College Transcript Interface

What is the College Transcript interface?

An interface where students request that their school transmit their course work to u.select.

This interface is also referred to as the Course Import and SIS Import. The remainder of this page uses the u.select term Course Import regarding the interface and the exchange process and College Transcript when referring to the PESC schema.

Supported Schemas

u.select supports several schemas for the content of the XML document.

PESC College Transcript schema version 1.0.0

PESC has defined the standard CollegeTranscript schema for student's course work. Unfortunately, PESC doesn't provide a published link to the schema, so please follow these directions to view the schema:

Go to: http://www.fsaxmlregistry.ed.gov/XMLRegistry/pages/welcome.jsp
Click the Community/Guest Users link
Click the College Transcript link
Click the Download link

Ohio Schemas 0.5 and 0.6

The Ohio schemas are predecessors to the PESC schema. The Ohio schemas are only supported for backward compatibility of existing interfaces, therefore no new interfaces should be created from them. For support purposes they can be found here: http://www.transfer.org/xsd/SISv05.xsd http://www.transfer.org/xsd/SISv06.xsd

Course Import Exchange process

The next sections describe the Course Import Exchange process. The process is triggered by a u.select user requesting to import courses from a school. Users can only request the import from schools that have a defined SIS Import Remote URL in u.select. See External URLs for information on the school's SIS Import Remote URL.

The exchange of information between u.select and the school system occurs in the following event sequence:

u.select redirects user to school's Student Information System
User authenticates with school's Student Information System
School's Student Information System builds College Transcript XML document
School's Student Information System sends College Transcript XML document to u.select
u.select replies with status

#1 u.select redirects user to school's Student Information System

u.select opens a new browser window and redirects the user to the Course Import URL defined for the school. The Course Import URL is normally a school provided web application. u.select appends the following query parameters to the URL.

key

This parameter contains the unique identifier of the course import request and must be supplied in the XML document sent to u.select.

uid

This parameter contains the unique identifier of the user and must be supplied in the XML document sent to u.select.

return

This parameter contains the u.select Url where XML document should be returned to.

Example Url with parameters

https://www.someschool.edu/sis/collegeTranscript?key=201120416394062&uid=publicjq@MIAMI&return=https://www.transfer.org/uselect/service/xml

#2 User authenticates with school's Student Information System

The school's Student Information System needs to force the the user to authenticate with the proper credentials for the school, since u.select user credentials are different than the schools and can't be used here.

#3 School's Student Information System builds College Transcript XML document

If the student successfully authenticates with the school's Student Information System, the school can create an XML document with the student's course work.

#4 School's Student Information System sends College Transcript XML document to u.select

The School's Student Information System posts the XML document to u.select. The school system needs to follow the XML Document Handling guidelines for exchanging information.

The XML document must be sent to the URL which u.select provided in the query parameter named return
The DocumentID must contain the value which u.select provided in the query parameter named key
The RecipientAssignedID must contain the value which u.select provided in the query parameter named uid

#5 u.select replies with status

u.select immediately responds with status XML in the HTTP response body of the open connection.

Success

If u.select successfully finds the student and request, the XML document is well formed, the content is valid and content is saved in the student's u.select courses, u.select replies with:

   <response status="0">success</response>

The course work is immediately available for viewing by the u.select user.

Failure

If u.select encounters an error (parsing, validation, finding...), a failure result (non zero status) is provided. Here's an example failure result:

   <response status="1">Non existent or empty, userid or PersonIdCode element for jobId=2007091014514555</response>

Example CollegeTranscript XML document

The CollegeTranscript XML document must be well formed and must contain the minimum elements that u.select requires. u.select doesn't strictly validate the XML document against the schema, due to the number of unused elements in the PESC schema.

The following XML shows the minimum information that must exist in the document. The example data shows the key and uid values from the earlier example Course Import Url:

  <CollegeTranscript>
      <TransmissionData>
         <DocumentID>201120416394062</DocumentID>
      </TransmissionData>
      <Student>
         <Person>
            <RecipientAssignedID>publicjq@MIAMI</RecipientAssignedID>
         </Person>
        <AcademicRecord> 
           <School>
             <OrganizationName>Miami</OrganizationName>
             <FICE>007104</FICE>
           </School>
           <Course> 
             <CourseSubjectAbbreviation>ENG</CourseSubjectAbbreviation>
             <CourseNumber>111</CourseNumber>
             <CourseTitle>English Composition</CourseTitle>
             <CourseAcademicGrade>A</CourseAcademicGrade>
             <CourseCreditEarned>3.0</CourseCreditEarned>
             <CourseBeginDate>2007-08-26</CourseBeginDate>
           </Course>
        </AcademicRecord>
      </Student>
  </CollegeTranscript>

DocumentID

This must be the value u.select provided in the key query parameter.

RecipientAssignedID

This must be the value u.select provided in the uid query parameter.

School

The school's identifier must be in one of the following elements with the correct value.

<FICE></FICE>
<ATP></ATP>
<ACT></ACT>
<IPEDS></IPEDS>

AcademicRecord

Multiple AcademicRecord elements are allowed.

Course

One or more Course elements can be provided.

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