eCAF Manager Overview

Within your system, you can manage and support Electronic Commonwealth Assistance Forms (eCAFs) for learners taking out a FEE-HELP loan. The eCAF Manager is an easy way to manage your eCAF submissions and progressions. In this article, we will go over how to use the eCAF Manager.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What are eCAFs?
• Accessing the eCAF Manager
• eCAF Statuses
• eCAF Progressions 
• Using Bulk Actions
• Deleting Incomplete eCAFs
• eCAF Errors
• Enabling Automatic eCAF Submissions

What are eCAFs?

An eCAF is submitted on behalf of a student when they request a VSL (VET Student Loan) for their enrolment into the course. The information is completed by the student and synced with the government's eCAF portal via the eCAF integration in your system.

Any errors will be displayed to you when the information is submitted, these will need to be corrected otherwise the eCAF will not be accepted. 

Accessing the eCAF Manager

The eCAF Manager can be accessed by going to Enrolments → eCAF Manager.

This will display a dashboard with an overview of all eCAFS that existing in your system.

Using the search bar, you can search for a specific student. Type the student’s name into the search bar and click on the Search button to bring up any students that match the search criteria. 

Alternatively, you can click on one of the tiles to bring up all records of the specified types. 

eCAF Statuses

Each eCAF will have a Status assigned to it, the status will determine the progress of the eCAF submission for the student's enrolment.

• eCAF Required: The student does not have an eCAF attached for this course.
• eCAF Pending: The student does have an eCAF for the course but it has not been completed.
• Student Submitted: The student has completed their eCAF submission, no further action is required.

If the eCAF Status is set to eCAF Required, you can click on the Cog icon to submit the student’s eCAF if desired.

When an eCAF is submitted, the relevant student details will be sent to the government via the eCAF portal. If there are no issues with the data, a success message will be displayed and the eCAF will be finalised.

If there are any errors with the eCAF submission, the details will be displayed in a pop up window for you to fix. 

You can edit the data by clicking on the Edit button next to the respective error message. This will take you to the page with the field that contains the data causing the error. 

eCAF Progressions 

If the student is due to submit an eCAF Progression, you can do so from the eCAF Manager.

There are three new eCAF Statuses related to this functionality:

• Progression Overdue: The student has declined to continue with the course and will need to be withdrawn
• Progression Pending: The student has one or more pending progressions.
• Progression Required: The student has a completed eCAF and a progression is required to be submitted.

A VSL student is required to submit an eCAF progression 2-3 times per year at specific dates. This is to confirm that they are continuing with the course, 

The dates are as follows:

• 1st of February
• 1st of June
• 1st of October

To submit an eCAF progression, click on the Cog icon and click on Create Progression. This will send the student data to the government via the eCAF portal, similar to submitting the initial eCAF. If there are any errors with the submission, a window will pop up containing the errors that need to be corrected.

Using Bulk Actions

You can use Bulk Actions to submit eCAFs or progressions for multiple students at once. Click on the Bulk Actions button and select the students that you would like to submit. 

Once you have all of the students selected, click on the dropdown arrow next to the Bulk Actions button. This will bring up the options to Email, Submit eCAF or Create Progression for each student selected. 

When you select an option, a batch job will start and you will be redirected to a page with the status of that batch job. 

Deleting Incomplete eCAFs

You can delete eCAFs from within the eCAF Manager. This option is only available on eCAFs that have not been submitted yet.

Click on the Cog icon for the record you’d like to delete and click on Delete eCAF. 

You will need to provide a reason for deleting the eCAF record. Once you have entered the reason, click on the Delete button to delete the eCAF record.

There is a user permission called eCAF Delete that can be used to grant/revoke access to the ability to delete eCAFs. This can be configured by going to Administration → Security → Roles and clicking on the role you'd like to configure.

Deleted eCAFs are tracked in the Audit Trail, you can check any changes made to eCAFs by going to the Administration → Audit Trail and using the Student: eCAF entity.

eCAF Errors

If an eCAF record has been synced and there are errors, there will be a Warning icon on the record. 

Click on the Warning icon to reveal the errors. Some errors will have an Edit icon next to them, clicking on it will take you to the place that contains the data needing to be corrected.

Enabling Automatic eCAF Submissions

There is a setting you can enable that will allow the eCAF Manager to submit eCAFs to the portal automatically. 

This can be enabled in the eCAF integration settings. Navigate to Administration → Configuration → Preferences and click on Integration → Integrated Systems.

Click on the Edit button on the eCAF integration and check the Automatically submit eCAF enrolments checkbox. Be sure to save the changes.

This will automatically submit any eCAFs with a loan deferral amount.