From Banner Student to Ellucian Student: a modernization readiness checklist

For the Banner path, Ellucian uses the name Ellucian Student powered by Banner. Ask IT and Ellucian to confirm the contracted target and functions included. Write that answer into the project scope. Managed hosting, an on-premises upgrade and a SaaS implementation give the institution different responsibilities; identify which change is being proposed.

Ellucian describes an incremental modernization approach. Ask the project team which capabilities, connections and process changes the institution needs in each phase. Do not assume every institution needs the same preliminary upgrade or one cutover for Student, Financial Aid, Finance and HR.

List the student functions moving in each phase and the systems staying in place. Have the Registrar and IT lead review the list together, including unanswered questions, before the sponsor accepts a schedule.

UNCG's planning page asks departments to identify their current processes, reports, data needs and connections to other systems. Ask staff to bring those descriptions to a working session. Keep the questions that still need an answer on one list; this is the readiness register used below.

For each row, add a named person, a due date, the current status and a link to their record or test result. Ask who may approve that result. If several people share the work, identify what each will check. Leave the row open until the required answer and check are complete.

Illustrative example: a nightly registration extract supplies a departmental report. The extract completes, but a person outside the migration team maintains the programme-code mapping. Ask that person and the report owner to review the proposed replacement.

Put the extract specification, approved mapping and receiving report beside the registration requirement. Have the report owner compare the same student population and effective date in the current and proposed outputs. Ask IT to list rejected records. Name who will explain and correct each difference.

The report owner should decide whether the proposed output meets the department's requirement. Stop the old extract only after the replacement is accepted or the department approves a change to that requirement. Completing a transfer does not by itself show that staff can produce the report.

Ask functional managers to choose student tasks that cross departments. Depending on scope, staff might add or drop a course, apply a charge, process an approved payment or produce an enrollment report. Have the manager approve the expected result using the institution's rules.

For each task, give the tester the starting record, permitted role and steps to follow. Say which record should change and which output the receiving team should see. Name the person who checks the result. Include a rejected transfer or an action the role must not be allowed to perform. Ask IT to confirm test accounts and approved data will be available.

Have managers check the academic and financial calendars before agreeing test and cutover dates. Ellucian's Lancashire account describes phasing around operational activities and business participation. It supports asking when staff can do the work, not copying a timetable for another university.

In a proposed external workflow, give an institution-approved AI tool an approved list of local job descriptions, report purposes and interface summaries. Before sending it, ask the designated data approver to remove student details, credentials and restricted technical information unless their use has been expressly approved.

Ask the tool to flag descriptions that may be duplicates, entries without a named person and possible links between a job and a report. Treat its output as a draft. Have the functional manager check each suggestion against the supplied list and the current requirement before approving a change to the working list.

Ask the manager to point to the original entry for every suggestion they retain and check whether the draft missed a dependency staff already know about. Record whether each suggestion is accepted, corrected or rejected. AI does not decide which job to retire, approve a mapping or establish a financial control total. This is a proposed review method, not a claim about a native Ellucian feature.

Start with the questions affecting the first phase. Ask each responsible person what they will do next: obtain a product answer, ask a manager to approve a process, correct a record or complete a test. Agree what they will bring back and when.

Give the sponsor the open questions that affect scope or dates. Keep assumptions marked as unanswered while estimating work. When the responsible person brings back the answer or result, record whether the sponsor accepts the phase, asks for more work or defers it.