Banner Team Meeting Minutes

Thursday,January 26, 2012 – 3:00 PM

Hill Hall Seminar Room – Third Floor

Cynthia Stephens – Facilitator

The meeting was called to order at 3:03 p.m. Ms. Stephens welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Old Business/Deliverables/Updates

Addresses in SPAIDEN – Ms. Stephens expressed a concern for address to be accurate and consistent in the Banner System because various projects depend on certain type addresses (mailing and permanent) to be present in the system. Ms. Stephens stated that the invalid and incomplete addresses prevented the Bursar’s Office from sending 1098’s to students. She further indicated that all inactive addresses should be deleted from the system and that every “To” address should have a date greater than the current date. Ms. Dolan suggested restricting the number of people that have modification access to this form. Ms. Stephens stated that the DADUSER is the user ID for students making address changes via web.

No SSN’s – Ms. Johnson stated she was also having issues with no SSN’s being in the system. Ms. Stephens stated that we can no longer require a student to submit the SSN. She stated that there was a work around and that she would research it and will forward the information.

ADM Redesign – Ms. Stephens stated that Academic Data Mart is now moving to Data Warehouse. She explained that the change is that the all errors would have to be cleared before the data in loaded into the warehouse. She explained that the difference is that with ADM the data was loaded in the Data Mart and then the errors had to be corrected. She mentioned that the new Chief Data Officer at the BoR no longer wanted errors being dumped into the repository. She also stated that the BoR spent too much time cleaning up data issues even after data was submitted. The will be a test group on February 21 to test the Data Warehouse submission and campuses will begin training in March.

Degree Works –Ms. Rodriguez stated that the system will be launched summer 2012. She stated that Admissions and Registrar staff will travel to Macon to participate in a scribe training. She mentioned that the Registrar staff previously attended an overview training that was very labor intensive and technical. Training for faculty will begin in March and training for everyone else using the system will be in April.

EScrip Safe – Ms. Stephens explained that eScrip Safe is the company that we purchase our in house diploma printing software. Ms. Stephens explained that eScrip Safe will produce electronic transcripts for us and that we will also receive electronic transcripts. She explained that the student will request the transcript via web and the transcript will be generated and sent electronically through a secure site. The transcripts can be in pdf or xml format. The xml format received from another school can be loaded into Banner. Ms. Stephens mentioned that there were some technical difficulties so the company decided to work with one Georgia Institution (West Georgia) to iron out all the issues. We should be back testing within a week.

IT Proposal –Mrs. Singleton presented a proposal to the group entitled “Communication”. It is a Title III funded project for 5 years that will begin in 2013. She stated that SSU uses email as the official form of communication but people are not using Share Point software because it provides more security and it is a community based product. She is proposing doing a Banner integration the starts with Admissions and ends with graduation. She mentioned that a way to increase donations is to generate a popup and get folks to donate funds. She feels that this popup will occur during a memorial event like homecoming. Mrs. Singleton stated that people are more willing to give in the mist of excitement. She mentioned a tool for recruitment that once they talk to a potential student they can go to a computer and immediately send them information via Share Point or Facebook. Mrs. Singleton asked for the team to think about ideas and present them to her because the proposals are due in either May or June 2012.

New Business

New Process Testing Upgrades and Patches – Ms. Stephens stated she is implementing a new policy that requires every upgrade and patch to be tested. She stated that all involves offices will be required to meet together to test the upgrades. She mentioned that all upgrades and patches are now mandatory to apply to the System and many new processes and federal regulations require that certain things be in place. Ms. Stephens mentioned that most things are time sensitive so testing has to be done completely so that the Systems Office can immediately place the upgrades in production after we certify that testing is complete. She mentioned that this is critical because some people make claim that they do not have time to test. Ms. Stephens stated that what we do not have time for is for the system to be inoperable because we did not test.

Waitlist Process – Ms. Stephens mentioned that COBA has requested the use of the waitlist process which will allow a student to be placed on a reserved list for the next available seat of a closed section once a student drops a course. The student will be notified and given a certain time frame to register for the course. Students and faculty members can see who is waiting to be placed in the course. She also mentioned that the students will be dropped from the waitlist position if they fail to register within the designated time. Ms. Stephens stated that a decision has to be made to determine the time frame of the waitlist (for example: will it be doing the drop add period or will it be after the drop for nonpayment period). COBA will be the first to use this feature and then it will be rolled out to the rest of the campus community.

Fullfill Overlay Requirements – Ms. Stephens informed the team that the BoR has implemented a new requirement for the core curriculum that certain perspectives have to be completed in areas A-E. Ms. Stephens stated that certain courses have to be identified to satisfy the critical thinking, global and US perspectives. Also, she stated that a new process has been created to satisfy these requirements even if the courses were previously used to satisfy the legislative requirements. This requirement will be displayed on the academic transcript and went into effect fall 2011.

IT Audit –Mrs. Singleton informed the team that the state auditors will be coming and the main focus will probably be on student access. She advised everyone to make sure that a Banner access form is on file. Mrs. Singleton advised everyone to send in a request for access to be removed if the student no longer works in the area. She mentioned that no one should be allowing a student worker to use their Banner login information.

REMINDERS

  • The next BANNER Meeting will be held Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 3:00pm in Hill Hall 2nd Floor Conference Room.
  • SunGardhe Summit March 26-29, 2012 – Las Vegas, Nevada
  • Data Warehouse Training March 2012

The meeting was adjourned approximately 4:10 pm.

Members Present

Naomi Singleton, Alba Rodriguez, Carol Burnett, Terri Phillips, Tyranise Harris, Mary Ann Goldwire, Janice Johnson, Carol Dolan, Barbara Sturch, Tara Aikens, Nijah Bryant and Litus Marshall