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. This blog post answers the question of how to keep alumni records current after moving to Banner SaaS through a reliable data integration approach rather than manual exports.
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 this data integration with the management system. The main goal of this automation was to ensure that alumni information is kept up to date and synchronized. For the university, this was not just a technical improvement but a practical SaaS integration step that reduced manual work around alumni data.
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. This data integration also established a reusable SaaS integration pattern that the institution could extend later.
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. Together, these components form an automated integration that combines bulk migration with ongoing synchronization.
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. That prior experience helped us shape this data integration and keep the SaaS integration design consistent with other higher education projects.
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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. Because the source system was Banner SaaS, the data integration had to stay accurate across both initial loads and later changes.
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. The university also needed a SaaS integration model that could keep alumni records synchronized without repeated manual intervention.
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 lacked both a structured data pipeline and a repeatable automated integration flow.
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. Without a proper data integration design, each new change created more work instead of flowing through an automated integration.
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. This structure gave the university a clearer data pipeline strategy for the overall SaaS integration.
The following image shows the future state architecture of the automated integration. In this automated integration, each data pipeline has a distinct role within the broader data integration flow.
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. This first data pipeline prepares the initial data integration baseline for the target system.
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. This second data pipeline keeps the SaaS integration current after the initial load and makes the automated integration useful in day-to-day operations.
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 this stage, the data pipeline supports the target-side requirements of the full data integration.
At the final step, the SFTP Put fitting uploads the file with transformed data to the SFTP server. That final handoff completes the data pipeline and closes the core automated integration loop.
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. This behavior ensures that the automated integration stops safely instead of pushing incomplete data through the SaaS integration.
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. Even here, the data pipeline remains transparent enough to support troubleshooting without undermining the overall data integration design.
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. Because the automated integration runs close to Banner SaaS, the university gains a more maintainable SaaS integration model for alumni data.
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. A strong data integration foundation makes all of these alumni activities more reliable, and a stable SaaS integration helps keep the underlying records current.
How to design a reliable SaaS integration for alumni data
- Start with the source of truth in Banner SaaS, because a good data integration depends on clear ownership of alumni records.
- Separate the initial load from ongoing updates, because one data pipeline usually cannot serve both purposes equally well.
- Treat each data pipeline as part of a larger automated integration, not as an isolated export job.
- Design the data integration around the target system’s format and timing requirements, so the SaaS integration stays practical in production.
- Use change data capture where possible, because an automated integration becomes far more efficient when only changed records move through the data pipeline.
- Build observability into every data pipeline, so administrators can support the data integration without guessing where it failed.
- Think of every SaaS integration as reusable architecture, especially when the same Banner SaaS patterns may later support other institutional systems.
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. Whether you need a single SaaS integration, a broader automated integration strategy, or a resilient data pipeline design around Banner SaaS, we can tailor the solution to your environment.
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.
