Using CAS Application Data After Loading It Locally
Using CAS Data Once You've Loaded It
Institutions use CAS application data in their local systems for six purposes. The following list presents these purposes in the order of an admissions funnel.
- Recruitment: encouraging prospects to apply.
- Application management: encouraging applicants to complete their applications.
- Application review: reviewing completed applications for admission to your program.
- Decision release: notifying applicants of admission decisions.
- Post-offer operations: collecting necessary paperwork and fees from matriculating students.
- Student record creation: creating official digital records for matriculating students.
How Your Intended Use of Data Affects Your Integration
Different uses for CAS application data in local systems have different requirements. To perform early-admissions funnel operations like application management and application review in local systems, you must bring many different data points from CAS and bring them frequently.
Decision release requires somewhat fewer data points (enough to create person and application records and indicate the decision), but if decisions are released on a rolling basis, the data would need to be loaded to local systems frequently.
High frequency data transfers covering many data points are hard to handle with approaches that don't involve data integration, since they require a great deal of time-consuming manual work by admissions staff.
If you want to perform application management, application review, or decision release functions in local systems, it's best to go with Batch Processing or Automated Integration.
If you’re going to review applications and release decisions in Liaison’s platforms, and you only want to perform post-offer operations (e.g., collecting matriculation deposits) or student record creation for matriculating students in local systems, then the slower, labor-intensive processes are fine. These approaches that don't involve data integration have the added benefit of requiring little initial planning and effort to implement. With a lower initial investment required, you can start accepting applications sooner.