You know a cloud migration is serious when it is not only about moving data but also about rethinking every hidden workflow that supports student life. Ellucian understood this long before institutions in Europe began shifting from Banner on-prem to SaaS. Graduation certificates were one of those quiet processes that seemed small from the outside but carried real weight for students and administrators.
As part of a larger effort to prepare the European market for Banner SaaS, Ellucian asked our team at ABCloudz to rebuild several widely used integrations so that institutions could adopt them without starting from scratch. Graduation certificates were high on that list. Many institutions relied on custom automation that generated student and degree details, formatted them into CSV files, and delivered everything to a third party vendor that issued both digital and printed certificates. This workflow, which originally included several manual steps, had to be recreated inside the SaaS environment in a way that would be fully automated, reusable, reliable, and ready for any institution across the region.
To design and validate this new integration, we collaborated with a university that already had a mature process in its on-prem environment. Their automation covered the full journey from identifying graduating students to sending structured data to the certificate vendor, and every step reflected years of institutional knowledge.
This post explains how we took that existing logic, turned every rule into a clear user story, and rebuilt the entire graduation certificates process using Ellucian cloud tools in a way that preserves accuracy, enhances reliability, and creates a scalable solution that any institution can confidently adopt during its migration to Banner SaaS.
Dealing with another kind of campus automation right now?
Visit our Ellucian projects or explore broader higher education projects that match your priorities.
Inside the original on-prem setup
Before the new integration was designed for Banner SaaS, the university relied on a well established on-prem setup that generated graduation certificate data at the end of each term. The workflow collected student and degree details from Banner tables, applied custom logic through local scripts, and produced CSV files that the certificate vendor used to create both digital and printed documents.
The process lived entirely inside the on-prem environment. Scheduled jobs ran SQL queries against the Banner database, formatted the results, and delivered the files to an SFTP location. From there the vendor picked up the export and prepared the certificates for distribution.
It was a familiar and dependable setup for many institutions. Everything ran locally, the logic was tightly connected to the database, and the institution had complete control over timing, data rules, and file handling.
Rebuilding the integration for Ellucian SaaS
Recreating this process inside the Ellucian cloud started with a simple but important objective, keep every rule that made the original workflow reliable while redesigning the engine behind it for SaaS. The on-prem version depended on direct database access, local file paths, and custom scripts that quietly evolved over the years. None of that exists in Banner SaaS. Every data point now comes through APIs, every transformation must happen inside Ellucian Data Connect, and every file delivery must follow cloud standards.
Our team began by decomposing the entire on-prem workflow into clear and testable user stories. Each SQL query, each validation rule, and each condition that determined whether a student was eligible for graduation became part of a documented blueprint. This allowed us to translate a set of legacy scripts into a modern, API driven integration that behaves the same from an institutional point of view but operates on a very different foundation.
Once the logic was mapped, we rebuilt the full workflow inside Ellucian Data Connect. Ethos became the secure entry point for all Banner SaaS data, serving student details, academic programs, credentials, honors, and term information through standardized APIs. Inside Data Connect, the integration now orchestrates a structured sequence of extraction, joins, filtering, transformations, and file generation that mirrors the university’s original automation.
A key part of this redesign was splitting the workflow into two dedicated pipelines. The full extract pipeline prepares a complete dataset for an academic term, while the change notifications pipeline processes nightly updates by consuming events from the Ethos CN queue. This combination ensures that the certificate vendor always receives accurate information, whether the institution is preparing a full export for a ceremony or applying late adjustments.
The final stage delivers the generated files to either SFTP or Amazon S3, depending on the institution’s preference. Logs are produced automatically, every run is fully traceable, and the entire workflow follows a consistent pattern that institutions can adopt with minimal adjustments.
Results
The most important outcome is that graduation data stopped being a local trick and became a repeatable capability. What used to exist as one university’s on-prem automation now lives as a SaaS-ready integration that Ellucian can roll out to other institutions with only configuration, not re-invention.
For institutions, the process around ceremonies becomes calmer. Full term exports and nightly updates arrive in the same format every time, and any issues surface in clear logs instead of in student complaints on the day of graduation. Teams spend less effort chasing edge cases and more time deciding policy, not fighting plumbing.
For Ellucian, this integration is a concrete building block in the European SaaS strategy. It respects local expectations around graduation processes, aligns fully with Ethos and Data Connect patterns, and reduces risk for future migrations where graduation certificates are in scope. Every next institution that adopts Banner SaaS starts one step closer to “everything just works” on day one.
Want to see more SaaS-ready examples?
Explore our Ellucian projects and browse more higher education projects built around real integrations.
Move your workflows into SaaS with ABCloudz
This project shows how a long standing on-prem graduation process can be reworked for the cloud without losing the intent, accuracy, or institutional logic behind it. Ethos and Data Connect give the structure, and our team brings the experience needed to translate legacy extraction rules into clear, maintainable, and fully automated SaaS native workflows.
If your institution is moving to Ellucian SaaS or looking for a way to modernize critical internal processes, we can help turn your existing workflows into reliable, future ready solutions. Let’s talk about how to bring your processes into the cloud with the clarity and confidence they deserve.