Developing TCSI compatible software

TCSI Solution Overview

The Tertiary Collection of Student Information (TCSI) solution provides a simple and easy way for HELP providers, higher education providers, and VET Student Loans providers to report information to government.

The solution offers two channels:

A Business to Government (B2G) interface which enables automated reporting through the utilisation of student management software (SMS); and
An online secure portal developed by government where providers will be able to upload files, and create and amend records.

Becoming a TCSI Developer

SMS vendors and in-house developers looking to design and build a software solution using the TCSI Application Programming Interface (API) will need to test and register their product with government before they will be able to connect. It is encouraged for SMS vendors to work with their clients to ensure the solution meets their needs.

To help SMS vendors identify which education providers will report their information through TCSI, go to Appendices, codes and tables.

On-boarding as a TCSI Developer

The process for on-boarding to TCSI as a developer consists of four sequential steps:

These steps and associated tasks are outlined below.

Please note: If you are only building a solution to export files for TCSI data entry and are not consuming TCSI APIs, you do not have to complete this process. Please go to the Higher Education Reporting Requirements or VET Student Loans Requirements for the file upload templates and user guides to help with your development.

Step 1: Indicate Interest, Register for GovTEAMS and Read TCSI Documentation

Expressing your intent to develop and test is the first step of the on-boarding process. It is also recommended that you obtain an understanding of the TCSI solution before proceeding with indicating interest.

Let us know you are interested in developing and testing with TCSI

Please complete the developer registration form (below) and send to TCSISupport@education.gov.au. If your organisation provides more than one product to support the education sector, please complete a separate form for each individual product.

TCSI will use this as the trigger to commence on-boarding you as a developer.

TCSI Developer Registration V2 DOCX (37.97 KB)

It may take up to 3 days for TCSI to complete your registration and email your invitation to GovTEAMS.

Create your GovTEAMS account

GovTEAMS is our main community/collaboration channel and documentation source for TCSI developers. The contacts listed on the developer registration form will receive an invite with instructions on creating a GovTEAMSaccount.

Other members of your organisation can request access to GovTEAMS by contacting TCSIsupport@education.gov.au and including the name of a registered developer in their email.

Read and understand TCSI documentation

Read the following documents:

Located on GovTEAMS:

PRODA B2B Software Developer’s Guide
B2G API Specification (API Specifications and Behaviour)
ITSP Operational Data Model
Developer webinar slides and recordings

Located on TCSI Support:

Reporting requirements:

Go to HEIMSHELP for information on the legacy solution, historical coding and validations and an archive of documents relating to the TCSI project.

Step 2: Set-Up to Develop and Test

Once you have indicated interest, registered for GovTEAMS and have an understanding of the TCSI solution, there are a few things you need to do before you are fully set-up to test. The steps below will help you through this process.

Create a TCSI Developer Portal account

The TCSI Developer Portal lets you create your “app” to enable communication with TCSI APIs, and also contains Swagger files for TCSI APIs. To create a Developer Portal account:

Activate your account using the link received in the email with subject: “Welcome to External Vendor”
Complete the sign-up form

You can also add more members to the TCSI Developer Portal by following the steps below:

Login to the Developer Portal
Click your organisation name on the top right
Select “my organisation”

Create an App for your Software

Your “app” in the TCSI Developer Portal (which you may also hear referred to as API Connect) is the unique representation of your Product (or your Student Management Software) from a TCSI perspective. To create and configure an app, please follow the instructions below:

Log into the Developer Portal
Click “Apps” on the top navigation bar
Click “Create new App”, provide a title for your app and click “Submit”
On the next page, under “Credentials”, click the “show” check-box next to the “Client ID” field. This will allow you to view your Client ID
Navigate to "API Products", then to “Transforming the Collection of Student Information”
Click 'Subscribe' at the bottom of the Plans section and select the app that you created

Once you’ve created an app and have generated a Client ID, send the Client ID to: TCSISupport@education.gov.au

We will use this to configure the initial layer of authorisation for your Software to communicate with TCSI APIs.

Create a PRODA account and register a mock organisation

PRODA is the authentication method used in the TCSI Project, and must be set-up and configured before API calls can be made.

Please follow the instructions in the configuring a test account guide.

After the process of configuring your test accounts is complete, link the mock organisation to TCSI by navigating to Organisations -> Organisation Name -> Service Provider -> add Service Provider -> Transforming the Collection of Student Information -> add service provider

A device can then be created, by navigating to Organisations -> Organisation Name -> B2B Devices -> Register New B2B Device -> Enter details and register device

Finalise setup by authenticating with TCSI

PRODA uses the OAuth 2.0 standard and JSON for authentication. Experience with/and or reading and understanding Oauth and JSON concepts is highly recommended as pre-requisite for this step.

Please refer to for the following documentation on GovTEAMS to complete this step:

PRODA B2B Software Developer’s Guide

The PRODA Authentication Tips and Hints section might also be helpful if you are encountering issues.

Your developer test set-up is now complete, and you can proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Commence Development and Testing

You are now able to commence your development and testing with TCSI APIs.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues whilst testing or have questions, please refer to GovTEAMS and related FAQs below.

If you are unable to find a resolution there, please email TCSISupport@education.gov.au.

For any API issues, please include the full request and response (with headers) in your email, in text. This may also be supported by screenshots.

Is there a difference between the Developer Test Environment and the Production Environment in TCSI?

The Developer test environment is based on the current TCSI solution that will be available in the Production environment. Any enhancement to the TCSI system will first be deployed in the test environment to assist developers to build their solutions.

Are SMS developers required to register for PRODA?

Developers are only required to register for a test PRODA account to facilitate their SMS product testing. In production, SMS developers are not required to register for a production PRODA account. Education providers will be required to manage this part of the process.

Why do I receive a 401 "Client id not registered." error when trying to make calls to the TCSI APIs?

This error generally occurs when the client-id being used to make the API calls is not subscribed to the TCSI API Plan. To resolve this, please make sure that the client-id is correct. If the client-id is correct you can subscribe to the TCSI API plan by:

Logging in to your Developer Portal account
Navigating to "API Products", then to the TCSI APIs.
Clicking 'Subscribe' at the bottom of the Plans section and selecting the app that you created.

The approval request will be actioned by the TCSI support team once received.

What is the TCSI Call Rate Limit?

To maintain the performance, reliability and availability of the TCSI system there is a limit to the number of API calls that can be made. The TCSI B2G API call rate limit in production is 1200 calls/minute. This limit is applied at the "client_id" level as registered in the TCSI API Developer Portal.

If you have identified scenarios where this limit could be an issue for you or your providers please send your scenarios to TCSISupport@education.gov.au

How do we know what the remaining call rate limit for our software is?

There are three call rate limit headers returned in API responses. These are:

Header item	Description
X-RateLimit-Limit: name=rate-limit,1200	This returns the rate limit value.
X-RateLimit-Remaining: name=rate-limit,1199	Returns the number of API calls remaining.
X-RateLimit-Reset: name=rate-limit-1,37	Returns the seconds remaining before limit resets – only returned when limit exceeded.

Step 4: On-Board to Production

Once you have finished developing and have finalised testing against TCSI APIs, you can commence the production on-boarding process.

Let us know

Sign-up and configure your product

Once you have received the Production Developer Portal invite:

Accept the Developer Portal invite and create an account
Login to your successfully created Developer Portal account
Navigate to ‘Apps’, create a new application, view and note down your Client ID.
Navigate to ‘API Products’, then to the TCSI APIs.
Click 'Subscribe' at the bottom of the ‘Plans’ section and select the app that you created.

Please note: if you think you require more than one Client ID for your software, please email TCSISupport@education.gov.au clearly outlining the reasons why and we may be able to provision the configuration of multiple Client IDs.

Finalise

The final step, before a client ID can be configured in the PRODA Production environment, the following needs to be done first:

Once your software product is ready, it must undergo NOI testing. Please read the PRODA developer pack and the included “Notice of Investigation (NOI) test process”.

When ready to commence testing, please let us know the time and date you are proposing to conduct the test, so that we can check with the PRODA team that the time is suitable.

Once NOI testing is complete*, please provide the following details in an email to TCSISupport@education.gov.au so the PRODA team can review the results and if NOI is passed, the nominated Client ID(s) can be whitelisted:

*Please provide the results of NOI testing as soon as possible so PRODA can check the logs before they expire (with the email marked as urgent).

Name of organisation: Please provide the name of the software vendor (or provider name if the solution is being developed internally)
Nominated email address – Please provide the email address for the developer account that the Client ID(s) is/are connected to
Nominated Contact person: Please provide contact details for your organisation
Client ID(s) to be configured in the PRODA Production environment:

Information & Support