Important Note: This article discusses classic functionality. For information on the modern applicant experience, refer to the Applicant Experience Knowledgebase article.
For some queries and reports, you don't want the current value of an applicant parameter, but rather, you need the value it was at a designated time in the application process. For applicant parameters that get refreshed from an SIS datasource automatically, you can capture the data of the parameter in an 'imprint' at these pre-determined times in the process. Once the imprint is recorded, even if the applicant parameter value changes in the future during a refresh, you will still be able to know what the value was at that time in the application process.
You configure the data imprints for the parameters by going to Settings -> Applicant Params and clicking the edit pencil for one of your applicant parameters. In order to record the imprints, the 'Track History' option for 'Archive Schedule' must be checked. Once enabled, there will be five options for your imprints listed under 'Application Cycle Data Imprints':
Start of Advising
Deadline Date
Decision Date
Program Start Date
Return Date + X months
NOTE: 'Start of Advising' actually occurs when the advising applications are created, and the number of months after the return date will be determined by the length of time that you refresh mapped parameters as configured in System Features.
When you have imprints configured for a parameter, that will be noted in the listing of applicant parameters in Settings -> Applicant Params.
After the parameters have been configured to generate imprints, the nightly SIS refresh task will include a routine in which it checks each of the active applications to determine if it is necessary to create an 'imprint' for that application for the parameters that have imprints configured.
Important Caveat: Since the imprints are generated through the SIS data refresh task, it is only possible to have application cycle data imprints for integrated users since non-integrated users are not included in the SIS refresh task.
Once an imprint has been generated in an application, it will be viewable by admins by going to the 'profile' tab of the application admin interface and clicking on the 'view history' link under the name of the parameter in the data table. This will expand the change history details and also display any imprints that have been generated for that applicant parameter in that application.
In addition, the advanced application searches can include query criteria that focuses on an imprint value rather than the current value of an applicant parameter. It is also possible to generate reports that include applicant parameters as output columns, but display the imprint values rather than the current values of the applicant parameters in the report.