Apply Texas team outlines recent fixes, testing windows and fraud protections

The Applied Texas product team on June 10 reported a set of recent deployments intended to fix data quality and user-experience problems and outlined next steps for testing and fraud mitigation.

Ronnie Shahham, product manager for Apply Texas, said the most recent sprint addressed a range of issues including aligning county codes to Texas Controller standards, fixing a high-school selection persistence bug in the applicant portal, resolving an admin-portal error that surfaced when majors had no application types selected, and improving the interface for optional questions and essay configuration. "This means cleaner, compliant geographic data right from the jump," Shahham said while describing the county-code corrections and other bug fixes.

Shahham also described technical work underway in the next deployment: a refactor of core question screens to improve page-load performance, fixes to session and cookie handling, and print fixes so essays are not truncated. He said the Q&A module will include support for future academic terms and that copyright text across the platform was updated.

Claudet Jens, director of application services, added that EDI documentation for two- and four-year applications was released June 1 and is available on the Apply Texas resources web page. Jens described a designated test environment with scheduled testing windows; the next window is planned to open July 6, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. and close July 10 at 5:00 p.m. Institutions must preregister both admin and applicant credentials for each test window due to security constraints.

Jens said the roadmap for fiscal year 2027 includes exploring an international application for two-year institutions, continuing residency-logic discovery and development (to avoid unintended EDI transmission impacts), and improving collaboration with TACRO. On security, Jens highlighted a recently rolled-out account-lock feature that allows staff to lock applicant accounts reported through the help desk and make that status visible in the admin portal. "This functionality allows the Apply Texas technical team to lock any applicant accounts that have been reported through the help desk regarding potential fraudulent activity," Jens said.

Committee members asked for clarifications on legacy-user EDI behavior and how fixes would affect in-progress applications. Jens acknowledged that legacy data can continue to transmit older values and that the team will rely on notifications and pop-ups to prompt users to revalidate addresses and county information. Staff requested that institutions continue reporting edge cases so the team can address remaining legacy-data scenarios.

The committee did not take formal action on system deployments at this meeting. Staff said they will share deployment notes, the EDI documentation, and test-environment details with gateway contacts and invited institutions to participate in upcoming testing windows.