Alumni are the greatest asset of any educational institution. Every institution wants to stay in touch with its alumni, turning campus residents into a community of professionals. To achieve this goal, institutions use fundraising and alumni management systems. In turn, these systems work effectively and efficiently when institutions use relevant alumni information.
One of our customers, a university in the UK, stores student data in Ellucian Banner. They also use a third-party fundraising and alumni management system. After modernizing their data storage from an on-premises database to Ellucian Banner SaaS, they decided to automate data integrations with this management system. The main goal of this automation was to ensure that alumni information is kept up to date and synchronized.
The ABCloudz team used Data Connect and Ethos Subscription API to build reusable data pipelines for seamless data integration from Ellucian Banner SaaS into the alumni management system.
The ABCloudz team used Data Connect and Ethos change-notification subscription to build data pipelines for seamless data integration from Ellucian Banner SaaS into the alumni management system. One of these automated pipelines migrates alumni data, while the other captures changes in the Banner SaaS database and replicates them in the alumni management system.
This blog post covers the success story of a single integration. However, Ellucian trusts us to deliver many other reusable integrations for European institutions. For example, ABCloudz completed SaaS integrations for T2 Parking, Maxient, Ex Libris Alma, and Rave Alert. Our team used this experience to streamline the alumni management system integration project according to established best practices.
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The ABCloudz team completed hundreds of Ellucian-based integrations, automating routine processes for higher education institutions. Check our portfolio to find an inspirational idea for your future automation solution or Ellucian Banner SaaS integration.
What data do alumni management systems use?
The goal of this project was to provide data from the Banner SaaS database to the third-party fundraising and alumni management system. This data includes information about students who graduated or left the university in good standing, with a degree or exit awards. The university considers these students sufficient to maintain alumni relations and add to the postgraduate community.
The following list describes the student information that the university stores in the alumni management system.
- Disciplines studied
- Awards
- Academic periods
- Academic levels
- Academic credentials
- Contact information
This list includes sensitive personal data, which requires special treatment. The ABCloudz team knows how to comply with security regulations when it comes to moving and storing personal data. However, data privacy was not the only challenge that we faced in this integration project.
Current state architecture
The following image shows the current state of our customer’s system before the automation.
At the first step, database administrators run SQL scripts to extract data from the on-premises Banner database. Next, they manually format these extracted CSV files into an appropriate format that the alumni management system can consume. Finally, the administrators upload these files with formatted data to the SFTP server of the alumni management system.
This process includes manual interactions with sensitive data, which can lead to errors or data leaks. However, the bigger challenge is that during the graduation period, the university regularly updates student data by adding information about graduation scores, awards, and so on. Also, alumni update their contact information as part of the workflow processes for graduation. Updating already uploaded information requires manual actions and leads to significant staff contributions.
Future state architecture
The ABCloudz team split the data uploading process into two parts. First, the Data Connect pipeline performs a one-time extraction of all relevant student data and bulk loads it into the alumni management system. Next, the other pipeline tracks changes every day and migrates the updated records as part of the change data capture process. This pipeline runs every night at the end of terms around graduation periods and uses the Ethos Consume Change Notifications fitting to capture all data changes.
The following image shows the future state architecture of the automated integration.
Before the start of each data migration, we use the Ethos Consume Change Notifications fitting to subscribe to the changes in the Ellucian Banner SaaS database. Next, the first pipeline loads all relevant student data in bulk.
After completing the bulk load, the second pipeline uses the change data capture (CDC) technique to replicate changes from the Ellucian Banner SaaS database in the alumni management system. The pipeline uses the student identifier from the academic credentials API record to determine the record in the target database that requires updating.
Both data extraction pipelines generate CSV files. These files have a different format for bulk and CDC load. If the extracted dataset is not empty, then the pipeline transforms CSV files with alumni data to an appropriate format. To do so, our team uses the JavaScript Transform and Stringify fittings.
At the final step, the SFTP Put fitting uploads the file with transformed data to the SFTP server
Error handling
These pipelines don’t provide any notifications about a successful run. However, when an error occurs at any of the steps, the pipeline cancels all the following operations and stores an error log on an Amazon S3 bucket.
Every morning, the administrator checks that the pipeline has completed successfully. If the administrator finds a fresh error log, then they fix the issue and run the canceled operations manually.
Benefits and results
Data Connect pipelines in this automated integration run natively in the Ellucian Banner SaaS environment. By automating the alumni data gathering process, the university made a huge step forward in tightening its postgraduate community. Ensuring lifelong alumni connections brings endless possibilities not only for the members but for the institution as well.
As you all know, nobody is bothered about an institution more than its alumni. Keeping in touch and maintaining communication channels with alumni is a must for any institution. Also, institutions can use alumni management systems to organize and manage alumni events. The last but not least option is to arrange transparent fundraising with one-time or recurring donations.
Automate your Ellucian integrations with ABCloudz
Automating data flow with Data Connect pipelines in your Ellucian environment might be a non-trivial task. The ABCloudz team has deep expertise in building these pipelines and integrating specific SQL fittings, which ensure that your integration can access the required data and transform it accordingly. With hundreds of successful projects in our portfolio, you can rest assured with the speed and quality of our delivery. To streamline your Ellucian Banner SaaS integrations, contact ABCloudz and share your idea with us. The team of experts can find a solution for any data integration task in your data ecosystem
