NursingCAS Dispatch

June 2025

The NursingCAS Dispatch is a monthly newsletter designed to update you on current happenings involving nursing’s centralized application service. The newsletter features:

• NursingCAS Know-How including key features, resources, recruitment opportunities, and reminders
• NursingCAS by the Numbers featuring application statistics and other relevant metrics and data
• User Updates to keep you in the loop, so you can keep your team and applicants in the loop
• Q&A providing answers to some of the most frequently asked questions from school users 

 NURSINGCAS KNOW-HOW

2023 – 2024 NursingCAS Fee Assistance Program Summary

AACN is pleased to report that the 2023-2024 cycle’s NursingCAS Fee Assistance Program was the most robust program to date! Providing $66,060 in total funding, AACN covered the cost of an initial nursing school application for 1,063 eligible applicants. The number of fee waivers awarded increased by 25% compared to the previous cycle, while the total funding contributed by AACN increased by 26% compared to the previous cycle.

Please keep in mind that schools can view fee waivers in WebAdMIT to determine which of your applicants meet the income or service requirements for the NursingCAS Fee Assistance Program. Schools looking to reduce the cost of applying to their programs can also purchase Coupon Codes – school-specific application fee discounts that schools can provide to select applicants.

 USER UPDATES

This section provides monthly updates on new features and enhancements available within the Applicant Portal, Configuration Portal, WebAdMIT, and information on upcoming training opportunities. Please note that these are only a few highlights of Liaison’s recent enhancements. A complete list of recent WebAdMIT Release Notes is available.

Subscribe to WebAdMIT Release Notes

WebAdMIT Release Notes provide a summary of enhancements and new features that are made available in the Applicant Portal, Applicant Gateway, Configuration Portal, Letters by Liaison, and WebAdMIT. Want to receive Release Notes emails? Subscribe here.

New Subpanels by Question Block on CAS Custom Questions Panel

The CAS Custom Questions panel on the Applicant Details page stores all of a CAS’s custom questions and question blocks from the Personal Information, Academic History, and Supporting Information sections. Previously, all questions and question blocks were grouped together. With this enhancement, each question block now has its own subpanel, with the applicable questions listed underneath it. Note the following:

• All subpanels are listed in alphabetical order.
• Up to four subpanels will appear, and if you have access to more, they are accessible from the More CAS Custom Questions subpanel.
• You can restrict a user’s subpanel access via the Work Groups feature.
• You can specify which subpanels are included in the PDF Manager‘s full application PDF bulk downloads.
• A new checkbox appears on the Work Groups and PDF Manager page, where you can confirm if you want new question blocks that are added mid-cycle to automatically be added to your Work Group and PDF Manager templates. Using this will save you time by eliminating the need to manually update your templates when changes occur, such as mid-cycle or during the Transfer Settings process for a new cycle.

This enhancement shortens the overall length of the panel and allows you to regulate by Work Groups which users have access to specific types of applicant data (e.g., you can share a question block related to the release statement agreement, but not share a question block related to an applicant’s gender identity). 

New view of CAS Custom Questions panel with subpanels

Jump to Top Navigation for Applicant Details Page 

The Applicant Details page, where all application data is listed, now has an arrow button that, when clicked, jumps you to the top of the page. This gives you quick navigation on a page that can become quite long to scroll through.

New MFA Column in Admissions User Report

The Admissions Users report in the Report Manager creates a report focusing on your program’s admissions users’ basic information within WebAdMIT. With this enhancement, a new column has been added to the report that will indicate if the user has enabled multi-factor authentication (MFA). This gives you additional insight into your users’ account setups.

Updated Not Received Indicator for Transcripts and Letters of Recommendation

The Transcripts subpanel under the Documents panel on the Applicant Details page lists each college the applicant attended. Previously, (Pending) was listed for each college’s transcript, which led to the assumption that NursingCAS had received the transcript and it was pending processing. However, a CAS or program may not have required a transcript, or it may not have arrived at NursingCAS, and so the (Pending) indicator was misleading. With this enhancement, (Pending) has been updated to (Not Received) for clarification and accuracy.

Similarly, the Evaluations panel on the Applicant Details page lists each recommender whom the applicant sends a recommendation request to, with a (Pending) indicator. However, the recommender may not have accepted the recommendation request, and so the (Pending) indicator was misleading as it led to the assumption that the recommender was in the process of submitting their recommendation. With this enhancement, (Pending) has also been updated to (Not Received) for clarification and accuracy.

Annual Spring Lookup Updates

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 include updates to degrees, languages, majors, and visa types. Review the Shared Lookup Table Updates page for a full list of updates.

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 the optimal implementation of the new values, review the Shared Lookup Table Updates page.

• Analytics by Liaison
• API
• Liaison Outcomes
• WebAdMIT

New Documentation for WebAdMIT

• National CAS Schedules | Some institutions participate in multiple national CASs, which are affiliated with an association, typically within the health professions (e.g., dental, pharmacy, physical therapist, etc.). If your institution is one of these, you can access important CAS milestones in this document.

Q&A

Q: What is the difference between the Prelaunch and Production WebAdMIT configuration portals?

A: The CAS Configuration Portal has two environments: Prelaunch and Production.

Prelaunch is a “staging” environment that allows you to configure programs for the new cycle without impacting the current cycle. This environment is used annually by schools configuring their programs before a new cycle, and by first-time schools that don’t yet have programs in production.

Since it is isolated from production, prelaunch is useful for testing and training purposes; any actions performed in prelaunch will not affect the live data in production. For example, you can submit test applications and run sample exports.

Note that only your programs built in the Configuration Portal are posted in the live environment. User accounts and WebAdMIT templates, such as Lists, Exports, Email Templates, etc., aren’t moved into production.

The Production environment is the “live environment” where you perform your applicant review processes. 

Because this is the live environment, the data comes directly from your applicants via the information they enter into their application. Only limited edits may be made to your programs once they have gone live.

For more information, please see the Prelaunch Environment Reference Guide.

Support for WebAdMIT School Users

As always, the dedicated WebAdMIT Client Support Specialist Team is available Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET to assist with questions about WebAdMIT features. The team can be reached at (857) 304-2020 or webadmitsupport@liaisonedu.com. Training is also available via webinars, on-demand courses, and the Liaison Academy. Please visit the WebAdMIT Help Center for further information.

Make sure to sign up to receive important notices through the Liaison CAS Status page for updates on future CAS and WebAdMIT outages.

If you have any questions, please contact Taylor Jaczko, AACN’s Director of Application Services, at tjaczko@aacnnursing.org.