Voice

Expanded pilot for Banner 9 to begin Spring 2018

Banner implementation timeline

As announced in May 2017, the University of Alaska has until December 2018 to migrate all financial, student services and human resources transactions to the latest version of Ellucian’s software, Banner 9. Support for the current version will stop fall 2018. After December 2018, Banner 8 will not be supported and can no longer be used.

Over the years different user groups have customized forms or otherwise modified Banner to match institutional practices and policies. The base upgrade from Banner 8 to Banner 9 does not automatically include customizations. Ellucian must re-customize forms in the new interface. That process is expensive and time consuming, and many universities are needing this done at the same time.

Human Resources began working on testing and training in May 2017 and has been working with Ellucian on the necessary customizations, but due to demand the progress was slower than anticipated. Therefore the larger pilot project has been postponed until spring 2018.

The Financial Aid user group has also started working with Ellucian on customizing and testing their forms.

The functional area with the largest extent of customization is Finance. Rather than pay to have every current, custom form recreated in the new platform they are conducting an extensive internal review of forms and practices to streamline the number of customizations necessary prior to launching the testing phase.

Staff in the Project Management Office are working with Ellucian to speed up response time. Extending time in testing mode will not affect the overall project deadlines and the other functional areas are still scheduled to migrate to Banner 9 by fall 2018. There may be additional pilot project opportunities over the summer 2018.

Migration to the new version does not affect the background data or functions, but the user interface is significantly changed, is web based, and offers mobile-ready functionality. Users are encouraged to visit Ellucian’s Banner 9 project site and familiarize themselves with the new platform prior to migration.

Back to Top UA