Our university adopted SCT Banner as a unified database for course scheduling, registration, alumni records, and finances. Our university is fortunate to have unusually good support from Information Systems. In spite of this, switching to Banner has been an exceedingly unpleasant experience.
The bulk of the problems are traceable to awkward, idiosyncratic design of the user interface. Navigating through the steps of a task is never intuitive. Indeed, most tasks cannot be done without extensive documentation and training.
Having worked with computers since 1969, having used at least eleven operating systems, and having programmed in eleven languages, I consider myself reasonably adept. None of this experience prepared me for Banner. In fact, this experience is counterproductive!
Computer users today have vast experience in navigating through computer tasks. They have spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours using web browsers, e-mail packages, and office software. All of these applications work in more or less the same way, all deriving from user interface concepts developed in the seventies and eighties at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. We click on different window elements and things happen in a predictable way -- unless you are using Banner.
In SCT SBanner, these widely accepted standards for user interfaces are ignored. Even worse are the faux ami's, seemingly familiar graphics interface elements that behave completely differently than in nearly any other program for Windows, Macintosh, Unix, or Linux. Just as one simple example, to close a sub-window in SCT Banner, one clicks on the "x" in the upper right hand corner of the main application. We all know this action should close the whole program, but not in Banner.
Similar examples abound. For many operations, success results in an audible beep, while an error is indicated by silence. This is completely opposite from most software.
Individual screens offer little or no guidance in how to proceed next. Even the most common tasks require many steps navigating through many screens. Just changing an instructor for one section of a course requires twenty non-intuitive steps.
Most data entry and management activities required by universities are no more complicated in principle than placing an order with an online retailer. Somehow we can order from Amazon.com or LL Bean without a training course or extensive documentation. A good user interface eliminates 99 per cent of the need for documentation and training. A poor user interface a continuing obstacle to productivity and efficiency.
Universities considering SCT Banner should plan for extensive local programming of their own user interfaces to hide the design inadequacies from users. Failure to do so will mean frustration and wasted time for users.
The following are bugs I encountered in my first two weeks of entering schedule information in SCT Banner. For tips on using Banner for scheduling, see Tips on Using Banner. Some are specific to Wake Forest, while some are intrinsic defects in SCT Banner.
- Clicking on pre-production database on the Launch page brings up a message a message to download a plug-in (using Firefox browser). I believe in the training session we saw that in Mozilla 1.7, too, but as I recall we were able to download it during training. We should track down the plug-in needed so we can tell users. Recommending IE is not a good solution.
- Double-clicking on Subject from a Schedule Section Query page does not bring up the Schedule Section Detail page. It should. Update: this action will indeed work if one accesses the Schedule Section Query via the Schedule Section Information window, double clicking on the CRN field of that window.
- After a period of inactivity, Banner fails to respond properly to requests for new windows. That is not so bad, many server-based programs will disconnect. However, Banner will not let one exit when the program is in this state. Attempting to exit by either File > Exit or via the "x" box in the corner of the window brings up the logon window. If you try to log back on, you get a message saying that it can't, and that you are already logged on. The only way to exit the program and get it to work again is to kill it via Windows Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DELETE).
- “Help>Online Help” menu option on main page brings up nothing.
- I tried Help > SCT Banner Bookshelf, and none of the sub-documents with actual information will load.
- Windows do not behave the way one expects windows to behave. For example, clicking “x” often will not close the window. Instead, one must click “rollback” or "x" on the main banner window. Other windows have no “x” icon, so that one must instead click “x” on the main banner window. This is the usual procedure to close the entire application in Windows programs, but here it only closes the sub-window.
- When saving a changed instructor, the program beeps on success and is silent on an error. This is the opposite of any other software I have used.
- Extract Data No Key often brings up a PL/SQL error. Update: this appears to be fixed.
These are not bugs, because they are this way intentionally. However, these design decisions make editing course schedules ten to thirty times more time consuming than they should be.
- Canceling a course is a ten step process. The old process was to enter a “d” in one cell of the course. This must be shortened radically.
- Changing the instructor in a course requires twenty steps over multiple screens. The instructor is not even shown on the query screen. Same for changing location, days, times. All this information should be visible in the Schedule Query page, and these fields should be editable. Or at least let us click right into the Schedule Section Detail with all information visible and editable.
- When entering a new section, the Assigned Times does not pick up start and end dates from already-entered Part of Term fields in SSASECT.
- Under Assigned Times, Schd makes you manually enter a value even when there is only one choice of what that value is.
- "Rollback" takes closes a window and returns to the parent window. This is a highly inappropriate name for this action. In database terminology, "rollback" means to change the record to an earlier value.
- To close a sub-window, one naturally clicks on the "x" in the corner of the sub-window, but this does nothing. To close the sub-window, one clicks on the "x" in the corner of the main SCT Banner application. Nearly anyone would expect this action to close the whole program.
- The Banner bookshelf documentation requires special configuration of both the browser and Adobe Acrobat. In particular, the broswer cannot be configured to block pop-up windows, and Acrobat must be configured to display PDF files inside the browser.
On February 18, 2005, Self-Service Banner was taken down as scheduled for service for the last six hours before class schedules were due to be completed. Scheduling downtime on important due dates is not a good plan.