring that each institution processes its portion of the request independently while maintaining synchronization with the overall order.
• Maintain transparent workflows by showing order progress from each institution in real‐time.
• Users should have access to a centralized dashboard where they can:
o View the status of all transcripts included in the order.
o Receive notifications and tracking updates for order milestones, such as processing, approval, and delivery for each institution.
o Cancel or modify pending orders (subject to campus‐specific rules).
• The platform should support customization of multi‐institution workflows, allowing each campus to:
o Define processing rules for multi‐campus orders based on institutional policies.
o Independently process their portion of a multi‐campus request while ensuring smooth coordination.
o Ensure that these customizations do not disrupt the unified experience for students.
• The system should integrate with campus‐specific payment processors to facilitate automatic distribution of fees to each institution while offering a unified checkout experience.
o Include support for various payment methods, such as credit/debit cards, ach transfers, and campus‐specific billing accounts.  
o Support integrated payments for multi‐campus transactions, allowing students to
complete payments seamlessly.
• The platform should calculate and display estimated processing times for each campus in the order based on predefined campus workflows and policies.
• Users should receive clear communication when delays occur at any institution, including explanations for the delay.
• Provide a mechanism for each campus to indicate delayed processing times (i.e., holiday curtailment periods).
• Institutions should be able to prioritize and expedite transcript requests based on urgency, academic deadlines, or external requirements.
• The platform should automatically reconcile data across institutions to ensure consistency in student records, preventing duplication or errors.
• Support standardized data formats (xml, json, EDI) for seamless transcript sharing across institutions and external partners.
• For users who request delivery to a single recipient, the system should consolidate transcripts from multiple campuses into a single package where possible, ensuring compliance with campus policies and act requirements.
• Allow users to select separate delivery methods (e.g., electronic or paper) for each campus as needed.
• Provide campuses with insights into multi‐institution orders through a reporting dashboard, including:
o Number of requests involving their institution as part of multi‐campus orders.
o Processing times and user satisfaction metrics specific to their institution.
o Revenue breakdown for multi‐institution orders.
4. Data exchange standard
• The platform should support structured transcript data exchange using xml, json, and EDI formats or other standardized formats, ensuring compatibility across all university institutions.
• Provide built‐in validation tools to verify compliance with the university ‐wide standardized schema for transcripts, ensuring consistent data formatting before transmission or receipt.
• Automate transcript ingestion into recipient student information systems (sis) to streamline processing and eliminate manual entry errors.
• Provide dedicated tools and resources to assist campuses in configuring the platform for data exchange, including:
o Pre‐built templates for common student information system (SIS) and ERP integrations to simplify implementation.
o User‐friendly interfaces for mapping local data fields to the standardized schema.
o Step‐by‐step configuration guides tailored for institutions new to structured data standards.
o Include vendor‐led workshops or implementation assistance to ensure successful onboarding for campuses without prior experience in structured data integration.
o Offer ongoing consultation services during the implementation phase to address campus‐ specific challenges and requirements.
• The platform should support secure data exchange using various protocols (e.g., sftp, https, api‐based), ensuring compatibility with diverse campus technical environments.
• Enable role‐based access control (RBAC) for secure data transfers, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access, modify, or exchange student transcript data.
• Ensure compliance with act and other applicable federal, state, local data privacy laws, incorporating strong authentication, access control, and encryption measures.
• Enable real‐time tracking and status updates for transcript exchanges, allowing students and administrators to monitor progress at each stage.
• Support integration with third‐party credential verification services to facilitate external transcript authentication and validation.
• Establish secure channels for encrypted transcript transmissions, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of student records.
• Provide tools to map and transform data to meet external partner requirements while preserving the integrity of the university schema.
• The platform should include advanced error‐handling features to:
o Automated validation and error‐checking to detect and flag missing fields, incorrect formats, and other inconsistencies before transmission.
o Real‐time detection and logging of data transmission issues.
o Automated retry mechanisms for transient failures, such as network interruptions.
o Administrative alerts with detailed error logs for persistent issues, expediting resolution.
o Recovery workflows to maintain data integrity and prevent duplication of records.
• The platform should maintain detailed audit logs of all transcript exchanges between university campuses, including timestamps, data types, sender and receiver information, and transmission statuses.
• Provide audit trail reporting to ensure compliance with act and university data security policies.
• Offer user‐friendly tools for administrators to review, search, and export log data for audits and troubleshooting.
• The data exchange architecture should be scalable to accommodate growing transaction volumes as campuses adopt the standardized schema. ensure high‐performance benchmarks for data transmission speeds and processing times, even under peak usage scenarios.
• Provide built‐in tools to facilitate the transformation of local data into the university schema format, including:
o Automatic data mapping utilities for campuses migrating from legacy systems.
o Real‐time transformation of unstructured or semi‐structured data into machine‐readable formats.
o Support campus‐specific configurations to adapt existing records to meet schema requirements.
• Offer a sandbox environment for campuses to test data exchange configurations, simulate transactions, and validate accuracy without impacting live systems.
• Provide guided testing scenarios and automated validation tools to confirm readiness before moving to production.
5. Administrative user interface (UI)
• Role‐based administrative dashboard
o Provide a role‐based dashboard displaying real‐time processing metrics, allowing administrators to monitor and manage transcript workflows efficiently.
o Enable role‐specific permissions for different administrative functions, ensuring secure and controlled access.
• Transcript processing and workflow management
o Allow administrators to view, approve, hold, or reject transcript requests based on institutional policies.
o Support batch processing to handle multiple transcript requests simultaneously, improving efficiency.
o Implement automated handling of financial and academic holds, ensuring requests are processed only when compliance requirements are met.
• Secure access and search capabilities
o Provide secure access to student records with advanced search tools, enabling administrators to locate specific records quickly.
o Allow filtering and sorting options to streamline record retrieval based on status, institution, or request date.
• Centralized inbox for receiving institutions
o Implement a centralized inbox for receiving institutions to manage incoming transcripts efficiently.
o Enable institutions to track, categorize, and process received transcripts in one interface.
• Automated validation and data transformation
o Implement automated validation and error correction for incoming transcripts, ensuring data accuracy before integration into student information systems (sis).
o Enable real‐time transformation of unstructured files (e.g., scanned pdfs) into machine‐ readable formats for seamless data processing.
• Automated notifications and communication management
o Provide automated email and SMS notifications to update students and institutions on the status of transcript requests.
o Allow institutions to configure customized message templates, ensuring personalized and institution‐specific communications.
o Implement delay notifications with explanations (e.g., holidays, system maintenance, closures) to inform users of expected processing times.
• Customizable reporting and audit logs
o Offer customizable reports on processing performance, request trends, and workflow efficiency to aid institutional decision‐making.
o Provide audit logging for all administrative actions, tracking modifications, approvals, and rejections for compliance and accountability.
• Security and compliance measures
o Require encryption and multi‐factor authentication for securing administrative access and protecting student records.
o Ensure compliance with act, and other applicable federal, state, and local data privacy laws, and institutional security protocols to safeguard sensitive student data.
• Real‐time tracking and received transcript reporting
o Enable real‐time tracking and reporting on received transcripts, providing visibility into processing timelines and completion status.
o Allow institutions to generate detailed analytics on transcript acceptance rates, processing speed, and data integrity.
- Contract Period/Term: 5 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: April 09, 2025