Periodically in September and October 2023, admissions staff have found that applicants in PTCAS who are verified and should be complete do not have Slate records.
Upon investigation, the issue is that no “in progress” subscription file was sent via the API for these students, which is where the application record is created in Slate. It appears that the in progress files should have been sent at the beginning of the cycle (August 2023) but were not.
My current hypothesis is that when turning on the subscriptions for the cycle and executing replays somehow these files were missed--either due to an error when running the replay, due to an issue with Liaison and the CAS database, or possibly because when the replay was run these applicants had “deselected” our program and so were not “in progress” at the time of the replay, but they later “reselected” our program which did not send another file?
Description of Issue:
10/19/2023 the following list was provided by the DPT admissions team of records that they identified as verified in the DPT-BOS instance of PTCAS but which had no Slate application record.
Applicant Name | CAS ID | Designation Submitted Date |
|---|---|---|
Cooper Ernst | 6909309498 | 6/17/2023 |
Katharine Manning | 6544491980 | 8/29/2023 |
Nicole Marshall | 2895233819 | 6/19/2023 |
Chloe McGonagle | 6163363961 | 6/25/2023 |
Eleise Trias | 8811883669 | 6/16/2023 |
Isabelle Volney | 1641478338 | 6/15/2023 |
Troubleshooting:
I created the following query to identify person records which were in the CAS - Application source format but which did not have applications to any of the DPT programs. It generates a row for each person record and indicates what program they have applied to by checking the source file name for the CAS Program ID for each DPT program.
https://tusmgp.admissions.tufts.edu/manage/query/query?id=6dc671d3-c44c-437e-99f0-c0baf163feed
There were these six students from Boston (above), plus two additional, and some of them had applications for more than one program.
Person Reference ID | Person Name | Person CAS/Liaison Person ID | DPT-BOS | DPT-PHX | DPT-SEA |
894097973 | Manning, Katharine Marie | 6544491980 | Yes | Yes | |
847434425 | Ernst, Cooper | 6909309498 | Yes | ||
655854718 | Trias, Eleise | 8811883669 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
311366551 | Davydov, Daniel | 6290569725 | Yes | ||
668561708 | Xiong, Jose Vang | 9540655614 | Yes | ||
152404006 | Marshall, Nicole | 2895233819 | Yes | ||
296453684 | McGonagle, Chloe Lynne | 6163363961 | Yes | ||
664761843 | Volney, Isabelle Lynn | 1641478338 | Yes |
Short-Term Fix:
To fix the issue in the short term, I put all the application files through the API In Progress source format to create the applications, and then I refreshed the existing files to update them to their current status of verified. Overnight Slate should run the rules and match all the documents, so tomorrow morning these should be in good shape for you to finish them up and get them ready for review.
On 10/24/2023 I was notified that two students had been updated to Verified in Slate, but were otherwise not complete and ready for import. Upon investigation, the two students were the two from this fix who had more than one application in this round. It seems like what happened is that the “retroactive refresh” of their data files in the PTCAS Application (All CAS by Liaison - Applications) source format did not behave exactly as if the files had been freshly added. Instead of matching on the CAS/Application ID and updating the correct program application, doing the retroactive refresh reverted to the matching behavior where only the Rank 1 application was used to match, and so each subsequent refresh updated the DPT-BOS application for these two applicants and did not match on and update the DPT-PHX or DPT-SEA applications. In test, I downloaded the original file for DPT-PHX and DPT-SEA and put it through the Source Format as a new file (instead of a refresh) and this behaved as expected. So there is something about “retroactive refresh” that doesn’t match application records exactly (and it doesn’t seem to be just that I did all files at the same time, as I did test a retroactive refresh on only one file and it still matched incorrectly).
Long-Term Fix:
I need to determine if we are not getting certain in progress files, and if so why. Or if the issue is that there were some in progress files missed during the API setup process, which is why we do not have them now. If it is the latter, then an audit of the in progress files in Slate vs. PTCAS should show in progress applicants in PTCAS that are not in Slate.
Export a list from Slate of all in progress applicants for the 2024 cycle, including CAS ID for matching.
Export a list from PTCAS of all in progress applicants for the 2024 cycle.
Compare the two lists to determine if there are applicant records in PTCAS for in progress that are not currently in Slate.
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