How do I exchange information with Student Financial Aid?

Institutions exchange information with Student Financial Aid (SFA) by sending or retrieving messages and files through the Message Processing Gateway (MPG) application.

Outbound event messages are pulled from MPG in first in first out (FIFO) sequence. Once a message is pulled from the MPG, it disappears from the outbound queue.

Messages and files from the institution or student must be saved with a .xml extension because they contain XML payloads. To send and retrieve messages or files, you need a software client to send HTTP requests, like cURL or Postman. You can use any client you're comfortable with as long as you provide the correct user name, password, file, and web service endpoint.

Post a File to MPG

Here's an example of issuing a POST command using cURL:

curl -kv -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer <token value>" --key fasapi https://sfp.ocs.oraclecloud.com/customer/mpg/v2/channels/in.ev/publish -H 'Vocado-Message-Class: FasStudentInitiationEvent' -H "Content-Type: application/vocado-message+xml" --data-binary "@/Users/Username/Desktop/student/FasStudentInitiationEvent.xml" -H'Vocado-Message-Id: 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111

Pull a File from MPG

These examples use cURL to show how you can retrieve messages or files based on various situations.

Here's how you pull messages using its message ID:

curl -k -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer <token value>" https://sfp.ocs.oraclecloud.com/mpg/v2/info/store/messages?messageId=11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111

You can use the Online GUID Generator to create unique message IDs.

Here's how you pull messages using the FIFO sequence:

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer <token value>" -H 'Accept: application/vocado-message+xml' https://sfp.ocs.oraclecloud.com/mpg/v2/channels/out.ev/consume -H 'Vocado-Pull-Id:11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111'