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Below is a detailed overview of the different steps that need to be taken during this procedure.

Step-by-step

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titleStep 1: get familiar with the Erasmus Without Paper basics

As a first step it is important to understand the basics (different scenario's for joining Erasmus Without Paper, the mobility process cut into pieces) of the Erasmus Without Paper infrastructure and apply it to the management of mobility processes at your own institution.

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titleStep 2: identify IT stakeholders in your own institution

The implementation of Erasmus Without Paper in your inhouse in-house software needs to be done by your IT team. We encourage you to involve them in the process right from the beginning. They will be responsible for developing the APIs that connect your own system to the system of your partner via the Erasmus Without Paper network using the communication protocols.

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titleStep 6: rethink your internal business processes

Although your IT team will be responsible for connecting your system to Erasmus Without Paper, you will need to rethink existing business processes because you will need functionality to send data to your partner institutions or handle data that you receive from your partner. We strongly advise that the IRO as a business process owner is directly involved in the rethinking of these processes.

Entry procedure

The so-called EWP-administrator from the institution looking to join the Erasmus Without Paper network, will need to login to the registration portal where she/he will need to add a signed Collaboration Agreement and add the url to the so-called manifest file.

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titleStep 1: Getting technical admission

As a first step the higher education institution needs to undergo a technical admission procedure:

  1. The EWP admin of the applicant higher education institution needs to login as a higher education institution in the registration portal staging environment, a copy of the production environment linked to the Erasmus Without Paper development network (please note that if you are not an EWP admin at your institution or your institution does not release this attribute for you (you can test this here), this step will fail, please contact the ESCI Service Desk);

  2. In this portal the higher education institution will need to upload a signed Collaboration Agreement determining the terms of use of the Erasmus Without Paper (development) network and setting the conditions to link the in-house software to the Erasmus Without Paper (development) network;

  3. Upon the countersigning of the Collaboration Agreement by the EWP+ Consortium, the EWP admin will be informed;

  4. The EWP admin will upload a link to the manifest file (this manifest file contains amongst other things information on which APIs the provider supports for the higher education institution in question) for its testing instance;

  5. The in-house provider performs some automated self-tests;

  6. The in-house provider contacts the ESCI Service Desk with a request for information or guidance (non-student issues) asking to test their APIs with the reference implementation;

  7. The EWP technical team will go through the testing scenarios for IIAs inter-institutional agreements and/or LAs learning agreements as described in GitHub.

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titleStep 2: Uploading Collaboration Agreement in Registration Portal

Upon successful testing, the EWP admin needs to login as HEI in the registration portal. In the registration portal the EWP admin will need to upload the signed Collaboration Agreement (also see step 1.2.).

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titleStep 4: Adding link to manifest file in Registration Portal

The EWP admin can now upload the link to its manifest file. Only APIs that were tested during step 1 can be included in the manifest file. When the provider would like to declare endpoints for new processes, they need to undergo the step 1 testing with the reference implementation.

Start exchanging via Erasmus Without Paper

Upon completion of the 4 steps above, the higher education institution is added to the Erasmus Without Paper registry (this can take some time) and becomes part of the Erasmus Without Paper network. The higher education institution can start exchanging data via Erasmus Without Paper in their production environment. They need to use the functionalities provided by their in-house system. 

As part of their obligations, software providers agree not to add additional APIs to their production manifest file before they have released these new APIs in the development environment and tested them with the reference implementation.

Revocation

One should keep in mind that things can go wrong. When institutions violate the use of the Erasmus Without Paper network, there should be an exit strategy. Institutions can report incidents and complain about the quality of APIs of any particular institution, the unavailability of a server, partners that are not trustworthy, etc via the ESCI Service Desk. The EWP Governance structure will try to settle disputes and has the authority to exclude any institution from the production registry if needed. The institution will need to prove its ability and trustworthiness again in the development environment. In cases of extreme violation the EWP governance structure has the competence to temporally exclude an institution from the Erasmus Without Paper production network.