About disbursement notifications

Using the F/A Disbursement Roster, you can send emails that include information about a student's financial aid award to students. This can help you comply with regulations requiring students to be notified about disbursements.

Prerequisites

• Set up an email connection to Campus Cafe using Google or Microsoft.

Required permissions

Create activity tracking template

An activity tracking template holds the content of the email. By including dynamic fields in the template, you can use the same template every time you need to send a notification. Hence, you only need to create this template once although Campus Cafe supports building multiple templates to accommodate varying business needs. For example, you might create a unique template for each of your distinct campuses.

1. Go to All Users > Activity Tracking Templates.

2. In Member select the desired template category (e.g. Financial Aid). This category controls who can use this template to send notifications.

3. In Template Name enter text to describe the activity. For example, Loan Disbursement Notification.
   
   

   Open

   

4. Click Add; a new screen appears.

5. Click Save.

6. At the bottom of the screen under Added Workflows click the paper and pencil.
   
   

   Open

   

7. In Type select Email.

8. In Category select Email.

9. In Mode select Email Sent on Add.

10. Under Actions select Email Tracked Person.

11. Under Email Tracked Person select which email address type to send the notification to.
    
    

12. Switch the Editor Format to Simple to allow inserting of dynamic fields.

13. In the Email Default Subject Text enter the subject line of the email notification. For example, “You have a loan disbursement!” Click the double arrows to select a dynamic (merge) field like the student’s ID number or name. Campus Cafe will automatically retrieve this information when sending the email.
    
    

14. In the Email Default Body Text enter the content of the email. Click the double arrows to select a dynamic (merge) field. Campus Cafe will will automatically retrieve this information when sending the email. The below fields are useful when sending a disbursement notification.

    • Award Code Description: COMMENT_3

    • Gross Disbursed: AMOUNT_ORIGINAL

    • Net Disbursed: AMOUNT_PAID

    • Amount of Difference Between Gross and Net Disbursed: AMOUNT_DUE

    • Disbursement Date: DUE_DATE

    • Disbursement Number: COMMENT_2

    • Last Four Digits of Student's SSN: COMMENT_4

    • Student Degree Status: COMMENT_5

    • Parent's Last 4 of SSN: COMMENT_7 (used for Parent Plus loan disbursements, data comes from related Parent Relation record in the system)

    • Parent's Name: COMMENT_6 (used for Parent Plus loan disbursements, data comes from related Parent Relation record in the system)

15. Click Save.

Example email

This example includes the student’s ID and name in the email subject line as well as information about what was disbursed. Note to insert the dynamic (merge) fields, you’ll need to have the Editor Format set to simple. After inserting your dynamic fields, you can switch it to Rich to allow more formatting options.

Select students and email

To send an emailed notification, you’ll first select the students to send the notification. This lets you narrow the targeted students to just those who have been disbursed and, optionally, further narrow the population by other criteria.

1. Go to Financials > F/A Disbursement Roster.

2. Use the filters to set the criteria to return the disbursements you wish to notify students about. For example, you may choose a specific Award Year, set the Gross Disbursed Amount > 0 to capture only disbursed awards and then input a date range for disbursed date to limit the notifications to awards disbursed in a certain time frame.
   
   

3. Select (check) the students to notify or click Select All to notify all students.
   
   

4. Click Add Tracking (Batch).

5. In Member:Template Name use the magnifying glass to select the activity tracking template.

6. Click Submit to send the notifications.