Banner

Banner Cloud Migration FAQs

 

Starting at 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 9 the final phase of transitioning all Banner applications and associated Ellucian products to the cloud will begin, with an expected completion date of no later than Tuesday, March 14. 

*Exact timing of end date to be confirmed ~5 business days prior to start of outage.

For  Students, impacts for the Mar. 9-14 outage window will be:

UNAVAILABLE

  • Your UA Online account will not be accessible.
  • Advising software like Degreeworks, transcripts and other student data will not be accessible.
  • Payment tools will only be accepting payments before the outage begins March 9 at 5:00 p.m. and after March 14. 
  • Housing applications for on campus housing will be unavailable.

PARTIALLY AVAILABLE

  • Blackboard and Canvas for UAF will be fully available for course work during the outage window, though updates from Banner will not occur during this time, so changes to enrollments or courses cannot take place during this time. Blackboard and Canvas for UAF will be back to normal March 14.

AVAILABLE

  • ELMO will be available for password resets and account management

For  Faculty, impacts for the Mar. 9-14 outage window will be:

UNAVAILABLE

  • UA Online will be inaccessible. This will impact your ability to adjust grades, and access advising software like DegreeWorks. Your students will not have access to transcripts or other student data, nor will financial aid offices have access to payment tools.
  • In UA Online, where applicable, submit timesheets, check leave balances, download tax forms and take care of any other self-service functions before March 9 at 5:00 p.m., or after March 14. When you do access UAOnline again, there should be no change in functionality, just a possible slight delay as the updated site loads.
  • Your UA account information will be inaccessible. Make any changes to your account information before March 9 at 5:00 p.m. or after March 14.

PARTIALLY AVAILABLE

  • Blackboard and Canvas for UAF will be fully available for course work during the outage window, though updates from Banner will not occur during this time, so changes to enrollments or courses by Faculty will not take place during this time. Blackboard and Canvas for UAF will be back to normal March 14.

AVAILABLE

  • ELMO will be available for password resets and account management
  • alaska.edu web sites will be available, though servers may experience an increase in traffic when Banner and UAOnline are unavailable, so expect possible delays.

For Staff who do not regularly use Banner in their day-to-day job, the impacts of the Mar. 9-14 outage will be minimal and are as follows:

UNAVAILABLE

  • Your UA account information will be inaccessible. Make any changes to your account information well before March 9 at 5:00 p.m. or after March 14.
  • UA Online will be inaccessible. Submit timesheets, check leave balances, download tax forms and take care of any other self-service functions before March 9 at 5:00 p.m., or after March 14. When you do access UAOnline again, there should be no change in functionality, just a possible slight delay as the updated site loads.
  • Human Resources or Finance Employees, you will not have access to enter new employees, adjust payroll or other HR Banner activities during the outage, nor will finance staff be able to enter transactions. 
  • All Banner accounts and management tools will be UNAVAILABLE.
  • UA Directory updates sourced from Banner, including information found at people.alaska.edu, will not take place until after March 14.
  • New UA Accounts creation will be paused until after March 14
  • Banner Printers will not be operational until after March 14. Non-Banner printers will be operational. No new printers, including Banner printers, will be added until after March 14.
  • Payments will not be coming in through Banner during the outage, but will be operational by March 14.
  • Housing applications for on campus housing will be unavailable.
  • Course changes will not import into campus instances of 25Live.

PARTIALLY AVAILABLE

  • Some features within ELMO, including ELMO verifier, will be impacted during the outage. 
  • TOAD queries in production Banner will be UNAVAILABLE, though TOAD queries against on-premise RPTP will be available.
  • QMenu and QAdhoc will be accessible but not be updated until after go live on March 14.
  • Data Warehouse reports will be available during the outage, but will not be updated until after go live on March 14.

AVAILABLE

  • ELMO will be available for password resets and account management. ELMO support will be available and is expected to take place through on-premise RPTP.
  • alaska.edu web sites will be available, though servers may experience an increase in traffic when Banner and UAOnline are UNAVAILABLE, so expect possible delays.
  • OnBase will be available during the outage.
  • External vendors such as Payment Net for managing Pro-Card purchases, and Concur for managing travel will still be accessible.
  • MyUA and other HR tools, along with the EthicsPoint reporting platform, Rave communications and other compliance and safety systems, will be available and operating with static Banner data pulled prior to March 9 outage.

Banner is the software behind of all the university’s financial, human resource and student systems, including any accessed through UAOnline. A decision was made to move Banner to the cloud, where it will be managed by Ellucian and hosted by Amazon Web Services. This transition ultimately will provide greater long-term stability for the platform, and ensure that the backend is kept current and well-maintained. Moving to the cloud will also free up university resources to focus on projects, such as the Student Information System improvement initiative, providing further benefit to the university community.

Since Oct. 2021, dozens of Banner users from across the system have been involved in the planning and testing for this transition that culminates Mar. 9-14, when UA Banner moves completely to the cloud environment. For in-depth project information on this critical system upgrade, visit UA Banner Cloud Migration site.

ACTION

TIME TO COMPLETE

UA will export a copy of the Banner and Degree Works database.

3.5 to 6 hours

UA will send the database exports to Ellucian.

1.5 to 3.5 hours

Ellucian will import the banner database from the extracts.

45 to 52 hours

Ellucian will import and restore the 3 Degree Work instances.

~10 hours

Ellucian will complete after-import step to bring the databases to good working order.

~9.5 hours to recompile all modules and apply cloud specific configurations

Ellucian will refresh and validate all of the Banner applications to connect to the database correctly

3 to 4 hours

Ellucian will rebuild the cloud reporting database on current data.

7 hours

Ellucian will make sure all of the Banner related servers are connected and setup before releasing back to UA.

6 to 8 hours

When the system is returned, UA’s Technology team will do an initial high level verification.

3 hours

The Banner Functional teams will then do a thorough verification.

~12 hours



A steering committee that was selected for the cloud project made up of stakeholders from around the system at each university and the system office chose the date for UA Banner’s migration to the cloud. The steering committee reviewed the dates that were available for a large system maintenance window and came up with a few options. The March window was selected based on how much could be set up prior to this date.
The cloud migration is an important first step toward modernizing our Banner implementation as a whole. After the migration occurs we will be more directly supported by Ellucian, the vendor that maintains the Banner system. This will allow us to implement and deploy changes in the Banner eco system much faster than before. Technical experts from Ellucian who are experienced with these implementations will be handling changes, allowing our UA resources to focus more on building value where it matters for the universities— through modern integrations and data exchange— ultimately benefiting efforts to modernize the SIS.
For project status follow along at NTS System Status Updates. For recent news and project updates visit the UA Banner Cloud Migration Project site.

For further questions? As always, your local service desk is here to help!

University of Alaska Anchorage
Technical Support Center

University of Alaska Fairbanks & System Offices
NTS's Service Desk

University of Alaska Southeast
Helpdesk