Banner Student Information System

Banner News Update

August 11, 2017

UCR is commencing our upgrade to Banner 9 for our student information system. Given that an upgrade to Banner 9 is required for all Ellucian customers by December 2018, we are embarking on a phased approach that begins this summer.

Our first activity will be to upgrade our Banner environment to be “Banner 9 ready”. This will occur over the weekend of August 18. Banner will be unavailable from Friday, August 18 at 5 p.m. until Monday, August 21 at 7:00 a.m. There will be no major changes to user experience except that Banner will no longer open in a separate java window (it will open in your current browser window).

There is one known issue of which Faculty and Staff users of Student Profile Advising Notes need to be aware: the name of the advisor who enters the note is not displaying. As a temporary workaround, we are asking that you type your name and department at the end of any notes you enter. For consistency and to improve our ability to clean this up later, please enter this as "[First Initial Last Name, School]" such as "[TEckman, CNAS]". This defect is fixed in the future release and we will work on remedying this issue as soon as possible.

Next, we will begin by upgrading various administrative modules in a series of phases. We will be reaching out to the Banner user community and our college partners to coordinate for system testing and training as we work to complete the overall project schedule. Because we are upgrading the administrative modules first, there will be little to no impact on our students.

The Banner 9 system release delivers a number of important enhancements, including a modern user interface, enhanced navigation and process management tools, and new functionality across the student, financial aid, and accounts receivable functions. It will also give us greater flexibility as users will be able to run Banner on any browser (and now tablets).   

With any system upgrade, we know that people often grow concerned over what will change. We have been working closely with our vendor partner, Ellucian, to understand and anticipate those changes. To date, most of the feedback that other institutions have provided indicates that getting used to the new interface and navigation takes minimal effort (like an update to the interface for Gmail). To date, hundreds of Banner customers have already upgraded, or are in the process of upgrading, so we will be able to share experiences across the Banner community as we roll out Banner 9 at UCR.

If you have questions or feedback, please feel free to send an email to bannerhelp@ucr.edu.  We will be keeping you informed of our progress through our website, http://ucrbanner.ucr.edu as well as through open discussions with your team. We welcome your involvement as a part of this initiative.

Sincerely,

LaRae Lundgren, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Services

Danna Gianforte, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer

Bobbi McCracken, Associate Vice Chancellor for Business & Financial Services and Controller

Get a Banner Overview

The Banner Navigation eLearning Tutorial offers an at-your-own-pace overview of how to navigate and use Banner. It can be accessed anytime, anywhere, from a computer or mobile device. 

The eLearning Tutorial is highly recommended for those academic advisors, faculty and staff who currently interact with Student Information System (SIS). Follow these steps to access the eLearning Tutorial: 

  • Log in to ucrlearning.ucr.edu with your UCR Net ID.
  • Create an activity search using “Banner.”
  • Click the register link.
  • Complete the training.

Your supervisor will be notified of your achievement via email from the UCR Learning Center.

Banner Past Updates

  • October 17, 2016

    Banner Transition Timeline

    Banner will provide the campus, advisors, faculty, staff and students with many new and improved applications and functions.

    It is important to keep you updated about how the transition to Banner will impact you.

    Please review the timeline below as many of the applications you use will go offline while the new system is being introduced.

    September 30

    5 p.m. Last day to complete exception updates and to sign off on catalog edits

    October 7

    5 p.m. Cut off day for submitting new custom data requests to Student Affairs Information Systems (SAIS), Computing and Communications ( C & C) and Student Business Services (SBS)

    12 NOON Last day to request new or modifications to SIS access

    October 10

    5 p.m. “Read only” access to SIS begins as processes in SIS end
    5 p.m. Cut off day for department to submit scholarships, stipends, awards, etc., to be disbursed by October 14

    October 14

    5 p.m. Growl retired permanently. “Current activity” screen (including billing statements, hold resolution, authorized user, etc.) will be frozen until 8 a.m., October 21

    5 p.m. SIS fee deadline. Last day to enter new charges or reversals on SIS+ for October 2016 billing statement including

    5 p.m. SIS shuts down permanently for transacting including: 
    Enrollment adjustments
    Financial aid disbursements 
    Curriculum changes 
    Transcript request payments 
    Comments and holds
    Diploma mailing requests
    Final refunds
    Readmission application fee payment

    View access to SIS will remain temporarily

    5 p.m. Verification request payments end in SIS

    October 17

    Banner production available for login and permissions confirmation. Please do not make any updates to Banner student data. Updates for Academic Scheduling in Banner and in 25Live may continue

    October 19

    R’Space faculty/advisor self-service student profile available

    October 20

    8 a.m. Degree works live

    October 21

    8 a.m. R’Web self-service experience live
    8 a.m. Account inquiry and departmental billing access commences
    8 a.m. Banner production is live and available for updates
    8 a.m. Online payments is available
    8 a.m. Disbursements for scholarship stipend, awards etc., resumes in Banner

    October 24

    8 a.m. Banner Cognos available
    8 a.m. Custom data report requests begin (url: go.ucr.edu/workfront)

    October 25

    8 a.m. Student billing systems live

    Important Policy and Procedural Changes

    Keep up on the latest policy and procedural changes that have occurred during UCR's transition to Banner.

    To see what has been happening behind the scenes, visit the Banner website.

    Banner tutorials can be accessed at ucrlearning.ucr.edu, search word, “Banner”

  • October 14, 2016

    GROWL HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY RETIRED

    We are now in the final stages of making the R’Web self-service experience ready for students on October 21, 2016.
    To ensure a smooth transition, we have taken many Growl and SIS-related systems and applications offline to prevent changes from being made to records during the transfer from one system to another.

    When students log into their R’Web portal on October 21, 2016, all of the applications and tools previously found in Growl will be available in the Authorized Applications window in R’Web.
    Keep yourself updated about how the transition to Banner will impact you.

  • September 21, 2016

    September 21, 2016

    • Growl and the Student Information System (SIS) will be retired at 5 p.m. on October 14, 2016 and you will not have access after that date. The new Banner Student Information System will go online October 21, 2016. 

      A new self-service experience through R’Web student portal will replace Growl and be available beginning at 8:00 a.m., October 21, 2016.
      Keep watching for further details and updates.