General Information                                              

The Enterprise Committee developed this manual to ensure consistency and data integrity.  All Banner Systems – General, Finance, Financial Aid, Student, and to a limited extent HR – share data.  The standards in this manual address the data entry standards for that shared data.  A record at the College could belong to more than one system.  For example, the record of a person who received an associate degree, is currently taking a community service course, and is an employee of the College would have general person data shared by three different systems: Alumni/Development, Student and Human Resources.

These standards will help to reduce the creation of duplicate entries, increase valid addresses for mailings, and create a better view of the College.

This manual is a standards policy reference guide; it is not meant to be a training guide for Banner.  It was created for use by all departments and it is not Banner form specific.

Document Review and Maintenance

The policies and standards for Data Entry in Banner will be reviewed by the Enterprise Committee as required by Banner System Upgrades or sufficient changes to Banner validation tables or Banner processes.

The Enterprise Committee meets regularly to address questions or concerns regarding these standards or how these standards might affect existing jobs, workload or data entry, should be reported to the Banner departmental representative as soon as possible.  These issues, especially those that affect multiple departments, will be brought to the Enterprise Committee for immediate discussion.

Legal Issues                                                                

Banner Users are reminded of their legal obligations to data access and disclosure.

Users have the obligation to be aware of federal regulations (FERPA, etc.), State of Massachusetts regulations, and Massasoit Community College’s policies applicable to data under the jurisdiction of their offices.

Certain information is the responsibility of specific or custodial departments.  Disclosure of information is restricted to these custodians or their representatives.  Contact a custodian or direct representative (for example: the Registrar or a direct representative of the Registrar) prior to disclosure of information.

Data is private and shall be used only for the legitimate business of Massasoit Community College

General Guidelines

The pound sign (#) is not to be used in any field.  This is used as a formatting character for letter generation and it is therefore particularly important that this character is not used in an address.  The percent sign (%) is used as a wildcard character within Banner and should therefore never be used in any field. 

All data entered into a data field should be typed using title-case (mixed case) format (uppercase and lowercase letters) using standard capitalization rules with the exceptions described below.

Data appears in the same format when printed as it was entered unless a special request is made for programming changes.

No periods (punctuation) should be used in any Banner field.

 

Name Information

Before you create a new record in Banner for a person, conduct an ID and Name search using GOAMTCH to make sure the person does not exist on the Banner Database. 

Names will be entered in upper and lower case using standard rules for capitalization.   Enter the last, first and middle names exactly as the person has indicated.  If given the full middle name, do not change it to an initial.  In no case should you enter a period for a middle or first initial.

15 characters are allowed for first names and 60 characters are allowed for last names.

 

First and Last Names:

If a person prefers to use a first initial rather than the full first name enter the initial.  Do not enter a period as punctuation after the initial.

Always use normal title-case format (uppercase/lowercase letters), and follow standard capitalization rules when entering data.

Special Characters:

Apostrophes

Apostrophes may cause a name to sort to a different location in a report and  require multiple searches to make sure that a person or entity is not already on the database. This also will generate incorrect third party ids for insertion into other software that will be rejected, forcing a manual creation of individual user ids only after the error is discovered.

Hyphens

Cooper-Smith   (last name)

Ann-Marie         (first name, if requested)

Spaces

Spaces cause the same problem with searches as apostrophes and are strongly discouraged.

Periods

• Periods are NOT ALLOWED
• At no time should a period be used in a name.  If a middle name is abbreviated as an initial, the single letter should be entered WITHOUT A TRAILING PERIOD.                       

Middle Name:

• If given the full middle name, use the entire full middle name, do not change it to an initial.
• Entering a middle initial is acceptable, if only provided the middle initial.  Do not enter a period as punctuation for the middle initial.
• If no middle name or middle initial exists, leave the field blank. 

Prefix:

• A Mr. or Ms. prefix is no longer added for records having no prefix and should not be assigned based on gender. These and other prefixes may be added if requested by the individual.

Suffix:

• Suffixes are entered in the Identification Form in the suffix field.  Do not enter suffixes in the name fields.
• Enter a suffix only when identified by the individual.
• Always use normal title-case format (uppercase/lowercase letters), and follow standard capitalization rules when entering a suffix.
• Do not use a period as punctuation after a suffix.
• No punctuation should be used in suffixes.
• If no suffix is provided the field remains blank.

Acceptable Suffix Abbreviations:

Abbreviation                             Description

                                                                          

II                                               The Second

III                                              The Third

CPA                                         Certified Public Accountant

Esq                                          Attorney

JD                                            Jurist Doctor

Jr                                             Junior

LLD                                          Doctor of Laws

MD                                           Doctor of Medicine

MSW                                        Master of Social Work

PhD                                          Doctor of Philosophy

RN                                            Registered Nurse

Sr                                             Senior

Preferred First Name:

• When a person prefers to be addressed by a name other than her/his legal first name, enter that name in the Pref. First Name field. Follow standard rules for capitalization.
• If the person has not indicated a preferred/chosen first name, leave the field blank.

 

Non-Person Name / Vendor Name Standards

 

Before you create a new record in Banner for a non-person (e.g. business, corporation, etc.), conduct an ID and Name search to make sure the organization does not exist on the Banner Database.

Enter the legal name of the entity.  All information is to be entered in mixed case.

Acronyms will not be used unless the acronym is part of the legal name of the organization. 

 

Examples:     

            IBM

            CompUSA

 

Ampersand (&) is used only when part of the legal name.  Use “and” in all other cases.

 

Examples:     

            Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

            J P Morgan & Co Inc

Abbreviations are allowed for Co, Corp, LTD or Inc when used after the name of a corporate entity.  Other forms of abbreviations may be used for corporate entity when space is limited.  

 

Race/Ethnicity Information

• If provided to Massasoit, a student's race(s) and ethnicity are entered into SPAPERS in the Race Details and New Ethnicity areas respectively.
• Only if BOTH ethnicity and race are provided by the student and entered into SPAPERS (the purple boxes below) is the confirmed box checked (the orange box below).
• If the student did not provide either ethnicity or race or provided just one of them, the box doesn’t get checked off.
• Additionally, the Confirmed Date on the right side of the SPAPERS form (green box below) gets automatically filled when the box is checked off.
  • If the box was accidentally checked off, and then unchecked, the Confirmed Date must then be deleted.
• There are some records where the student provided their ethnicity and/or race information, but no information was entered. Please make sure all information provided by the student is entered into Banner.

 

Address Standards

Address Information

Use of Banner Address Hierarchy

Banner permits multiple addresses to be entered for a person or non-person.  The use of each address type is strictly defined.  Because all functional areas share name and address data, custodial relationships must be established.

In addition, there are some restrictions in Banner on how addresses can be used within each system.  The student system permits an address hierarchy to be used when printing reports.  For instance, when billing statements are run, the system can first search for a billing address, then a mailing address.  The Finance System can have multiple entries for the same address type, distinguished with sequence numbers; this allows for multiple locations for a single company.  And finally, the Human resources system can only use one address type when generating checks.

Because of these multiple addresses and the shared nature of the data rules of data custodianship apply.                                                                                 

Address Types and Custodianship

                                                           

Code	Description	Definition of use	Custodian
BI	Billing	Billing address of  student	Student A/R
BU	Business	Business address for vendor	Finance
EA	Emergency	Emergency address info	HR and Student
HM	Home	Home address for employee	HR
MA	Mailing address	Reserved DO NOT USE	Finance historical
PA	Parent/Guardian	NOT USED	System required
PO	Post Office Box	PO Boxes outside home zip	Alumni, HR, Student
SA	Student	Student Mailing address	Student
XX	Feed	Reserved for TGRFEED	System required

 

Street Addresses

All information is to be entered using title-case format (uppercase/lowercase letters).  Never use all uppercase or all lowercase letters.  Enter the address using standard capitalization rules, fully spelling out the entire address with the exceptions noted below.  Remember the pound sign (#) is not to be used in any field since this issues a formatting command. 

 

Example:

            152 W Elm Street Apt 3  NEVER  152 W Elm Street Apt #3

Use only the first two lines for street address information.  Line 1 should contain the physical street address and Line 2 should contain PO Box, Apartment Number, Suite Number, RFD Number, etc. 

Do NOT use the third line of address information, since it may cause a conflict with Banner label/letter generation.

 

Directionals

 

All directionals in an address should be abbreviated to the appropriate one or two character abbreviation unless it is part of the street name.

 

Example:

 

152 E Ashland Street    not   152 East Ashland Street

 

Directional Designation              Abbreviation

 

North                                        N

South                                       S

East                                         E

West                                         W

Northeast                                  NE

Northwest                                 NW

Southeast                                 SE

Southwest                                 SW

 

 

Alternate locations

 

If all Delivery Address line information cannot fit on one line, place secondary information on the first address line.

 

Example:

 

Mr M Murray

Apt C  ß           use this line for secondary info if it doesn’t fit on one line

5800 Springfield Gardens Circle

            Springfield VA  22162-1058

 

 

Post office box addresses

 

Post Office Box numbers are output as PO BOX NN on the mailpiece.  Never use periods, such as P.O. Box.

 

Example:

 

PO Box 11890

 

 

Dual addresses

If dual addresses are used, place the intended delivery address on the line immediately above the city, state, and ZIP Code.  This normally is the Post Office Box address.

 

Example:

 

1201 Broad Street E

PO Box 1001           ß address to which the mail should be delivered

Falls Church VA  22062-1001

 

 

Numbered Streets

 

If the name of a street is a number, enter the street address as it appears on an application or invoice.

 

Examples:

 

15 Sixth Street 

or

 82 121st Street

 

 

 

Punctuation on the address lines

 

With the exception of the hyphen in the ZIP+4 Code, punctuation should be omitted in the delivery address block.

1401 S Main Street

Plummers Landing KY  41081-1411

 

City, State, Zip Code and Nation Standards 

City and state data should be populated by using the ZIP Code field.  Tab to the Zip code and enter the code or use the LIST (F9) function to retrieve the correct Zip Code.  Following this procedure will automatically fill in the City and State fields correctly.  Do not overtype the city/state information, since this is retrieved from the U.S. Postal Zip Code Table. 

If the nine digit zip code is available (Zip plus four), enter the first five digits of the zip code then use the LIST (F9) function to automatically fill in the City and State fields.  After the City and State fields are automatically filled, enter a hyphen then the last four digits of the Zip code, if known.

Do not enter USA or US for any address within the United States.  Leaving the field blank will result in the nation being USA. Inputting USA as a nation will cause the nation to print on every letter/label and will cause a problem for the Post Office.

 

Dates 

All dates are displayed in the format of dd-mon-yy.  Hyphens are be used between the day, month and year.  Dates may be entered in this format or a number of others.  If entered in month,day,year order, the elements may optionally be separated by characters.

 

Example

 

            052501

or         05-25-01

or         05/25/01

 

The following examples use September 24, 2001 as today’s date.

If the day is entered, today’s month and year will default.

(Example:  enter 24, date will default to 24-sep-2001)

 

If a month and day is entered, today’s year will be default

(Example:  enter 1224, date will default to 24-dec-2001)

 

If month, day and two digit year are entered, then the pivot year will default

(If the year is less than 28, century will be 20 if the year is greater/equal to 28, century will be 19)

 

(Example:  enter 122427, date will default to 24-dec-2027

                  enter 122428, date will default to 24-dec-1928)

It is safest to enter the entire year for dates prior to 1928, so the century is correct and not the default.  If only the last two digits are entered, all those years greater than or equal to 28 will be assigned a “19”.  Those two digits less than 28 will have “20” assigned.

 

Examples:

45 will become 1945

14 will become 2014

 

Banner Identification Numbers

The Banner System uses an identification number consisting of a unique nine-digit number to identify each Person and each Non-Person (e.g. business, corporation, vendor).

Dashes are not permitted in the identification number.

Massasoit has decided to use system generated numbers for all persons.  A Banner generated  identification number will be the primary ID for a Person. This number will start with a ‘V’.  The social security number will be entered in the field provided on the SPAPERS form.