Department Awarding Portal

The Department Awarding Portal streamlines the submission process for department scholarships, grants, and awards. This tool replaces the individual spreadsheets previously submitted to SFS and allows you to track, manage, and view the status of each submission through the portal’s dashboard. This is not to be used for graduate awards submitted through SAFM for the current aid year or undergraduate scholarships managed in AcademicWorks/Blackbaud. 

Please use this link to access the awarding portal: https://tools.sfs.virginia.edu/Dept_Awd/dept_awarding/dist/index.html#/main

Users must be logged in to VPN (or be on Grounds) to access the portal and must also authenticate through Netbadge. Once you have logged in using your Netbadge credentials, you should see your name and department. If either of these are not accurate, please contact [email protected] 

After login, you will be redirected to the request overview dashboard. This page will serve as your homepage upon future logins and provides an overview for award requests which are groups of awards submitted for a specific aid year. Each request can contain awards for multiple students, multiple award types, timeframes, and fund sources. The dashboard also provides a list of all your individual awards, sorted by student last name.

• Request Status: Requests will be grouped under tabs indicating the request status:
  1. Draft – requests that have been created but not yet submitted for processing. Requests in ‘Draft’ status can be edited or deleted.
  2. Submitted – requests that have been submitted but are not yet being processed by SFS. Requests in ‘Submitted’ status can be edited (awards can be modified, deleted and added).
  3. In Process – requests that are currently being processed by SFS. Requests in ‘In Process’ status CANNOT be edited.
  4. Requires Department Attention – requests that have at least one award requiring an update before successful processing can occur. Requests in ‘Requires Department Attention’ status can be edited (awards can be modified, cancelled and added) and re-submitted.
  5. Completed – requests that have been successfully processed and posted to SIS. Requests in ‘Completed’ status CANNOT be edited. If you need to make a modification or cancel an existing award you must submit a new cancellation or correction request.

• Stipend and Graduate Aid Review
  • If you are awarding one or multiple stipends, submitting prior year corrections for graduate aid or awards to cover VGR fees, the system will move your request into 'review' status after submission. These requests need to be reviewed by department support staff prior to processing, Once reviewed, requests will be moved to 'Submitted' for regular department aid processing or will be moved to 'Requires Department Attention' if additional information is needed. See the Award Types Quick Guide for additional information about Stipend processing, corrections, and VGR fees.
• Search: You may search requests or individual awards by typing anything in the search fields. The search will filter as you type.
  1. For Request searches, note that you are searching requests on the tab/status being displayed. If you are viewing ‘Submitted’ requests, the search will only return requests in ‘Submitted’ status.
  2. Searching individual awards will return all matching individual awards. You may search by student name, student Empl/SIS ID, award name, etc. To view the award, select the Empl/SIS ID link. This will display the Request that includes the selected award.
• Create New Request: To start a new request, click 'Start New Request' and enter a name/title. This title will be searchable and we suggest including the current date. Once you have added a name/title and continued, a new request is created in ‘Draft’ status. See Creating/Submitting a New Request below for more information.
• Clone a Request: You may clone any request in any status. Selecting the option to clone a request will require you to enter a unique request name. Once you have entered a name and selected clone, the system will copy the entire request including all awards and fund information and will save the new request with a 'Draft' status. You may modify the new request as necessary and submit when appropriate.
• View Other Dept Users: Select this option to see who in your department has access to submit and view requests. Users may edit their own requests and view other requests from their department.

After creating a new request, you are redirected to the Award Request page where you will enter award details.

• Empl/SIS ID, Student Name, Award Type, Timeframe, Amount, Cost Center and Fund Type are required fields.
• Empl/SIS ID is the 7-digit student ID needed to award in SIS.
• The combination of Award Type and Timeframe selected will indicate the item type to be used for awarding. The item type will pre-populate in read-only format once this combination is selected. See the Award Types Quick Guide for information about specific award types and disbursement.
• Award Name is a free-text field that you can use to provide additional information for reference purposes. This field is searchable on the dashboard.
• You have the ability to add, clone, and remove awards depending on the number of awards you wish to submit in the request.
  • When cloning an individual award, the system will copy all student and fund information, including multiple fund sources, if appropriate. You may update the new award as necessary.
• You have the ability to add multiple fund sources to an award by selecting the option to ‘Add Fund Source’ on any award line.
• The system will validate required fields and format of data as you enter the awards. Messages will be displayed at the top of the page and under the ‘Submit Request’ button indicating if required fields are missing or data is invalid.
• Once you have entered one or multiple validated awards, the ‘Submit Request’ button will be enabled. Selecting ‘Submit Request’ will change the request status and individual award statuses to ‘Submitted’, generate an email indicating that your submission was successful and navigate you back to your Dashboard where you will see your newly submitted request under the ‘Submitted’ tab. The request is now ready for SFS to process.

You have the option to upload multiple awards using Excel when on the Award Request page. To do so, follow these instructions: 

• Select the option to ‘Download Excel Template’ in the upper left corner of the page.

• Excel download instructions will be displayed. Download and save the excel template.
• Add award data to the template:
  • You can rearrange columns, but do not modify the text in any column header.
  • The Award Type and Timeframe columns require specific values. The template provides dropdowns to make sure these values match what the web portal is expecting. Timeframe will only populate once Award Type is selected.
  • The upload functionality does not support multiple fund sources. You will need to add these manually after uploading as needed.
• Once you have entered the desired awards, save as a CSV file.
• Return to the Department Awarding Portal and create a new request or navigate to an existing draft request.
• Select the ‘Choose File’ option in the upper left corner and select your newly saved CSV file.
• The awarding portal will populate the award request with the data from the template. You may modify, clone and delete awards as needed.
  • Note: Unrecognized data (particularly in Award Type and Timeframe) will be ignored, resulting in blanks in the award lines.

Requests in ‘Draft’, ‘Submitted’ and ‘Requires Department Attention’ statuses may be modified. Requests in ‘In Process’ and ‘Completed’ may be viewed but not modified.

• Draft: Requests in draft status may be modified as needed. All award fields may be updated and all awards may be cloned or deleted.
• Submitted: Awards in submitted status can be modified as needed by selecting the option to ‘Edit Request’ in the upper right corner of the Award Request page. This moves the entire request back to draft status where you can make any necessary changes.
• In Process: If you need to modify or cancel an award that is in process, please email [email protected] with details.
• Requires Department Attention: Awards marked as ‘invalid’ may be modified in requests in requires department attention status.
  • You may only edit Amount, Cost Center, Fund Type, Program, Activity, and Assignee. If student, award type and/or timeframe are incorrect, you must ‘Discard’ the award and submit via a new request.
  • If fund source and amount are correct and something external to the system has changed making the award valid (fund source becomes SIS-allowed for example), you still must edit and submit the award line making no changes.
  • Once all invalid awards have been corrected and/or submitted, the system will move the entire request back to ‘Submitted’ status where the awarding team can process the corrections.
• Completed: If you need to modify or cancel an award in completed status, you must submit a new request and select ‘UGRD Correction’ or ‘UGRD cancellation’ as the Award Type. See the Award Types Quick Guide for more information.

• Award Types Quick Guide
• Departmental Aid Users site
• Departmental Aid & Student Award Payments
• Department Awarding Training Webinar
• Department Awarding Training Slides