General FAQ's for Banner 8

When is Banner 8 Going Live?

• Testing phase: Late spring/early summer '09
• Production Go Live: October '09

What does going from Banner 7 to Banner 8 mean?

Banner is our administrative software that is used through-out the university in the areas of Finance, Financial Aid, Housing, HR and Payroll, Student (registration, grades..) and Student accounts. Banner uses an Oracle database to gather, store and present information through forms (INB), reports and web self-service (BannerWeb). Every few years, the vendor (SungardHE) releases a major version to deliver functional and technical improvements to Banner. Alfred University must implement these versions to retain support from the vendor and to remain in compliance with Federal Regulations (e.g. Financial Aid, Tax tables).

How long will Banner be down during Go-Live?

Banner has a number of modules and each of these modules contains hundreds of forms that store data in hundreds of Oracle tables. With the change from Banner 7 to Banner 8, the underlying Oracle Database will move to the new UTF-8 'character set". This requires that thousands of rows of data in thousands of tables be converted to the new 'character set'. Also a number of forms are changing and a number of tables and programs are being updated. This work must be performed while no one is logged into the system.

We are anticipating that this will take at least 3 - 4 days to bring up Banner 8 and to run the new character set conversion. We will know better after we have run this process in our development environment this spring/summer.

What is the UTF-8 'character set'?

The 'character set' provides support for international characters which will allow institutions to improve service to their constituents by providing the ability to store names and addresses in their native language and format. This will be important for Alfred University as we provide expanded support for international students/studies.

Will Blackboard be down during this time?

Blackboard will remain available but there will be no updates fed to it from Banner during the 3-4 days of conversion in Oct. '09.

What other changes will we find in Banner 8?

• Monetary and currency rate field expansion
• Common security and PIN enhancement
• Adding in new bio-demographic fields, expand field length
• Ability to define and add custom fields to some forms
• Creation of new Additional IDs table
• Expanding SSN/SIN/TIN field to 15
• Automated link between faculty load and HR
• Multi-year encumbering for grants
• Catalog Extract and Load
• Concurrent Curricula Phase V
• The above is just a sample

Will the screens change? Do I have to get re-trained?

Banner 8 has the same look and feel as Banner 7. Most form names remain the same, but some have been added or changed functionality. Once Banner 8 is in the development environment, each functional area will be better able to determine if any additional training will be required.

Will my password change? Do I have to get another account?

No. The Banner password and account name you are currently using will work after the change from Banner 7 to Banner 8 is complete.

Do you have other questions to be added to this list of FAQs ?

Contact Denise Kirschner (kirschdj@alfred.edu)