The Ontario Attestation Letter Service Process

The Ontario Attestation Letter Service process looks like this:

1. The DLI creates a list of students who require PALs and submits it to the MCU.

2. The MCU reviews the list and approves the request.

3. PALs are generated and posted in the portal.

4. The DLI downloads the PALs and distributes them to applicants.

• If the DLI uses the OCAS IAS, the PALs are automatically added to each applicant’s account and an email notification is sent to the applicant or agent (if configured by the DLI.)

Logging into the Ontario Attestation Letter Service Portal

• Go to the portal URL.

• In the Sign in dialogue box, enter your email address and password.

The portal opens to the Dashboard page.

Preparing the PAL Request

• Ensure you have cap space for attestation letters for the year.

• Identify the students to be included. Ensure you exclude students who’ve already been issued or don’t require a PAL.

A PAL will be generated for each student in the list, whether they require one or not.

The Ontario Attestation Letter Service doesn’t check if students meets any of the exemption criteria (such as Status in Canada), and the MCU doesn’t have a way to verify this, so we’re unable to skip and ignore those students.

For information about exemptions, see the Provincial attestation letter section of the Government of Canada website.

• Download a copy of the Excel template.

  OCAS-PAL-ExcelTemplate

  18.28 KB

• Prepare the list of students who require an attestation letter. For details, see Preparing Data Sets Using the Excel Template.

As you add details for each student, consider the sample test cases described in Data Validation Rules.

Note: Each Microsoft Excel file is limited to 250 students (rows).

Submitting the PAL Request

• Log into the portal.

• In the navigation pane, select Upload Batch.

• Select the upload area to choose the Excel file to upload.

OCAS processes the file and runs validation rules. If the file contains any errors, they’re listed on the page.

The Excel file is also checked for duplicate entries any are found, they’re listed on the page.

• To proceed, remove the duplicate students from the Excel file or use the Override Duplicate option.

Note: The purpose of the Override Duplicate option is to override the duplicate check and request another PAL for a student who already has a PAL for that cap year.  This option is strictly intended for troubleshooting PALs that were issued incorrectly since the additional PAL for that student will be counted towards the year's allocation (cap).

To use the Override Duplicate option, contact our PSO team at [email protected].

• Fix any other errors, then select the file to upload.

The batch file name and number of applicants included in the request are displayed.

• Select Submit.

A confirmation message is displayed.

• Select Go to batch list.

After the batch file is submitted, it’s displayed on the List Batches page. The following details for each batch are displayed:

• The date and time the file was submitted

• The ID of the person who submitted the batch

• The number of applicants included in the batch

• The status of the batch

In the following example, the three most recent batch uploads have a “Pending Approval” status.

Tip: You can filter the list to display batches with a specific status. For example, you might want to see only those with a status of Pending Approval.

After you submit the batch, the MCU will receive, review, and approve the request. Allow one to two business days for the MCU to review and approve the requests.

Once approved, the PAL letters are generated in PDF format and posted in the portal, and an email is sent to each user at your DLI. The email is sent from [email protected].

Note: One email is sent for each batch; it’s not cumulative. For example, if College X uploads four Excel files with 50 students in each one, the MCU will review the four files and approve a total of 200 letters. However, the college will receive four separate emails - one for each Excel file submitted.

Here are examples of the English and French versions of the email you will receive.

Downloading and Distributing PALs

• Log into the portal.

• In the navigation pane, select List Batches.

• Locate the batches approved by the MCU.

Tip: Use the Status filter to display only the batches with Letters Approved status.

• For each batch, select the corresponding Download button.

The downloaded file is a ZIP file that contains the generated letters.

If your Excel file included duplicate students, the ZIP will include a "batch_errors" TXT file that identifies the duplicate student numbers.

When the approval comes back from the MCU, the original allocation count is reduced by the number of PALs issued. Duplicates aren’t counted.

• Review the contents of the ZIP file.

• Distribute the PALs to applicants or agents.

  • If the DLI uses the OCAS IAS, the PALs are automatically added to each applicant’s account and an email notification is sent to the applicant or agent (if configured by the DLI.)

Viewing Reports

The Ontario Attestation Letter Service generates a PowerBI report that lists the students who’ve been issued a PAL for your DLI. This report is updated every hour and is available in the portal. You can use this information to help manage cap space for your DLI.

• To access the reports, in the navigation pane, select Reports.

• You can apply filters to view specific details (date range, letter type, residency, student number or allocation year) or export the data.

Here’s an example of a report:

Logging Out of the Portal

When you’re finished processing the batches, log out of the portal.

In the banner, select the icon that displays your initial, then select Sign Out.