Use the Direct Certification (DC) Import to import your direct certified students into the app. Typically, the students are imported from a state-provided DC file. The DC file contains a list of students eligible to receive free meals through various programs in your state.
The Direct Certification import process can handle multiple case imports in a single file and imports of different case statuses for a family over subsequent imports.
To prevent errors when subsequently importing Foster, Homeless, Migrant, or Runaway benefits, importing students without a case type will not extend DC benefits to siblings. To extend benefits to a family, the import must include a field for case, and only SNAP, TANF, FDPIR, or Medicaid cases will be extended.
IMPORTANT! Make sure your integration template is set up correctly and has all the proper translations for all case types that may be included in the state file.
The following steps will show as the Direct Certification import is running:
•Gathering Direct Certification Data
•Processing Direct Certification Records
•Committing Direct Certification Results
•Populating Direct Certification Exceptions
•Clean Up Direct Certification Import Data
What you will need:
•File layout or description of the columns
•Template
Similar to the SIS import, the DC import requires a corresponding import template that matches the content and format of the DC file. In some cases, you must create multiple templates—for example, if you need to import fosters or match on more than two sets of criteria.
•Matching criteria
You will need to know your matching criteria; for example, First, Last, DOB and/or ID, and or/ State ID, and/or SSN. You can have two sets of matching criteria per template. If you need to match on additional criteria, you must create an additional template.
Note: You will run the DC import for each template, using the same import file.
Making Changes
In some instances, you will need to modify the DC file.
WARNING! If you must open the file to obtain the file layout, DO NOT open a .csv file in Microsoft Excel. Any leading zero will be truncated from the data, creating duplicate records. If you must open the file in Excel, first open Excel and then import the file’s content as text data.
Formatting Dates
A common fix for date formats is to open the file in Excel. In Excel, you can use the following formula to reformat dates of YYYYMMDD to MM/DD/YY, where xx is the cell containing the date:
=MID(xx,5,2)&”/”&RIGHT(xx,2)&”/”&LEFT(xx,4)