Academic Program - A group of current and historic study programs offered by the University.  The Academic Program function is used to categorize the student’s academic studies based on type/subtype and degree/major/minor combinations.  Student records can have multiple academic programs associated with one type/subtype.  An example: dual degree programs.

Alerts - Is a warning message displayed on the student record.  The Alerts function is used to view, add, remove or modify alerts associated with a student record.  If a student has an alert the words, has alerts! will appear in the title bar.

ANSE - Admissions and New Student Enrollment (a.k.a, Undergraduate Admissions Office) 

Application - A basic unit of the student suite, such as SMS or SAS, designed for a specific task or use.

CMN (Common) - Common is the person biographical information.

Cohorts - Grouping of students based on criteria determined by the school.  For example, Honors Students.

Communication Group - A function that enables the employee to organize, assign and track contacts and correspondence with various student types and groups.  For example, the Admissions Office may notify all prospective students with an email notification concerning application deadlines and requirements.

Data Domain - The suites primary data partitioning method, independent of applications and available for security purposes.

Instance (two definitions)

• An instance is identified by the unique combination of the Person Identification Number and persons type/subtype.  A record linked with a student and stored in the module that deals directly with that record.  For example, a student with the Graduate/Degree Seeking type/subtype will be stored in the SMS-Graduate College application/module. 

• An instance is also an identifier of the COSMOS System you are currently logged into.  For example, Jon is logged into the Production instance while Jane is logged into the Test instance of COSMOS.

 List of Values (LOV) - A display of predefined values the employee may select from a drop down window.  The employee cannot enter a value in the field that is not included in the list of values.

Matrix Student Suite -  The software product, built on Microsoft technologies, used to develop the new student system which U of A calls COSMOS.  

Menu - COSMOS screen which corresponds to a set of functions an employee may perform within an application.  The menu will be determined by the employee roles within the application suite.

Module - A self-contained unit of the Student Suite.  For example:

CMN - Common System

SAS - Student Aid System (Office of Student Financial Aid)
SMS - Student Marketing System (Admissions and New Student Enrollment)

SMS - Student Marketing System (Graduate College Admissions)

OSFA - Stands for Office of Student Financial Aid

Permissions - Permissions are assigned to screens, data domains and zones.  The combination of these three permissions determines user access level.

UA Person - Every individual who interacts with The University of Arizona is first recorded within the Common database as a person record then associated with an application in the system.

Status -  Indicates a position of a record within the system.  Statuses can be configured within each module and can control different processes through attributes.

Status Type - A category used for defining statuses.  

Student Suite Version - The applications latest software release.

Type/Subtype - A two-level descriptor used in a single instance.  A few examples are:

• Undergraduate/Freshman

• Undergraduate/Transfer Student

• Graduate/non-degree seeking. 

The type/subtype is used primarily for configuration purposes and University standard business processes, such as admissions, academic programs, etc.