Ellucian Banner Student Information System: Features, Access, and Support

Ellucian Banner is a leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed specifically for higher education institutions. It serves as a comprehensive administrative software application, simplifying everyday processes to support students, faculty, and staff. This article explores the features of the Banner student information system, its various modules, how to access it, and the support available to users.

Overview of Ellucian Banner

Banner is an on-premise solution that contains several modules. It maintains student, financial, and personnel data. It is designed to streamline administrative tasks and provide a centralized platform for managing information across various departments within a university. Because of the common database, multiple departments use the information entered into Banner. Other departments share data, sometimes several years in the future. For example, a name change would be reflected in the Student, Financial Aid, and Human Resource systems. The systems are highly integrated because they all share a common database. This common database is shared by everyone who uses Banner at MSU Denver, which makes it easy to maintain records on someone who applies to the University, becomes a student, graduates, and then becomes an alumnus.

Key Modules and Functionality

Banner encompasses a wide array of modules that cater to different aspects of university administration. These include:

Student: Manages student records, admissions, registration, academic history, degree data, and commencement processes.
Financial Aid: Administers financial aid programs, scholarships, and grants.
Accounts Receivable: Handles student billing, payments, and account management.
General: Provides core administrative functions, such as system setup, security management, and reporting.
Security: Controls user access and permissions to ensure data security and integrity.
Administration: Offers tools for managing the overall Banner system, including configurations and upgrades.

Banner is used in almost all areas of Tulane, such as admissions, registrar, academic history, degree data, commencement, financial aid, accounts receivable, document management, and others. It also houses all the data for these functions as well as storing important documents.

Data Storage and Retrieval

Technically, data is not actually stored in Banner. Data is stored in a powerful database called ORACLE. It would be difficult for a non-technical user to directly add or retrieve data from the actual database. The Banner software acts as an interface to the ORACLE database, making the job of adding or retrieving data much easier. Though information on Banner is shared, many users are allowed only to look up (query) specific information. When you perform a query, you retrieve information from the database and display that information on the screen. Banner has a variety of tools that let you search by name and automatically retrieve associated information.

Read also: Banner Design Ideas for Alumni

Integration with Other Systems

Banner is integrated with a plethora of other applications across the campus, including HR. Banner is heavily integrated into Gibson as well since Banner security roles and data drive many of the features found there. Gibson also utilizes Banner's self service modules to display data for students and advisors.

Accessing Banner

To obtain access to Banner, a user must first complete FERPA training as well as system training. To request access to Banner, please complete this form. University employees needing Banner Data access must complete a Data Usage Request (DUR) form. Submissions will be sent for review to the University Registrar’s Office and be routed for additional approval, as necessary. Argos access is handled via the Banner Access request form and should be submitted by a supervisor. Important! Please note that report requests are dependent upon approval by the relevant data steward.

Many of the Banner functions available to students are accessible from the Student Hub. Simply select the link that corresponds to what you want to do (e.g. Most of the Banner functions available to employees are accessible from the Faculty & Staff Hub, including pay information, leave reporting, and benefits information.

Support and Resources

ITS is committed to providing timely and efficient support for the University's student information system. The scope of this service includes administration and ongoing support that is necessary to ensure optimal performance and information security for both the back-end (a.k.a. “Banner Admin Pages”) and the front-end online services (a.k.a. Fulfillment targets serve as guidelines, and actual resolution times may vary depending on the complexity of the issue, available resources, and other factors.

Reporting Tools

Student & Academic Operational Reporting Our flexible, powerful, and easy-to-use reporting tools cater to Yale’s student and academic-centric reporting needs.

Troubleshooting

Need help?Issues with Banner can be submitted through ServiceNow. Frequently asked questions (FAQs): A list of commonly asked questions and answers related to typical issues and concerns (a.k.a.

Banner User Guide

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