How Should You Manage Banner Modifications?
Local modifications make every Banner upgrade harder. How to inventory, classify, test and retire Banner mods, and when to use Extensibility or APIs instead.
How should you manage Banner modifications?
Treat every Banner modification as technical debt with an owner. Keep a full inventory of each mod (what object it changes, why, who owns it, and how it is tested), re-evaluate it at every upgrade, and retire it whenever delivered functionality, Banner Extensibility or an API-based integration can do the same job. New requests should go through change control that prefers configuration and extensibility over code changes.
Overview
You cannot avoid all customisation, but you can know exactly what you have and shrink it every year.
Step 1: Inventory
For every modification, record:
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Object(s) changed | Package, page, trigger, process |
| Business reason | "Collect sponsor reference at registration" |
| Owner | Registrar's office |
| Test steps | How to prove it still works |
| Last reviewed | Release or date |
Step 2: Classify
- Retire: no longer needed or now delivered by Ellucian.
- Replace with configuration: rules or validation changes.
- Move to Extensibility: labels, fields, simple pages. See Banner Extensibility.
- Move to APIs: integration logic. See Ethos APIs.
- Keep: truly unique and justified, with tests.
Step 3: Govern new requests
- Ask "can configuration do this?" first.
- Then "can Extensibility do this?"
- Code changes need a business case, an owner and a test script.
Tip: Report your mod count to leadership each term. A visible number tends to go down.
Frequently asked questions
Any change to Ellucian-delivered objects, such as pages, packages, processes, triggers or tables, plus custom objects that depend on baseline internals.
Each upgrade may overwrite or conflict with modified objects, so every mod must be re-applied, recompiled and regression-tested.
Last reviewed by the ITCadence Banner team. Ellucian product capabilities vary by version and licence; confirm details against current Ellucian documentation.
