WebAdMIT Yearly Maintenance
To prepare your WebAdMIT data integration for a new admissions cycle, you'll always need to perform several steps. This article focuses only on regular yearly maintenance. In addition to the actions listed here, you'll want to consult the Yearly Maintenance article to consider other ways your data integration might need to be changed to keep up with changes to your admissions processes or the CAS application. The following is a list of the actions that you will need to perform.
- Transfer Lists and Exports to your new cycle.
- Review the data dictionary for any value crosswalk changes.
- Accommodate new custom question headers.
- Adjust API calls (if applicable).
Lists and Exports
Each admissions cycle, your Lists and Exports will have to be transferred from the previous cycle into the new cycle. If you've made your Lists and Exports public (by making them visible to all your users), then they should move over automatically when your institution's CAS administrator performs the Transfer Settings operation. If your Lists and Exports fail to transfer into the new cycle, it's relatively straightforward to rebuild them. Simply navigate to the List or Export in the old cycle and use that as a guide for rebuilding it.
Data Dictionary
From time to time, the lists of possible values for defined option fields will change. For example, when South Sudan became its own country, a new country was added to the list of countries. Each year, a data dictionary is provided to document these lists of possible values. Changes are highlighted in the last columns of this document. You can download your CAS's data dictionary under the Help panel in WebAdMIT.
In addition to changes to the lists of possible values for defined option fields, there will be changes to some basic fields in WebAdMIT. The most important of these is the designation program identifier. Each cycle's programs are distinct from other cycles, even if the programs are the same from cycle to cycle. For this reason, the numeric identifier for a given program in one cycle will be different for the same program in a different cycle. Bear this in mind when configuring your data load.
Custom Question Headers
Each cycle, the headers automatically assigned to custom questions will change. Specifically, the numeric identifier included in the header will change. In our data model, each cycle's custom questions are distinct, even if the question is the same; therefore, the numeric identifier will change. You'll need to accommodate this change in your data integration. You can go about this either by:
- Configuring the header for the custom question in your export to the same value in each cycle (review this guidance on configuring headers in exports) or
- Configuring your data load tool to recognize the new header.
Some systems recognize fields based on their position in the incoming file, so a change to the header may not affect your data load at all.
API Call Adjustments
If you're using the WebAdMIT API to extract data, you'll need to make some changes to your calls to make sure you're getting the right CAS data.
- User identity: each user identity is a unique combination of user, cycle, and CAS. For example, an individual user will have a different user identity for CASPA 2023-2024 and CASPA 2024-2025. Since all WebAdMIT API calls cascade from the selection of a user identity, you'll need to make sure you use the correct user identity for the cycle you're interested in.
- Export IDs: each cycle's Exports are distinct from those of other cycles, even if the exports are transferred from the previous cycle to the current one. You'll need to adjust your API calls to point at the new cycle's exports.
More Assistance
For more assistance with yearly maintenance, review our Yearly Maintenance for Your Integrations topic.