Understanding ARTS

ARTS is a national system that electronically distributes academic record information for current and former students who have applied for admission to an institution through a Tertiary Admissions Centre (TAC). The ARTS system enables the TAC to obtain academic records quickly and securely, in order to support the applications for students applying to programs of study at other institutions.

The ARTS process is initiated by the target institution's TAC, which sends a request for academic information to the target institution. The institution acknowledges the TAC request through an acknowledgment file and creates a result file with the student's academic record information. The institution then sends the result file to the TAC. When the TAC receives the results file, they send an acknowledgment file to the institution. The request file, the result file, and the acknowledgment file, are all transferred electronically between the TAC and the institution. The details of how this works are:

1. A TAC initiates a request for academic record information about a current or past student of an institution by creating a request file containing identifying information supplied by the student.

2. The admissions center encrypts the request file using a standard encryption process.

3. The admissions center transfers the encrypted request file to a target directory on the institution's system.

4. The institution renames and copies the request file to a working directory, decrypts and validates the request, and places an encrypted request acknowledgment file on the target directory.

5. The institution retrieves the academic record information and constructs and encrypts a result file.

6. The institution copies the encrypted result file back to the target directory.

7. The admissions center continually checks the institution target directory to determine the state of requests.

   The admissions center retrieves the result file and deletes the request and acknowledgment files from the target directory.

8. The admission center decrypts and validates the result file and places an encrypted result acknowledgment file on the target directory.

   If the result file does not validate, the system places a copy of the original encrypted request file on the target directory.

9. The institution continually monitors the target directory for the existence of result acknowledgment files.

   1. If no error records are reported, the acknowledgment file is deleted by the institution.

   2. If error records are reported, the institution takes action to rectify the cause of the invalid data or result file format before deleting the acknowledgment file.

PeopleSoft Campus Solutions is designed to perform the following tasks for ARTS processing:

• Read all ARTS request files in a target directory, after the file is decrypted.

• Create acknowledgment files for each request file.

• Retrieve academic information for a student in a request file, including notes.

• Produce a result file for each individual request.

Additional detail about specific requirements for ARTS processing, file formats, data reporting guidelines, and technical information for ARTS is available.

See Automated Results Transfer System Users Guide published by the Australasian Conference of Tertiary Admissions Centres.