Spotlight:  Banner 8 Upgrade

Project Sponsor: Chris Gregg
Project Managers:  Shaun Faricy and Amy Schwartz

Background:
SunGard Higher Education released the Banner Unified Product Release 8 in November 2008.  This release includes new versions of Internet Native Banner (INB), Self Service/Murphy Online (SS/MO), Operational Data Store (ODS), and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).  This is considered to be a major upgrade.  This version of Banner features both immediate benefits and items we can/will implement following implementation. 

The immediate benefits are:

• Expanded field lengths
• Enhanced security features
• New character set to support internationalization
• Solutions to address user reported issues.

Post implementation benefits are:

• User-defined Fields (Supplemental Data Engine)
• Partial Character Masking
• PIN Maintenance 
• More institution-defined rules on PIN length and make-up
• Optional institution-defined challenge questions

We initially planned to perform this upgrade in our production environment in January 2009, but we were forced to delay due to a major issue where student accounts were being charged incorrectly.  This delay is allowing us to upgrade to the 8.1.1 version of INB.

How are we moving forward?
To continue preparation for going live with this upgrade on August 4th, primary Banner users have been kept up-to-date on where we're at with our process.  The system was ready for Business Office user testing starting May 22nd and released for campus-wide testing on June 2nd.  Testing will be open through June and IT will use June and July to resolve identified issues and prepare for implementation weekend. 

What's the timeline for upgrade weekend?

• From 12:01 a.m. Friday, July 31, to approximately 8 a.m. Tuesday, August 4, Internet Native Banner and Murphy Online will be unavailable. 
  
• During this Banner 8.1 upgrade, AppWorx will also be unavailable. IRT will be disabling all jobs attached to the AppWorx maintenance calendar for Friday through Monday. If your chains are not attached to this calendar, make sure you reschedule the job. Please contact Andrea Seberg or May Ko Yang if you need assistance. 
  
• From 12:01 a.m. Friday, July 31, to approximately 8 p.m. Thursday, August 6, the production reporting database ODSP and EDW will be unavailable. Any reporting will come from ODST data, which will be current as of end of business Thursday, July 30. 
  
• Any AppWorx jobs running against ODSP will need to be disabled until ODSP becomes available. 
  
• From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, July 31, the test reporting database ODST will be unavailable. 
• Certain applications, including RFS and the Information Look Ups (including News, Events, and Directories, and A - Z Index), on the UST Web site, will be unavailable while both reporting databases are unavailable.