25 May 2023

Student records system upgrade

DVC: Student Education, Professor Jeff Grabill and COO Rachel Brealey write to inform colleagues about essential upgrades being made to our Student Record System.

Dear colleague,

We previously wrote to you on 21 April about the essential upgrades we are making to our Student Record System. We are moving Banner to a cloud-based platform and will be making updates over the same weekend.

The key periods of Banner downtime are expected to be: 

4pm on Thursday 15 June to 10am on Monday 19 June

4pm on Thursday 22 June to 10am on Monday 26 June 

This second period will only be used if the upgrade hasn’t been completed during the first. We are constantly adjusting and approving our plan as we know more, and we will continue to update you.

You will receive an email to let you know when Banner is back up and running. In the unlikely event that the release has not been successful, you will also be informed with further advice on how this might affect your work that week.

We are aware there are many key systems that interact with Banner that may be affected by the upgrades and move to the Cloud and want to make you aware of the following key points: 

  • Live Banner will be taken offline in its entirety from 4 pm on Thursday 15 June.  
  • Systems will be prevented from sending and receiving data from Banner from 4pm on Thursday 15 June.  As such, there will be no nightly feeds. Systems that rely on a nightly feed may still be accessible during this period. However, they will be showing data as it was at 4pm on the Thursday 15 June, not live data. Systems will resume sending and receiving data to and from Banner after all technical and data checks have been completed.  
  • Argos, Oracle reporting & ODBC links will be offline from 4pm on Thursday 15 June. Once the changes have been made, these will be redirected to the new Banner database location as part of the go live plan. 
  • You may also experience some limited functionality in systems that rely on Banner data between 4pm Thursday 15 June and 10am Monday 19 June. 

A great deal of work has been carried out to identify the key systems that interact with Banner. We are aware that many of these systems are delivering business critical functionality and are working in collaboration with a number of teams to minimise the impact that might be felt by colleagues and students.

However, it is still expected that some interfaces with Banner will be disrupted. This risk has been accepted as part of the go-live plan, and we will provide enhanced support to address issues after Banner goes live on a prioritised basis aligned to business needs.

If you have any other questions, queries, or concerns, please contact SLP@leeds.ac.uk. 

With best wishes,

Professor Jeff Grabill, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Student Education

Rachel Brealey, Chief Operating Officer

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