CollegeNET is a company that handles our online incoming applications. Applicants fill out their application on a webpage and even pay on the web.

CollegeNET outputs its payed-for, acknowledged forms to an FTP site on a daily basis. There are two outputs it produces, one being actual PDF files of the filled out applicant forms, the other being metadeta text files. The metadata hold the important data about who the forms belong to, what they applied for, etc.

Both of these are copied off of the CollegeNET FTP and pasted into a ParaDocs Samba share located at \\gsdocs.umbc.edu\cnetimport .

ParaDocs has a service that runs in the background at all times, that scoops up the metadata file and matching PDFs. ParaDocs then reads the data from the metadata file and properly imports it all into ParaDocs. Important notes while it imports are:

• ParaDocs creates a workflow if there is not one already, or if the person has applied to a different major, semester, etc.
• ParaDocs inserts the document into an existing workflow if 4 fields match: SSN, Lastname, Term and Objective.

Seperate posting services are now used for collegenet updloads. There is now an additional posting services running specifically for the collegenet purpose.