This article explains how U.S. and foreign telephone numbers are processed prior to being sent in a SEVIS batch.
Terra Dotta ISSS handles phone numbers in the following way:
- If a U.S. phone number is present, Terra Dotta ISSS sends the number to SEVIS.
- If a foreign phone number is present, a country code must be listed as a separate field, or a verification error will display.
- If the country code and foreign phone number are present in two separate fields, Terra Dotta ISSS sends the number to SEVIS.
- If all phone number values are null, then Terra Dotta ISSS checks the box in SEVIS that states the F-1 student does not have a phone number. The DSO need not take any action.
The U.S. Phone Number must be exactly 10 digits and contain numbers only.
If hyphens are included, Terra Dotta will delete them. For example, 123-456-7890 will become 1234567890.
Foreign Phone Numbers contain two separate fields in SEVIS: the country code and the phone number.
Most systems of record files lists the foreign phone number as one field. It may be impossible for your campus IT to separate the country code from the foreign phone number. If this is the case at your institution, the recommended practice is to not to integrate these fields in the data file sent to Terra Dotta. However, in this case, the foreign phone number could be included in the SIS file without being mapped to the SEVIS-mapped parameter, giving the advisor the opportunity to split the foreign phone number manually into the two SEVIS-mapped fields.
If the SIS file contains a + symbol prior to the country code, then Terra Dotta will delete the + symbol prior to batching the update to SEVIS.