Release 2 – March 8, 2023

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New Features and Enhancements

CAS Application Enhancements

Liaison’s suite of portals work together to help you collect and manage applications. The CAS application, also referred to as the CAS Applicant Portal, is the system where applicants find and apply to your programs. You receive these applications in WebAdMIT or Liaison Outcomes, where you perform your review processes. The appearance of your program and your requirements are customized in the CAS Configuration Portal, where you establish the program-specific elements that your applicants will interact with. Additionally, your program may use one or more of the following tools and platforms:

API: a data integration tool.
CAS Analytics by Liaison and Othot: advanced analytics solutions and data reporting tools.
CAS Applicant Gateway: a platform for applicants who have already submitted their CAS application to complete and upload additional materials requested by their programs.
CAS Liaison Letters: a platform for evaluators to submit their letters of recommendation.
Enrollment Marketing and TargetX: customer relationship management (CRM) systems for student lifecycle management.
Living Profile: a platform where students can connect their academic pursuits with their career aspirations.
SlideRoom: a platform for collecting digital portfolios.
Time2Track: a platform for tracking, verifying, and managing experiences.

Optionally Add Third Gender/Sex Value

This enhancement is for CASs using the standard Gender/Sex question and must be approved by the CAS association or UniCAS client for use in the next cycle. If activated, this enhancement will be available for all participating programs in the next cycle. CAS association and UniCAS clients: contact your Account Manager for more information or to enable this feature.

Disclaimer: on rare occasions, a new feature or enhancement may be moved to a future release or otherwise subject to change.

CASs can choose to add a third custom answer value to the Gender/Sex question, alongside the existing Female and Male answer values; for example, the third custom answer value could be X or X or another gender. This enhancement allows CASs to meet their guidelines and new options from state and federal governments.

Applicant Portal

Applicants can view and select the custom answer value when completing their application.

Admissions by Liaison

The custom gender answer value is displayed in Admissions by Liaison as configured by the CAS and appears on the Biographic Information section of the application form. The custom gender value will be stored in the same Gender or Sex field that currently exists to ensure all user-configured dashboard reports, custom properties, and exports that reference the gender field will continue to work as expected.

Analytics by Liaison

The custom answer value will appear in Analytics by Liaison once an applicant selects the new value.

CAS API

The CAS API Application response now includes a new Gender JSON node under the BiographicInfo node (i.e., persInfo.biogInfo.gend.gender) that captures all the CAS-specific gender/sex options. For more information, review the Application resource in the API technical documentation.

If you currently use the CAS to Slate integration, we recommend you update your data integration and change the sex mapping from the previously-used field (persInfo.biogInfo.prof.gender) to the new CAS- and cycle-aware field (persInfo.biogInfo.gend.gender). While the previous field will remain in the payload, the data populating it is applicant-scoped instead of application-scoped and may not accurately reflect the options available in your CAS. The specific prompt value mappings vary from CAS to CAS; refer to your CAS for the custom gender answer value.

(CAS API description updated on April 3, 2023)

WebAdMIT

The custom answer value displays in WebAdMIT as how the CAS decides the value, and it appears in the Personal Information panel, Biographic Information subpanel on the Applicant Details page. It is also available in the List Manager, Export Manager, and Report Manager (for reports by Gender or Sex – e.g., Ages by Gender or Sex, GPAs by Year by Gender or Sex, etc.).

Annual Spring 2023 Lookup Updates

This enhancement is automatically available for use by all CASs and participating programs. No action is required on the part of any association, school, or program. Contact your Account Manager for more information.

Disclaimer: on rare occasions, a new feature or enhancement may be moved to a future release or otherwise subject to change.

Many fields in the Applicant Portal contain predefined answer values that applicants can select; for example, the Country and County fields both have predefined answer values. These values are housed in shared "lookup tables." Periodically, we update these tables to include additional response options.

The new lookup table values will be released in two phases: one phase in Release 2 and another phase scheduled for Release 3. The first phase of the new lookup table values are now available in the Applicant Portal.

These lookup table updates impact the following portals, some of which you may use. If you created a "crosswalk" from our portals to your local data in your SIS/CRM, you may need to update this crosswalk for the newly added options. For guidance on optimal implementation of the new values, review the Shared Lookup Table Updates for Spring 2023 page.

New Integration Help Center

The existing Data Integration and Application Programming Interface (API) help centers are now combined into a new Integration Help Center. This help center includes all the great information from the previous help centers and builds on them to include more of Liaison’s product APIs and connectors. These include:

Admissions by Liaison API and connector
CAS API
Enrollment Marketing Platform (EMP) connector
SlideRoom API
TargetX connector
WebAdMIT API and connector

CAS API Enhancements

The following enhancements are automatically available to all CASs and participating programs using the CAS API. No action is required on the part of any association, school, or program. If you have any questions about these features, contact your Account Manager or support.

Disclaimer: on rare occasions, a new feature or enhancement may be moved to a future release or otherwise subject to change.

userPrincipal JSON Node Added to GET Application Responses

The GET Application v1 and v2 response models include a new userPrincipal JSON node. Previously, the response conveyed a userPrincipal ID but not a corresponding userPrincipal object. Using the userPrincipal JSON node, you can gather some basic data about an applicant's CAS application, including the last date they logged in to their application. This information could be useful if you want to identify In Progress applicants who are actively working on their application and reach out to them through marketing or prospect campaigns.

New CAS API Endpoint for Generating Organization-scoped Document Subtypes

The GET DocSubType API was released in 2022 Release 12 for the purpose of retrieving CAS-specific document subtypes. With this enhancement, a new Organization-scoped GET DocSubType API endpoint is available for organizations and institutions. When called, the API creates an Excel-compatible workbook with the available sub types. For more information, visit the Configuration resource in the API technical documentation.

Display Name Field Planned to Be Depreciated

Starting in April, the Display Name field (i.e., personalInfo.biographicInfo.profile.displayName) will be depreciated in each CAS's next cycle. If you use the CAS to Slate integration, the Display Name field is the pre-mapped value for the applicant's preferred name.

While the Display Name field will remain in the payload in your CAS's next cycle, data will stop populating in it. If you currently use the Display Name field in your CAS API data integration, or you are using the standard CAS to Slate integration, you must update your data integration and change from Display Name to the Preferred First Name field (i.e., personalInfo.biographicInfo.alternateName.preferredFirstName). If your CAS does not use the Preferred First Name field, you can add a program or organization question to gather this information.