Many colleges using Ellucian Banner SaaS still rely on manual processes to communicate critical notifications to students. For a large public community college in the United States, manual uploads and semi-automated processes posed risks, including delays and human errors in crucial student notifications.
In this blog post, we’ll share how the ABCloudz technical team implemented a robust integration between Ellucian Banner SaaS and the popular Remind communication platform, leveraging Ellucian Data Connect to fully automate the delivery of student data and notifications.
We’ll cover the initial state, the project’s detailed execution phases, and the future-state architecture, giving you a clear picture of the technical skills with Ellucian products and integrations that projects like this demand.
If your institution faces similar challenges, this story will help you understand the technical solutions that deliver reliable, automated student communications.
This is not the only integration we have delivered for this client. We also built an automated connection between Ellucian Banner SaaS and ProVerify, a financial aid verification solution.
Looking for something else? Explore more higher ed projects, including Ellucian solutions.
Challenges of manual notification processes
The college used Ellucian Banner SaaS student information system to manage critical student data, including course waitlists and notifications to students. The notification process required several manual and semi-manual steps, creating significant administrative overhead.
Current state architecture
When a student’s status changed on a course waitlist, staff members generated notification files manually using CSV format. Each CSV file contained critical data, such as student IDs, course details, and student contact information. Banner processes created these files, but administrative personnel had to trigger and verify each export.
After creating the files, staff used custom batch scripts to prepare and manually deliver the files to the Remind communication platform. This transfer involved Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), requiring careful coordination, secure credential management, and regular manual intervention.
This process also demanded frequent human oversight to handle issues. For example, if files failed to upload correctly or data was incomplete, identifying and resolving the issue required additional manual effort. The college lacked automated logging or error reporting mechanisms, making it difficult to pinpoint problems quickly and accurately.
Due to these manual workflows, delays in delivering crucial notifications to students were common. Data inconsistencies, such as duplicated or missed notifications, introduced risks that impacted student satisfaction and administrative efficiency. The college’s staff spent valuable hours verifying uploads, troubleshooting file issues, and performing repetitive manual checks to ensure accuracy.
In short, the institution’s existing architecture provided limited automation, introduced considerable risk, and consumed excessive administrative resources. To address these concerns, the college sought an integrated, fully automated solution that streamlined student notifications, improved reliability, and freed staff from manual administrative burdens.
Future state architecture goals
Recognizing the challenges of their existing approach, the institution set clear objectives for automating their notification processes. They envisioned a fully integrated, automated solution between Ellucian Banner SaaS and the Remind platform, enabling the following goals:
- Real-time and reliable delivery of critical notifications and student data directly to Remind. The institution wanted notifications triggered automatically when changes occurred, ensuring timely communication with students.
- Significant reduction in manual interventions. The college aimed to eliminate manual CSV file generation, scripting, and SFTP uploads, removing human error and speeding up the notification process.
- Transparent monitoring and robust logging. The institution required built-in tracking to identify precisely when notifications were sent, successfully delivered, or if errors occurred.
- Streamlined error handling. The client wanted automated and clear error notifications to help technical staff quickly identify, investigate, and resolve any integration issues.
Achieving these goals meant designing a solution using Ellucian Data Connect for full data pipeline automation, enhancing operational efficiency and significantly improving student engagement at the college.
Project execution and implementation steps
We structured our work into five clear phases, moving step by step from detailed technical assessment to a fully automated and reliable integration that meets all project goals.
Phase 1. Deep technical assessment and planning
We began by thoroughly analyzing the existing technical landscape at our client. Our primary goal was to fully understand how the college used Ellucian Banner SaaS for handling critical student data, especially for waitlist notifications and student information.
Technical analysis
First, we reviewed the existing Banner setup to identify precisely how waitlist notification data was stored, managed, and extracted. We examined the SQL scripts, Banner database, and procedures already in use. This allowed us to map out existing workflows, including the generation of CSV files and the manual data transfer to Remind through SFTP.
Identifying API and data gaps
After analyzing the existing setup, we reviewed the Banner APIs available to the institution. Our objective was to ensure that all required student data fields were accessible for automatic extraction. Through this review, we discovered critical gaps. Standard Banner APIs did not expose all the fields required by Remind. Specifically, key data points related to student waitlist activity were not accessible through existing Banner APIs.
To address this gap, we identified the need for custom API development. This custom API would specifically handle incremental data extraction, capturing only new or modified records based on timestamps stored in the Banner database.
Phase 2. Designing automated pipelines using Ellucian Data Connect
Once we had a clear understanding of the existing setup and identified gaps, we began designing a fully automated integration solution. Ellucian Data Connect became the core tool for the integration architecture due to its robust capability in handling complex data transformations and integrations.
Integration strategy
We established Data Connect as the central platform responsible for the extraction, transformation, and delivery of data to Remind. The integration involved three clearly defined data flows, each with a specific purpose:
- Waitlist notifications
We implemented an incremental synchronization approach, extracting only those notifications updated after the last successful run. This incremental approach used timestamps stored in Amazon S3 to efficiently track changes.
- Student data
We designed regular batch uploads to deliver updated student records. The data included student identifiers, emails, phone numbers, and other contact information required by Remind.
- Institutional (school) data
We introduced a static pipeline for transferring basic information about the institution. This static data upload runs periodically and ensures Remind always has the latest institutional information.
Custom API development
To close the identified data gap, our engineers developed a custom Specification-based API (SPEC API) for incremental waitlist data extraction. This specialized API retrieves new and updated records from Banner’s table that stores all student waitlist activity for courses, using timestamps to ensure only relevant changes are captured. This approach improves efficiency and accuracy.
Phase 3. Implementing automation with Data Connect pipelines
With clear integration designs in place, we moved into the automation phase.
Data Connect pipelines
We developed three separate pipelines using Ellucian Data Connect, each serving a specific integration need:
- Waitlist notification pipeline
This pipeline incrementally extracts student waitlist notification data from Banner using the custom API, meaning it retrieves only new or updated records since the previous run, and securely delivers this data to Remind.
- Student records pipeline
This pipeline regularly exports detailed student records from Banner, formats them into CSV files, and automatically sends them to Remind.
- Institutional information pipeline
This pipeline periodically updates essential college information, ensuring that Remind always has the latest institutional details with minimal maintenance effort.
Automated scheduling
To remove manual interventions entirely, we configured automated schedules for each pipeline:
- The waitlist notification pipeline executes every 10 minutes, ensuring timely updates.
- The student records and institutional information pipelines execute four times daily, balancing frequency with efficiency.
This automated scheduling eliminated manual triggers and ensured data was always current in Remind.
Phase 4. Data transformation and validation
To guarantee data quality and accuracy throughout the integration process, we applied a series of automated transformation, validation, and error-handling steps within each pipeline.
JavaScript transformations
Extracting raw data from Banner alone was not sufficient. To ensure consistency, our technical team implemented JavaScript transformations within Data Connect. These transformations standardized critical data elements like student names, phone numbers, and dates. For example, we concatenated first and last names, formatted birth dates as MM/DD/YYYY, and normalized phone numbers into consistent formats recognized by Remind.
Incremental update logic
To streamline the waitlist notification pipeline, we developed incremental logic leveraging Amazon S3. We stored timestamps of the last successful data extraction, allowing each subsequent pipeline run to quickly identify only new or changed data. This approach greatly improved efficiency and minimized redundant data processing.
Rigorous error handling
We implemented robust error handling strategies within each pipeline. Every Data Connect pipeline now generates structured log files detailing execution results. These logs clearly identify successful transfers or specific errors, including timestamps and error descriptions. Additionally, the pipelines explicitly mark error states, enabling the client’s technical team to rapidly pinpoint, diagnose, and resolve any issues that arise during data transfers.
Phase 5. Secure and reliable data transfer to Remind
Reliable and secure data transfer was a critical requirement for the college. To address this, we established automated SFTP connections between Data Connect and Remind’s servers. Our team configured each pipeline to deliver files automatically using these secure connections, which eliminated all manual file transfers. All credentials used for these transfers were securely encrypted and stored within Data Connect, safeguarding sensitive information. Each pipeline delivers data automatically upon successful execution, ensuring timely, secure, and accurate communication of student notifications directly to Remind.
Future state integration architecture
After completing the integration project, the notification process at the college became fully automated. Every step that previously required manual work is now orchestrated through secure, resilient automated data pipelines.
Here’s how the new architecture operates:
- Automated status detection: Ellucian Banner SaaS detects changes in course waitlist status automatically.
- Automated data extraction: Ellucian Data Connect triggers extraction of all relevant student and course data as soon as a status change occurs. The custom API ensures that only new or updated records are included.
- Automated data transformation: Data Connect runs transformation scripts that standardize data (e.g., formatting phone numbers, combining names, formatting dates) before export.
- Automated file generation: The platform generates the required CSV files automatically.
- Secure delivery: The pipeline immediately and securely transfers the files to Remind via SFTP, using encrypted credentials.
- Remind receives and processes notification files automatically: As soon as Remind receives the notification file, the platform delivers timely notifications to students without any manual intervention.
Automated error handling and logging
- Every operation is logged in real time. If an error occurs, the pipeline creates a clear error state and notifies technical staff for quick resolution.
- All logs are stored securely in Amazon S3 for audit and troubleshooting.
The result: All manual file preparation, export, verification, and transfers have been eliminated. The new architecture guarantees timely and reliable delivery of notifications.
Want more examples like this?
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Project outcomes and business impact
The fully automated integration significantly improved the institution’s student notification processes by:
- Eliminating all manual CSV file creation, handling, and SFTP transfers. The solution fully automated these steps, allowing administrative staff to redirect their attention to more valuable activities.
- Improving the accuracy and timeliness of student notifications. Notifications now reach students promptly and reliably, enhancing communication effectiveness and student satisfaction.
- Increasing overall operational efficiency at the institution. Reduced manual work and streamlined troubleshooting lowered administrative overhead and the risk of data inconsistency.
- Positioning the college for scalability. The automated integration architecture can accommodate future expansions or modifications easily, providing long-term flexibility for other potential data integration scenarios.
Through this comprehensive and automated solution, our client gained a robust, reliable, and scalable integration between Ellucian Banner and Remind, transforming how they manage critical student communications.
Designed for reuse across institutions
At the time of this publication, our integration is under review by Ellucian as a potential out-of-the-box solution for connecting Banner with Remind at other institutions. From the very beginning, Ellucian encouraged us to design this architecture with flexibility, allowing for easy reuse and minimal customization across different environments.
While Remind does offer direct API-based integration, this feature is only available to customers with a higher-level subscription. Our current solution is fully automated and leverages secure file transfers via SFTP, which is supported by Remind’s standard offering and meets the needs of many colleges and universities. The modular approach we used means that if a client later upgrades to an API-capable subscription, the integration can be adapted to use direct API connections with minimal changes.
By focusing on both adaptability and immediate practical value, we not only solved the current client’s needs but also created a foundation that is ready to serve other institutions working within similar constraints.
Modernize your Ellucian integrations with ABCloudz
If your college or university faces similar challenges or wants to explore modern integration solutions, our experienced Ellucian experts can help. Our team has a deep technical understanding of Ellucian products such as Ethos Data Connect, Banner APIs, and custom API development. Whether your goals include integration automation, migration, performance tuning, or modernization, we will partner closely with you to achieve your objectives.
Contact ABCloudz today to discuss your integration and modernization roadmap.
