Have You Seen the New Banner Web?

By Abigail Julias

If you haven’t, you’re not alone — on October 1st, Banner Web’s main page was updated with a modern design. I had received an email about the change a few days before the change, but after asking around it seems that a lot of students, and even some faculty, had not known about the update.

I asked the Office of Information Technology about the changes, and Matt Mackey was able to provide me with some more information about the change. This is the first time Banner Web’s design has been updated since its initial launch, and the reasons for the update were twofold: the old Banner Web was no longer supported by the software vendor, Ellucian, and the previous design was showing its age. The new Banner Web is a cloud-based platform, which is more secure than the previous site and will likely be faster than the old site.

The new design is from ‘Ellucian Experience’, a dashboard software specifically designed for higher education institutions such as SUNY. The layout has been reshuffled into filterable cards full of relevant links, which may make navigating Banner Web easier. What pops out as new are the “To-Do List” and “Personal Web Links” cards, which allows students to add custom links and set timed tasks. Whether those features will end up being useful is still up in the air, but it doesn’t hurt to have them there.

The old Banner Web is not completely gone — many links still lead to the old ncccbanner site, and the old Banner Web home page is currently still accessible (which was how I was able to get a picture of it.)

Personally, I think the new Banner Web looks a lot better. It might take a bit to get used to the new card layout, but the site itself feels much more responsive and will certainly be better in the long run.