The Offices of Undergraduate and Graduate Admission went live with Banner at the end of September. Banner is now being used to track recruits and applications, beginning with Spring 2009 and Fall 2009 enrollment terms. For more information on the Banner project, go to Project Evolution..
July 1st. Banner (Finance) Goes Live. Waldo isn’t quite deceased (Project Evolution is a three-year affair) but we’ve gathered here to wish him the best. This is a place to bid him farewell, commemorate his useful life, or gleefully dance to his demise.
I imagine that for those of us who have worked at Emerson for only a few years or even more recently – I’m thinking of a generation of workers who grew up with the Web – Waldo is the cranky, fastidious, antiquated eighty-something grandpa who travels around town in his beat up Buick, and YOU have been asked to adopt him. You weren’t given any instructions on how to manage him (no user guides, just barebones log on info when your predecessor left); you never knew when he was going to flare up and crash (when you had just put in two hours of data-entry time); or how he could be so ungrateful for all your meticulous work and reciprocate nothing (when you followed instructions perfectly for a laborious PDQ/CSVWriter query, you end up with a blank report).
For some of us who have been here for ten years or longer (we shan’t name any names), we have figured him inside out, and gotten used to his mean old ways. We painstakingly, through trial and error, learned the unintuitive keystrokes, quirky field names and commands, and stumbled upon roundabout shortcuts to extract the data we wanted out of him. By chance, I discovered how to look up a PO from the Budget menu (if you weren’t shown that – too bad, it’s too late). Sometimes when you’ve been in someone’s company for so long, in good times and bad, it’s with mixed emotions you say, “Adios, guy.”
Well, Grandpa Waldo, that time has almost come. It’s simply not working out. I regret to inform you that the antediluvian, archaic, obsolete, outdated ways of yours have got to go. We are moving on to something more “in” with the times, something that fits our needs and measures up to our expectations. We’ll miss you. Or maybe not so much.
Reminder: It's July 1! To submit a requisition, go to http://ssb.emerson.edu and log in with your new ID and Pin.
Thank you, Bill Lynch, for the helpful comment: Go to https://interactive.emerson.edu/ssb to sign up for training.
Remember: You must attend at least one training before you can input purchase requisitions after July 1, 2008.
Training Materials and Reference Guides are located under Training at the Project Evolution website.
If you have questions that are not answered in the guides, please contact Tony Ferullo, Project Manager, at project_evolution@emerson.edu
Training materials to date include:
News from Project Evolution: The Banner Finance module is getting ready to launch. If you received an e-mail, you have been identified by your supervisor as a purchaser and need to be trained before you can access the new system. Training will be held June 16-27, 2008.
You can sign up for training at https://interactive.emerson.edu/ssb/index.cfm?
Check for updates on the Banner project at the new "Project Evolution" website: http://www.emerson.edu/project_evolution.. Meet the team and read some basic FAQs. You can also email questions to project_evolution@emerson.edu.
I attended my second Banner training with the Business and Finance staff the second week in January. Note to myself: Attending the Navigation segment of the training made everything easier. It's like finally figuring out how ma organized the kitchen so you can get to the food faster.
I attended my first Banner training last week. It ran three days straight, and if I understood correctly, that is how Banner training will take place for all departments. Business and Finance has already started this process, as they are the first department slated for migration to the new system. I wonder how they feel about their training thus far. I know that there are people who hate the "legacy" system --our good friend Waldo -- and those who can't part with it because they are used to the old and "faster" way of doing things.
My own impression is that Banner, as widely-used and as featured-filled as it is, will be difficult to learn for us old folks. New naming conventions, new processes, new tables to learn, new ways of data query and reporting. I was somewhat lost on the second day. I think it wouldn't be asking too much for the twenty-somethings, who already are tech-savvy and easily-adaptable, to lend a helping hand to the elderly while we cross this threshold. Banner will be better for the College in the long run but in the mean time, we can suffer together, as a team.
As you have read, the College is implementing a multi-year project to replace its administrative information systems with a “unified digital campus” (UDC) solution from SunGard Higher Education, Inc., the core of which is a product commonly known as Banner.
The September 2007 issue of Emerson Today introduced Emerson's "Banner" project.
I will start posting links and articles in relation to to the project with a focus of helping staff and faculty in the transition to and usage of our new system.
This page contains an archive of all entries posted to IT News Blog in the Banner category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Alerts and Announcements is the previous category.
Banner Resources is the next category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.