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 December 2023
The NursingCAS Dispatch is a monthly newsletter intended to keep you up to date with current happenings at NursingCAS. The newsletter will feature:
 NURSINGCAS KNOW-HOW
CAS Migration to the Cloud
Liaison International is migrating the Centralized Application Service (CAS), including the student application, to the cloud. This strategic move builds upon prior successful migrations of other integral components of the CAS infrastructure, including the CAS API and WebAdMIT. This exciting transition allows for greater scalability, faster response times, and improved security.
- Stage 1: Migration of the Prelaunch environment, where schools configure their program listings before they go live, from December 16, 2023, at 7:00 a.m. ET through December 18, 2023, at 7:00 a.m. ET.
- Stage 2: Migration of the Production environment, where applicants complete their applications from January 20, 2024, at 7:00 a.m. ET through January 22, 2024, at 7:00 a.m. ET.
Liaison is adding rotating banner notifications to the application and messages to the support phone lines. Please review the related Resource Page for additional information.
Call for NursingCAS Enhancements
Do you have a suggestion that can improve the NursingCAS application? Is there a feature, process, or report that can enhance WebAdMIT (the backend admissions platform)? Submit enhancement ideas by Friday, January 12, COB for the upcoming 2024-2025 cycle! Last year, users submitted over 45 ideas, and many were implemented for the most recent cycle. AACN, Liaison International, and the NursingCAS Advisory Group strive to ensure continuous improvement of the NursingCAS platform. This team will review, assess, and prioritize all submitted ideas.
NursingCAS Applicant Newsletter & Recruitment Event Calendar
The Applicant Newsletter, provided by AACN, is emailed to 115,000+ NursingCAS applicants the third week of every month. This newsletter is for programs in NursingCAS only. Program submissions are FREE and are due on the Friday prior to publication. However, posts must relate to one of the three topics below or they will be removed. Please submit an announcement using the form on our website.
Here is some additional information on how schools can leverage each section of the Applicant Newsletter:
- Open Seats: Use this section to provide notifications to applicants about NursingCAS programs that have available space. You can share information about one specific program or multiple programs in one announcement. You can highlight the program by providing information relevant to your nursing school, specific program requirements, location, accreditation, program cost/scholarships, specialties, etc.
- Deadline Extensions: Use this section to share announcements about deadline extensions for your NursingCAS programs. You can share info about the program, the new deadline, and any requirements that might have changed (if applicable).
- New Programs: Use this section to highlight any new programs that have joined/launched in the Application Portal since the last newsletter.
We recommend including contact info for representatives or links to your website/NursingCAS application within the announcement. Visit the Newsletter Archive on our website for samples of previous submissions.
The NursingCAS Events Calendar is a great platform for publicizing your program’s recruitment events. These can be student information sessions, virtual fairs, open houses, and other recruitment events that can help your institution engage with potential applicants. You can submit items to the Events Calendar using the Applicant Event Form on our website. This calendar is distributed to 115,000+ students each month with the Applicant Newsletter.
Student Recruitment: Echo Targeting
Echo Targeting (an AACN partner) is a digital banner advertising tool that allows member schools to exclusively reach NursingCAS students while they surf the internet. Owen Landon, President of Echo Interactive LLC, was recently joined by current Echo Targeting nursing school users, Brian Weed (Creighton University) and Brad Craig (Bellarmine University), in a 30-minute Student Recruitment: Echo Targeting webinar. The presenters shared how schools can benefit from using banner ads and/or videos to reach NursingCAS students as they visit their favorite websites (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Instagram). Watch the webinar recording and view the presentation slides to learn how to reach the NursingCAS audience when and where you need to reach them!
NursingCAS Overview: A Demonstration of the Student Application and Admissions Management Portal
Register now to attend AACN’s NursingCAS Overview: A Demonstration of the Student Application and Admissions Management Portal webinar on Thursday, December 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Prospective and current NursingCAS users are encouraged to attend!
WebAdMIT Sandbox Environment Refresh
Are you utilizing the WebAdMIT Sandbox? If not, you should be! Sandbox is a duplicate test platform useful for testing and training purposes; any actions performed in Sandbox will not affect the live data in production. This provides users with a safe, “near-production” environment for testing or training purposes. For example, you can submit test applications and run sample exports. The WebAdMIT Sandbox is a copy of the WebAdMIT production environment with sensitive applicant information (such as surnames, email addresses, etc.) obfuscated.
The WebAdMIT Sandbox is refreshed between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. ET every Monday. If Monday is a US or Canadian holiday, deployment is the next business day. This deployment includes all system changes from the preceding release. The WebAdMIT Sandbox environment is refreshed with current (cleansed) production data and program configurations. Any test exports, custom fields, etc., in the current Sandbox will be overwritten.
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 and sign up to receive important notices through the Liaison CAS Status page for updates on future CAS and WebAdMIT outages.
New NursingCAS Team Member
NursingCAS is excited to welcome Taylor Jaczko as Associate Director, NursingCAS Marketing & Analytics. Taylor is responsible for the annual NursingCAS Discover Nursing School Virtual Fair, developing robust CRM campaigns to drive student application growth, and supporting marketing and reporting needs for the team.
 BY THE NUMBERS
Discover Nursing School Virtual Fair – 2023
NursingCAS hosted its fifth annual Discover Nursing School Virtual Fair on October 3, 2023. The Virtual Fair was offered to NursingCAS participating schools and allowed programs to chat virtually with prospective students in their own personalized chat rooms in a live, online event. AACN marketed the event to over 330,000 individuals, including NursingCAS applicants, high school students, pre-health academic advisors, and more. See the graphic below for more information on the event’s success!
 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. A complete list of WebAdMIT Release Notes from recent cycles is also available.
Fall 2023 Shared Lookup Table Updates
Please pass this important information along to your IT team. Review the Shared Lookup Tables for Fall 2023. If you are exporting data into a campus system, work with your IT team to determine if updates need to be made. If your school created a “crosswalk” from the WebAdMIT data to the local data in your campus system’s Student Information System (SIS) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, it might need to be updated with the newly added options.
Many fields within the NursingCAS application have predefined answer values that applicants can select from; for example, the Country and County fields have predefined answer values. These values are housed in shared “lookup tables” viewable in the NursingCAS Customer Export Layout (CEL). For guidance on optimal implementation of the new values, review the Shared Lookup Table Updates page.
Ability to Copy Interviews, Assignments, and Scoring Models
To build new items in WebAdMIT more efficiently (e.g., Exports, Lists, and Work Groups), you have the option to copy an existing template. This functionality has been expanded to include Interviews, Assignments, and Scoring Models.
Updated In Progress Applicants Report
In WebAdMIT, you can download a report that includes information about your In Progress applicants. Available for CASs with a partial view of In Progress applicants, this report includes information about applicants who have selected your program but have not yet submitted to it. With this enhancement, a new column, designation_program_lookup_id, has been added to the report. This column allows you to associate applicants to each program via the Program ID rather than the Program Name or Label.
For a preview of the new file, review the Updated In Progress Report with Program Plan Field or Updated In Progress Report without Program Plan Field sample files.
Admissions Uploaded Document Fields in List Manager and Export Manager
If desired, you can upload documents to the Applicant Details page, which are stored under the Documents panel. For example, you can upload supplemental documentation sent directly to your admissions office instead of through the CAS. With this enhancement, you can now use the List Manager and Export Manager to query and export data about these uploaded documents. This may be helpful if you want to quickly identify applicants that you have uploaded documents for. The new fields are:
- Admissions Uploaded Documents field category
- Admissions Uploaded Document Name
- Admissions Uploaded Document Upload Date
Batch Add Applicants to Clipboard from List Actions
When using the List Manager, you can apply batch actions to quickly update applicant information, such as designating Assignments or changing Local Statuses. With this enhancement, you can now batch-add applicants from a list to the Clipboard (a personalized, ad hoc list) using the Add Checked Applicants to Clipboard action. This allows you to quickly identify applicants via the List Manager and then pull out select applicants for further review in your Clipboard.
Additional WES GPA Fields
Some CASs have an electronic World Education Services (WES) integration, where applicants can submit their official WES foreign transcript evaluations to the CAS. With this enhancement, WES now sends the following additional GPA fields, which you can view on the GPA Overview panel on the Applicant Details page, List Manager, and Export Manager:
- WES GPA for Non-Accredited Religious Study
- WES Hours for Non-Accredited Religious Study
- WES GPA for Non-Recognized Post-Secondary
- WES Hours for Non-Recognized Post-Secondary
This enhancement confirms that you have access to all of an applicant’s WES GPA information.
If you have any questions, please contact Stephanie Wurth, AACN’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, at swurth@aacnnursing.org. |