We’re introducing a new way to upload and manage graduate data in the Tassel Hub. This new workflow gives your team more control over data standards, highlights issues earlier in the process, and reduces the time spent cleaning up records before ceremony day.

Because this workflow is new for everyone, the FAQs below explain what’s changing, why we made the change, and how to prepare.

Here is a link to the live training hosted in January 2026, so anyone who manages or uploads graduate data at your school feels confident using the new tools.

There are two main changes to the data upload process.

What do I need to do to prepare for the change?
If you want to utilize this new feature, you need to flag the graduate data fields that are important for display, recording, or printing. Then, you will need to define what values are acceptable for each field. 

For example, for the Degree field, if you prefer degrees to be fully written out, you would define acceptable entries as “Bachelor of Science” and “Bachelor of Arts,” rather than abbreviations like “BS” or “BA.”

Yes, at this time you will need to redefine acceptable graduate data fields for every ceremony. 

What is the new data cleaning process in the Hub?
There are two main components to the new data cleaning process. 

Yes! You will choose which fields to validate and define acceptable values, so you're only flagged for errors that matter to your institution

We listened to feedback from customers that the data upload and cleaning processes were cumbersome and time consuming. These updates are designed to simplify the process, provide more visibility into your data, and increase the speed at which you can upload and validate graduates.

Yes, we will be providing multiple resources to learn about this process change. There will be a live training session held via Zoom, training articles in our knowledgebase, and video walk-throughs. 

It is our recommendation that all institutions utilize the new tools to ensure your data is clean and consistent. This will ensure that  your Director software is able to deliver the best ceremony possible for your graduates. However, if you do not flag any graduate data fields, the tool will not look for any mistakes or inconsistencies in your data when uploaded.

If a tagged Graduate Data Field (like "College/School") is missing from an import sheet, will it still upload the graduates or flag an error?  

It depends on if the field is required. If a tagged field is required, but missing upon import, the graduates will be uploaded, but placed in limbo in the data correction tool where the graduate(s) will remain until their data is corrected. If the missing field is not required, the graduates will upload without issue.

Graduates who were uploaded with incorrect data will remain in the data cleaning tool and will not be completely uploaded into the site or invited to register until corrections are made.

Errors in the data cleaning tool should be resolved before the data deadline, as Tassel will not see that updated information for processing. This can result in incorrect/incomplete data for your ceremony.

You should use the "non-standardized" option available when editing the Graduate Data Field. This ensures that if a graduate does not have a value for this field it will be flagged for correction, but prevents the system from creating unnecessary data correction tasks for values it doesn't recognize.