The Path to Banner Implementation
If you have walked into the Computer Services office lately, you may see a lot of offices with lights off and few people around. No, they're not on vacation - they're in Banner training!
Banner training has been in full gear since April for many people across campus, especially Computer Services staff. We are working on what our consultants call a "very aggressive" timeline to try to get pieces of Banner up and running later this fall and into next spring and summer.
The first piece that will "go live" is Admissions, beginning in November. Applicants who apply for fall 2007 admission will be entered into Banner, rather than our existing student records system. Prospects for the 2008 season will also be entered into Banner around this same timeframe.
The next step is for the finance area. The accounting function on campus will only use Banner for student revenue collection and tracking, which includes tuition and fees. SUNY provides a separate accounting system for accounts payable and purchasing, which all SUNY campuses will continue to use even after Banner is fully implemented. After spending most of the summer and fall writing rules for collecting the various accounts receivable, they will start taking tuition payments through the Banner system beginning in May 2007 for summer and fall 2007 invoices.
By the beginning of 2007, the Banner Catalog will be built. They use the term "catalog" differently than we do - it's not our undergraduate or graduate catalog. Banner Catalog is what we currently call our "course master," which is what our schedule of classes is built from. All courses, their numbers, titles, descriptions, GE levels, etc. are entered into this system. Moving to Banner will change our course numbering conventions. Stay tuned for more on that in a future article!
The Financial Aid office will be working diligently this fall to prepare to process aid beginning in summer 2007 in Banner. Staff in this office will be required to attend many training sessions throughout the fall.
Once the catalog is ready, we will build the summer and fall 2007 schedule of classes. We will begin offering Web registration for these semesters through Banner, which will be accessed in the all new my.newpaltz.edu.
Banner Advancement, which the offices of Development and Alumni Affairs will use quite extensively, is the last section scheduled to go live around September 2007.
The conversion from our legacy system to Banner involves our entire campus community. Key individuals from most student service offices have been and will be immersed in the Banner conversion for months, if not years, to come. As we are on an aggressive implementation schedule, it is very important to remember that the level of student and faculty services provided for by such offices as Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate Admission, Registrar, Student Accounts, Financial Aid and Administrative Computing, may not be as consistent as in the past, over the course of the next year. We greatly appreciate the patience and understanding from all members of the campus community during this implementation period. Meltdowns and glitches are bound to occur, but grinning and bearing them will be a strong show of support for those who have been laboring to make this transition as seamless and smooth as possible.
More details will be provided about each area in future articles. If you have any questions or ideas for future topics you would like covered, please e-mail them to askbanner@newpaltz.edu.
