Administrators can create the new academic year at any time, but this should be done prior to any of the updates below.

To add the new Academic Year, simply navigate to Administration > Academic Years and click "Add Academic Year".

These are the forms that each athlete should be completing at the start of each academic year - for participation clearance and demographic updates. 

ARMS will load these forms as workflows annually for all clients, based on their NCAA Division. These forms should be reviewed prior to assigning for any Department specific adjustments to approval processes.

ARMS recommends you assign a basic student-athlete information workflow to collect up-to-date contact, address, emergency contact, etc. information for your athletes. 

Helpful Hint: If you collect parent/guardian information in this form, send a request to help@armssoftware.com to import this information once all workflows have been submitted. ARMS will create contact profiles for all of those associated relationships.  

Annually, Departments should review their internal workflow forms for any updates for the upcoming Academic Year. ARMS recommends that you start reviewing these forms for changes as early as April to ensure your workflows are ready when the new rosters are loaded. 

Examples of Internal Forms

For information on grouping workflows together in Packets, please review the article Creating Workflow Packets

Wondering how best to handle forms for minors? Check out our article Student-Athlete Minors & Workflow for recommendations.
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The first step to preparing new rosters, is to create the upcoming/new Academic Year in ARMS. Both the Year and the Terms should be configured.  

Athletes that will not return for the upcoming academic year should be updating in ARMS to deactivate their accounts. Additionally, if graduating, ARMS can update their profile to an Alumni in ARMS. 

Some Inactive Statuses Include:

Check out the article for updating Roster Statuses.  

Those athletes that have committed to return for the new Academic Year can be promoted to the new Roster Year in bulk.  This option is located in the same wizard as updating Rosters Statues (noted above).  

Adding new student-athletes can be done manually in ARMS or via imports through the ARMS Data Team. For step-by-step instructions on these options, please review the article for  Adding Rosters & Student-Athletes. 

Pro-Tip: Have your coaches update their incoming athletes (currently recruits in ARMS) to a status of "Pending Student-Athlete". This will allow Administration to run exports on the incoming class, update the export with University ID & Email, and send back to ARMS for import to the roster. ARMS will then automatically associate recruit profiles to the new student-athlete profiles!  
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Once rosters have been saved for the new academic year, workflows & packets can be assigned for completion.  

Individual workflows and packets are assigned from the Student-Athlete roster view in Department. Here Administrators can filter by sport, status, gender, minor status, etc. as needed. 

See Assigning Workflows

Pro-Tip: After all athletes have been assigned beginning of year workflows, use the "Student-Athlete Form Status" view to check on athletes that have "No Forms" for the academic year (or filtered packet). This will ensure no athlete is missed.

After workflows and/or packets have been assigned, Administrators can monitor both completed packets and outstanding workflows using the "Student-Athlete Form Status" view. Here, Administrators can also follow-up via email with any athletes pending completion in bulk. 

Check out the article for Tracking Student-Athlete Workflow Completion for more information.
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Administrators can update Practice & Competition Eligibility in bulk from the Roster view via the Update Eligibility menu option.

Using the Bulk Update menu option, Administrators can optionally update the NCAA Forms Complete status across multiple student-athletes at one time.

Pro-Tip: Work with the ARMS Support Team on your "rules" for updating these statuses automatically based on workflow completion. Simply send us your Packet(s) name that should be fully approved in ARMS and the status(s) it should update.
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At the start of each year, student-athletes should be sure they can successfully log in to their account in ARMS. By default, athletes will be setup with their username as their school email and password as their Student ID. Departments using the University's central login (SSO) will have athletes logging in with their University Net ID and corresponding password.  

Once logged in, athletes should: