Dear University Community,
The Banner/Luminis (BLISS) implementation team has successfully reached another major milestone. The University's Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions offices are now live with the Banner Integrated Product Suite. This brings us another step closer to replacing existing campus systems with SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC), an environment that unifies access to information and services to our constituents.
All Spring 2008 inquiry data will now be processed using Banner. Not only will Admissions offices automatically load all inquiry, test score and application information into Banner and process the information efficiently, but using the communications feature of Banner, they will be able to communicate quickly and efficiently with prospects and applicants using Banner's capability to automatically assign a prospective student or applicant to a communication plan according to their degree level, field of study, term, etc. All mailings will be dated and marked with detailed information to provide a full audit trail of correspondence sent to an individual.
Additionally, the Banner Xtender/Imaging solutions imaging and document management will allow the Admissions offices to go paperless. Everything that needs to be stored as part of a student's permanent record, such as applications, email correspondence, transcripts, and letters of reference, will now be imaged and stored in a secure environment yet easily accessible from work or home within the familiar Banner environment. And everyone will have the same consistent information, eliminating the risk of misplaced documents.
As the offices gradually take advantage of the Xtender features, they will be able to streamline the application review process. Multiple reviewers will be able to access the documents concurrently, rather than waiting for paper files to be passed around. And approvals will be automated using Xtender's workflow capabilities.
Earlier this year, our new portal, MySanDiego, made its debut. It has continued to grow, with the addition of Law School and New Student roles; other roles are in the works. MySanDiego provides every member of the USD community a personalized entry point into the digital campus, providing 24/7 access to information and services previously limited by location or hours of operation. Its integration with Banner provides seamless single sign-on access, putting users within a mouse click of personalized campus information and services. As the portal evolves, our vision is to provide our campus with a solid, accessible path to the infrastructure, enterprise applications and features required to support USD's digital campus.
Behind this mega-project, the most extensive that USD has ever undertaken, is a large dedicated and talented team of individuals, both functional and technical, who have been working together this past year in a tremendous collaborative effort across campus. We would like to thank this team and also recognize Indra Bishop, the BLISS project director, for the tremendous leadership and keen oversight of the project. Congratulations and special thanks to Steffanie Hoie (team lead), Steve Pultz, Danny Crinion, Ray McCormack and the rest of the Admissions team. In addition, we would like to recognize the infrastructure team of Matthew Hejazi, Steve Taburiaux, Ray Rodriguez and Sal Rodriguez for all their contributions to the new Production Banner system.
At the following link is a document showing all the upcoming milestones that the BLISS project needs to accomplish in order to reach our ultimate goal of a unified digital campus. It is a daunting task; please support the team in any way you can and if anyone wants to participate in the project, please contact Indra Bishop directly (x7898).
http://www.sandiego.edu/bliss/pdf/Milestones.pdf
