Financial aid is one of the most complex and consequential areas of the student lifecycle. Yet many institutions continue to rely on fragmented systems, manual processes, and limited visibility into the student experience.  

When financial aid operations are fragmented, students fall through the cracks—missing deadlines, misunderstanding their awards, and ultimately choosing to enroll elsewhere. Institutions are turning to Slate to close those gaps and build a process that works for students and staff alike. 

At SIG, we partner with institutions to reimagine financial aid in Slate not just as a set of processes, but as an integrated, strategic function that supports enrollment, improves access, and enhances the overall student journey. 

From Disconnected Processes to a Unified Experience

Slate provides a powerful foundation for managing financial aid workflows, communications, and data in one place. When fully leveraged, institutions can move beyond siloed operations to deliver a seamless experience for both students and staff.

This includes creating intuitive portals where students can track requirements, submit documentation, review awards, and understand their true cost, all within a single, cohesive environment. At the same time, staff move from chasing down paperwork and toggling between systems to managing exceptions, monitoring progress in real time, and focusing on the students who need their attention most.

Driving Engagement Through Proactive Communication

Financial aid is not just transactional; it’s a critical driver of student decision-making. Institutions that use Slate effectively can shift from reactive communication to proactive engagement.

Automated alerts, personalized nudges, and targeted outreach help ensure students complete key milestones such as FAFSA submission, verification, and deposit. These efforts not only reduce melt, but also build confidence and clarity throughout the process.

Turning Data into Strategic Insight

One of the most transformative opportunities within Slate is the ability to connect financial aid data with broader enrollment and student success strategies. Because financial aid data is sensitive, every workflow is built with appropriate access controls and data governance in mind.

By moving away from siloed data, institutions gain clear visibility into where students stall in the process, how aid packaging influences yield decisions, and where targeted outreach would have the greatest impact on enrollment.

This level of insight enables more informed decision-making and continuous improvement across teams.

A Strategic Approach to Implementation

Successful financial aid transformation in Slate requires more than configuration. It requires people who understand what it actually feels like to run a financial aid office.

SIG brings together former financial aid leaders and seasoned Slate practitioners who have managed these processes firsthand. That experience shapes how we approach every engagement. Whether implementing new functionality or enhancing existing processes, we build with your team, not just for them.

Financial aid doesn’t have to be fragmented or opaque. With the right strategy and the full capabilities of Slate, institutions can create a more transparent, efficient, and student-centered experience—one that supports both access and enrollment success.

“It’s been wonderful partnering with SIG on all the financial aid enhancements we implemented in Slate for Wheaton College. I’ve referred to our meeting at Slate Summit as ‘providential’ as I had no idea how critical it would turn out to be having the quick communication capabilities due to FAFSA delays postponing our awards. This initiative was a game-changer for us!” – Karen Belling, Director of Student Financial Services at Wheaton College

The post Slate and Financial Aid appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

Data Integrity, Digital Front Doors, and The Rush to Automate

Angie Cummings, Senior Consultant

So far in 2026, institutions across higher education have largely moved past debating whether to modernize and are now focused on how quickly they can make meaningful progress.

Clients are shifting from acquiring new technology to realizing outcomes from what they already own, with automation becoming urgent as institutions invest in Intelligent Processes to reduce manual work across areas like financial aid, graduation processing, and student communications.

Data integrity remains the foundational challenge, prompting more direct conversations about fixing core data issues before adding new capabilities.

Digital front doors are becoming a priority as schools focus on creating more cohesive, role-based experiences for students and faculty, while analytics and insights are increasingly driving action in conversations that were once purely operational.

Last Year’s Curiosity is This Year’s Action

Adam Travis, Director of SaaS Strategy & Enterprise Solutions

It feels like the conversation has shifted around Banner SaaS and Ellucian SaaS Platform. Clients who last year were asking,

“What is SaaS?” are now asking, “How do we get there?” Clients who were not interested in Experience in the past are now getting it set up.

Last year’s curiosity is turning into this year’s action.

Maybe it was inevitable that momentum would build for Ellucian SaaS, but higher ed is known to move slowly on adopting new tech, and I am surprised at how quickly the momentum is shifting. Even if the implementations take time, the conversation has changed.

There is also a bit more discussion on process and emphasis on students, a trend I hope continues.

Skeletons From Yesterday’s “Great Ideas” Carry a Cost

John Brown, Senior Consultant

Institutions are recognizing the barriers and costs that decades-old broken processes, workarounds, and modifications to Banner create, and are working to eliminate these inefficiencies to fully leverage new functionality available in Banner SaaS and the Ellucian SaaS platform.

Skeletons from yesterday’s “great ideas” carry a cost both financially and in lost productivity that most institutions can no longer afford, especially when often no current employees know why they even exist.

Budget Remains a Challenge for Small Institutions

Ron Kwong, Senior Consultant

Small institutions are not proactively thinking about switching to SaaS.

I do see a school still on SSB 8 and integrating 3rd party applications, e.g. Coursedog, with the legacy Banner 8 integration instead of taking the available Ethos Integration option.

School budget is a challenge to these small institutions to modernize Banner. A transparent budget expense and savings report/presentation may help institutions make the Banner modernization decision.

AI-Driven Operations

Teressa Green, Senior Consultant

Schools are utilizing AI–driven operations to help improve efficiency.

A Hesitancy to Install Ethos, and Uncertainty About the Future

Marianne Gillfillan, Senior Consultant

The technical community is still skeptical of the SaaS platform and Ellucian’s ability to support it. Some DBAs have refused to install any part of the Ethos platform requirements because of that skepticism.

Members of the technical community bear the brunt of the pain when things don’t work and question how to address problems in the future.

I’m seeing sites purposely shift to other vendors because of Ellucian’s history from a technical perspective and not because of their longevity in the higher ed market, which should be their main selling point. This is going to be a critical decision point.

Emphasizing Ellucian’s deep history in higher ed technology should be at the forefront of any discussions we have with clients.

The tech community has a long history of encouraging Ellucian to stay current and do better. There is no reason why that cannot or should not continue in the future state of the SaaS environment.

However, there is also a concern about what their jobs will look like in the future. Helping the tech folks understand they will still be needed is critical to their acceptance of new environments as their roles evolve.

Preparing for SaaS by Taking Inventory of Integrations

Ian Becker, Senior DBA / Certified Cloud Architect

I am being asked more and more from my clients what they can do now to prepare for SaaS.

Taking an inventory of all their integrations is a great first step, as well as identifying where they have custom SQL jobs where they are directly accessing the database.

Running Student AR with Smaller Teams

Amber Herigon, Senior Consultant

Universities are increasingly running Student AR with smaller teams, and Ellucian SaaS helps them keep pace by automating manual tasks, reducing system maintenance, improving data accuracy, and expanding student self‑service—allowing lean staff to manage higher workloads more efficiently.

A Collective Response from the AR Team

Baselining as Necessity

The AR Team observes that Higher Education Student Accounts remains a relatively slow-moving functional area in terms of trend adoption, due in part to legacy processes, long-standing customization, compliance obligations, and the operational risk tied to revenue management.

This makes modernization more deliberate than fast-moving.

At the same time, baselining is emerging as a key trend in the AR space, especially for institutions whose Student Accounts practices still reflect decisions made decades ago, including those dating back to the SCT era.

For many schools, modernization is now less about adding something entirely new and more about simplifying legacy processes, customization reduction, and better utilizing the functionality already available in today’s platforms.

However, the AR Team also observes that EBPP vendors such as TouchNet, Flywire, and Nelnet are already operating with a more mature SaaS mindset.

Their solutions increasingly emphasize real-time connectivity, self-service, flexible payment options, and streamlined account management not only as operational improvements but as tools that can strengthen student relations, reduce friction, and support retention.

From this perspective, SaaS is emerging less as a technical upgrade and more as a strategic service model surrounding the Student Accounts experience, with baselining serving as a necessary step for institutions hoping to fully realize that value.

The post Top Higher Ed Trends of 2026…So Far appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

The most popular questions I hear when speaking with clients about Banner SaaS are: “Why would I want to move to SaaS?” and “Where would I even start?” These are great questions, and we could spend a year on both, but no one has that kind of time.

I’m going to give the highlights of each, which I hope will spark other questions along the way.

Why would I want to move to SaaS?

The first true Software as a Service, or SaaS, product emerged in 1999 from Salesforce. As I alluded to in my previous article, it was inevitable that Banner would eventually follow the path of SaaS.

I could list the numerous benefits of migrating your higher ed ERP to SaaS—like reducing your infrastructure; automated and regular upgrades which allow you to take advantage of new features quicker (not to mention save you from late nights, early mornings, and weekends running endless upgrades); and for those interested in the financials, predictable costs.

But what often goes unspoken are the unforeseen—and very human—challenges that can occur during migration: Like being so far behind that you can’t use those new time-saving features that were just announced.

Or trying to plan for the next infrastructure rebuild and how much it’s going to cost, only to find out it’s not in the budget and you need to figure out how to make what you have stretch 3 more years. What about that latest zero-day vulnerability that just dropped, and now you must spend the next 3 days fixing and securing every Banner server while you’re on vacation? Sound familiar?

It’s a big change moving into a SaaS environment, especially when you’ve been in control of your infrastructure for a long time. Being limited to a certain number of environments, like 2, can be a real game-changer for some clients. Letting go is not easy.

However, understanding the migration process might ease the pain of letting go. Ellucian uses a prescriptive approach to align all the validation data with best practices for higher education.

In many cases, institutions are already doing this; they just don’t realize it. This allows for a more streamlined, industry-standard approach to the SaaS provisioning and delivery process.

For the record, Ellucian didn’t come up with this out of the blue. The methodology was built on frameworks from global organizations like CAUDIT, EDUCAUSE, and UCISA, that represent the collective wisdom from the higher ed sector. I believe this is one of the biggest reasons moving to Banner SaaS would be a benefit to any institution.

Don’t get me wrong, this would most likely incur change within the institution, and that’s always a harder sell. However, the functional consultants at SIG are well-versed in those changes and are standing by to help clients work through them.

How does the data migrate?

For modernization clients, Ellucian will limit the Banner SaaS environments to PROD and TEST, which are fully built-out environments.

During the migration experience, several mock migrations occur to fine-tune the data migration process and ensure all data is represented properly. The number of mocks are based on how clean the data is and how seamless the migration process goes.

Ideally, 4 mock migrations are scheduled, but if your data is a mess, expect a few more attempts before the data comes across just right.

Let’s break down the migration process at a high level:

The process starts by running a pre-delivered script, which will export the entire current Oracle database and upload it to a secure AWS S3 bucket.

Once uploaded, a process is kicked off to begin the import of the entire file to an awaiting Oracle/Banner database.

• That database is then upgraded to the latest Banner versions, if necessary.
• Any Banner versions that are different from the current known versions are applied. 
• This database is used as the staging point for the load into the SaaS-based database of PostgreSQL or Oracle, depending on your region and purpose. 
• Prior to importing customer data, a prescribed set of validation data is layered into the SaaS-based database, PostgreSQL or Oracle, via several templates:  
• Global settings, which every site will get 
• Foundational settings like US, 2-year/4-year 
• Any localizations like UCAS, Texas, California, etc. Once the templates have been applied, the client data from the known Banner schemas is migrated via AWS Data Migration Services to a PostgreSQL database (for US-based customers). If you are a non-US based client, you will most likely be imported to an Oracle database.  

Before you know it, a new Banner database is ready to go. Anyone who has done any kind of major data migration knows that the first cut of data is expected to have issues. If you’re expecting perfection—or for the migration to happen in 2 hours—it just doesn’t happen that way.

Any good Oracle DBA knows how long it takes to export their database. I’ll share more in a later article about how to shorten that time.

Each subsequent mock migration will allow fine-tuning the templates so that by go-live, the migration is just right. That’s when you should expect perfection.

So, when then?

SaaS is the current and future platform for nearly every piece of higher ed software today. If you haven’t realized it by now, everything has gone the way of SaaS and if it hasn’t, it’s on its way.

Whether you choose to move to Banner SaaS or some other ERP, at this point, your decision will land you in a SaaS-based product.

Ellucian has been producing higher ed ERP software longer than I’ve been working in higher ed (which, frankly, is a long time).

Their experience runs deep and it’s a complicated environment. One of the reasons we switched from our home-grown legacy ERP system all those years ago was that the complexity was getting too much to handle.

Between the constantly changing federal regulations and the subtle differences in terms, courses, and registration each institution deals with—not to mention the HR and payroll nuances coupled with maintaining proper finances and billing—it’s an intricately complicated system that can collapse at any minute but doesn’t.

Yes, it has defects and problems. But nothing this side of heaven is perfect, except a newborn baby. At the end of the day, Banner gets the job done and always has.

So, the decision isn’t if you’re going to move to SaaS, but when.

Making the decision to move to Banner SaaS is the biggest step in the process and should not be made hastily or in a bubble. Involve all the necessary constituents, top to bottom.

Everyone has a voice because everyone will be affected. However, once the decision is made, it’s all downhill.

Keeping that hill from getting too steep will be a challenge, but not impossible. Here are a few things to get you started.

Where would I even start?

Moving to Banner SaaS does not happen overnight. There’s so much that can be done now to prepare for the experience, and these tasks can take years to properly process. If these tasks are left until the last minute, there will be a flurry of requests to the IT staff, and no one will be happy.

Many of these tasks should already be part of regular maintenance routines, but we find they are not.

Finding out months before a SaaS go-live is not the time to clean up your database.

  I have been a Banner DBA for a long time. I have been known to be a bit of a control freak with the databases I support and tend to rule with an iron fist. My motto is: A clean database is a happy database. So, if you want to start anywhere, start with database maintenance.

In my next article, I’ll explain how to keep your database neat and trim and reduce the migration time from export to go live.

The post The Road to Banner SaaS – Why SaaS and Where do I Start?  appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

I started working with Banner in 1999, the same year I was married. It was a year of learning to adjust to new things: a new life, new job responsibilities, a new role as a DBA, and a new ERP. It was an exciting time.

Banner was version 3.x; it was client/server technology. We were transitioning from a legacy system that was character-cell-based, hosted on VMS, and in my opinion, the most solid and secure OS around. At that time, Banner was still offered on VMS, so that was our platform of choice. It had its quirks, but we made it work because that’s what we did: we found a problem, fixed it, and moved on.

Over the years, we saw Banner move from client/server technology to what we affectionately called “Banner in a browser” (INB), a thin client. We all thought that wouldn’t last. We experienced our first 404 errors, then mysterious 500 errors, all in the name of progress.

As Banner Evolved, Our Community Grew Stronger

The Banner technical community became stronger as we struggled through this change together. We chatted more at conferences, the Banner DBA list became active, and we shared a great deal of information. We helped each other get through the change, and we made it work.

Along the way, we challenged each other to think outside the walls of our institutions. We became a community.

Then came the need to change the database character set with the introduction of UTF-8. I thought this would hurt more than it did. The initial plans from Ellucian were not well-designed, but the technical community challenged the vendor to do better, and they responded.

By the time most of us were ready to go through the process, it was relatively painless, and we moved on. The entire ecosystem improved because of the willingness to share and be open to suggestions. As a community, we have been improving the entire Banner environment for years.

When the most recent change from Oracle Forms to Java-based applications happened, the uproar within the community was astounding.

We went from supporting 3 servers per environment to supporting countless servers, depending on the choices we made. Our workloads increased, and we needed to learn new technology, especially if we chose Tomcat over WebLogic. It seemed like a dark time for those supporting the Banner infrastructure.

However, just as with any other change, we embraced the task at hand, pushed each other to try even newer technologies like Docker containers, expanded into cloud technologies as a cost-saving measure and for redundancy and disaster recovery, and moved on once more.

 Today, Banner is evolving again. There is always the unknown whenever venturing into something different. It doesn’t mean that it should be avoided. It doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be questioned, either. We’ve seen so much change over the years. We’ve experienced the good and the bad. The one constant we have come to realize, however, is the power of the collective voice.

We know our voice matters. We know the technical community can make things happen if we speak up and push the envelope, because we know at the heart of everything is the well-being of our institutions. The biggest question, though, is whether we can really handle another platform change?

To Change or Not to Change

Change is never easy. My kids are terrible with change. When we got rid of our aging minivan, I had to replace it with the same make, model, and color, and still I got the response from them: “It’s different! What was wrong with the old car? It was fine.” It wasn’t fine. It was old and costing us more in maintenance every time we took it in.

The new one had updated safety features, better gas mileage, GPS, but all they saw was the functionality of the vehicle: the ride inside from their perspective. They were not looking at the bigger picture.

Change is inevitable, and resistance to change is guaranteed.

The first time I heard that Banner was moving to a SaaS platform, my thoughts immediately went to “my role as a DBA is over”. It took me a long time to realize that my role as a DBA had been over for a long time. I haven’t been “just a DBA” for several years.

My daily tasks have morphed into sys admin, networking, cloud architect, problem solver, installer, Windows admin, counselor, and the list goes on. Occasionally, I get to flex my DBA muscles, and it feels good, but certainly not as often as I used to.

The Real Work Happens Between the Technology and the People

As I have begun working with the Ellucian SaaS platform, I have come to realize that the skills I’ve developed over the years, including my DBA skills, will not go to waste.

There are ample opportunities to create new approaches to old problems. This requires thinking outside the box—a skill you either have or you don’t. I’ve found that most DBAs just have it. We know how to work between the technology and the people. We know how to problem-solve.

We know how to make the technology work the way it needs to work. If it doesn’t, we know how to “encourage” the vendor to make the changes we need to see happen.

 We are a community of change makers. We embrace change.

We may complain about it along the way, but in the end, we get the job done and learn a bit while doing it. The only thing we cannot do is stand still.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the many years of working in higher ed, it is that change will happen whether I like it or not; whether I’m on board or not; whether I agree with it or not.

The only choice I have to make is to embrace it and prepare the best I can for the ride.

We Got This

The bottom line is that when the technical community faces change, I have seen amazing things happen. Ellucian Student powered by Banner is just one more change in the evolution of the Banner ERP lifecycle.

If we embrace that change and accept the challenge, I can’t even imagine what the Banner Technical Community will develop and become. The possibilities are endless.

Stick with me over the next several weeks as I explore how to prepare your site for migrating to the Ellucian SaaS Platform.

It is a long road, and there is no better group I’d want to travel with than the Banner Technical Community.

We got this!

The post Modernizing the ERP Platform – A Technical Journey  appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

The logic makes sense: If admissions, student success, registrar, financial aid, and advancement could all work from a shared platform, institutions could finally operate as one coordinated organization instead of a collection of well-meaning silos.

What many institutions discover, however, is that enterprise CRM does not create alignment on its own. It exposes where alignment never actually existed.

Surfacing unavoidable organizational questions

At the departmental level, CRM decisions are relatively straightforward. A team defines its goals, selects a tool that fits its workflow, and optimizes for its own outcomes. Admissions focuses on recruitment and yield. Advancement focuses on alumni engagement and giving. Student success teams focus on persistence and support.

Enterprise CRM changes the equation. The moment a system is shared across departments, questions that were previously avoided become unavoidable.

Who owns the student relationship at each stage of the lifecycle? Who decides what data is shared and how it is interpreted? When processes conflict, whose approach wins? When outcomes do not improve, who is accountable?

These are not technical questions. They are organizational ones. Enterprise CRM brings them to the surface whether an institution is ready or not.

CRMs assume institutional clarity

The current generation of CRM platforms is designed to support cross-department workflows, shared profiles, lifecycle transitions, and increasingly, AI-driven recommendations. The technology assumes a level of institutional clarity that many campuses have not yet established.

Most institutions are still operating with decentralized authority, informal governance structures, and decision-making by consensus rather than ownership. Local exceptions that were supposed to be temporary have become permanent.

When those realities collide with an enterprise platform, the result is friction. Teams may agree in principle to shared approaches but resist in practice when local needs feel threatened. Central groups may avoid hard decisions in the name of progress, allowing ambiguity to persist. The CRM ends up reflecting existing misalignment rather than resolving it.

When enterprise CRM initiatives struggle, the symptoms are often blamed on configuration, integrations, or user adoption. In reality, the breakdown usually started much earlier.

Departments agree to shared goals but not shared ownership. Compromises weaken standardization without preserving real flexibility. Parallel processes emerge to avoid uncomfortable changes, and staff revert to spreadsheets and shadow systems when clarity is missing.

From the outside, this looks like a technology problem. From the inside, it feels like exhaustion.

The platform did exactly what it was supposed to do. It revealed the lack of institutional alignment behind it.

Enterprise CRM success begins before configuration

Institutions that succeed with enterprise CRM treat it as an operating model decision, not a software rollout.

Before configuration begins, they make deliberate choices about:

• Which decisions are centralized and which remain local
• Where standardization is non-negotiable
• Where flexibility is intentional and documented
• Who owns outcomes across lifecycle transitions

They accept that not every department will get everything it wants, and they make those trade-offs explicit rather than implicit. Most importantly, they establish governance structures that are empowered to make and enforce decisions, not just facilitate discussion.

In these environments, enterprise CRM becomes a tool that supports clarity instead of amplifying confusion.

Alignment is a leadership responsibility

Enterprise CRM can be a powerful enabler of better coordination, improved student experience, and stronger outcomes. But it does not create alignment on its own.

Alignment is a leadership responsibility. Governance is a prerequisite, not a byproduct. And technology only accelerates what already exists—it doesn’t create what isn’t there.

Institutions that understand this early move faster, implement with less friction, and get more value from their CRM investments. Those that do not often spend years reworking decisions they hoped the platform would make for them.

Enterprise CRM does not solve alignment problems. It reveals them.

The post Enterprise CRM Doesn’t Create Alignment. It Exposes Misalignment appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

We had an executive-level report built in Slate which we delivered Monday mornings to our institution’s leadership. The problem with this report, however, was that it was extremely complex, with goal calculations for every program and a variety of data points that each member of the executive team deemed “extremely important.”

Failure to render

Unfortunately, more often than not the report would timeout upon generation, resulting in blank reports delivered to recipients. As a result, I fielded lots of grumpy phone calls. At the time, our team did everything we could to make the report run more efficiently, including checking, rechecking, and rebuilding our query bases and configurable joins.

After multiple embarrassing instances in which the report failed to render, we were left with no choice but to chop the report up into different versions and flood the leadership’s inboxes with several emails instead of the one master report to rule them all.

I recently encountered a client with similar woes, only this time the culprit was a ton of Ping data. The client was simply trying to report on the efficacy of a specific marketing campaign. Prior to engaging with SIG, the client had tried and failed to get even simple query results to successfully render because their Ping data table contained over 40 million rows. As a large state institution, these numbers were to be expected; so, what could we do?

Materialized views to the rescue

After discussing various options with the client, they followed our primary recommendation to leverage a newer Slate feature called “materialized views,” with this Ping data scenario serving as a test case for proof of concept.

As defined in Slate’s Knowledgebase, a materialized view is “a static, point-in-time snapshot of a result-set.” Essentially, a custom query is created with a scheduled snapshot time in which results are saved separately from the original data table and can then be leveraged in other reports and queries serving as its own query base.

Unlike dynamic queries pulling live data from entire database tables, new queries using materialized views as their base only pull from the latest snapshot, so there’s no additional wait time for filters to recalculate.

What was the impact? Using a new materialized view query base we configured for them, we were able to generate query and reports in seconds with no more timeouts. The client was able to glean the important data they needed and make informed decisions on where to put their future dollars. It was a win for the client and a reminder of my early frustrations with generating reports in Slate.

The next time you’re struggling to cope with unwieldy amounts of data, remember to check out this feature. If you want to learn more about how SIG can help you build impactful reports and use your data and Slate more efficiently, give us a call.

The post Materialized Views Make Me Wish I Could Time Travel appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

But what happens when that’s not the case? Maybe you haven’t been successful in implementing Slate to take advantage of its many features. Or maybe you’ve achieved heightened levels of success, but the work required to manage the system and maintain those results feels unsustainable.

If these thoughts resonate with you, you’re not alone.

What You Need to Do vs. What Can You Do

Slate offers the functionality and flexibility to be configured to do almost anything relevant to an audience served by higher education. But new systems can’t be retrofitted to an old process. Figuring out exactly what you need to do versus what you can do isn’t easy. And when you do home in on what needs to be done, becoming proficient enough in Slate to execute it all, or resourcing a team to configure complementary processes without stepping on each other’s toes, is challenging in any context.

To complicate things further, the work of implementation is never finished. Slate continues to offer new features and enhancements that may have implications for the configurations you’ve established. Which features do you need to begin using? What parts of your process need to be refreshed? When is the right time to make these changes?

Questions like these often lack clear right and wrong answers, and that’s why it can be advantageous to secure the expertise of a Slate Preferred Partner like SIG to evaluate your needs and provide direction on the solutions that make the most sense for your institution both now and in the future.

Diagnostic

One of our primary tools for such evaluations is a Slate diagnostic.

A diagnostic is a holistic evaluation of your Slate database that dives into specific configurations of fields, prompts, forms, checklist items, rules, and more, while also assessing processes and identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, and leverage new and under-utilized features. Especially if your institution has used Slate for a few years or longer, it’s an ideal starting point to determine what you need to do, what you can do, and why.

Stacking more processes on top of each other often leads to fewer gains, and less time. A diagnostic may be the intervention you need to determine how to right the ship and ensure you’re making the most of your Slate database.

Training

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may have Slate but feel that you’ve never taken advantage of its capabilities. Or you have new users who need to learn the system, fast, to manage your processes. These needs speak to training.

Slate is an intuitive system when you understand the basic functions of mapping data and querying. SIG offers training programs to help you do just that, focused on the foundational skills needed to be successful in Slate, as well as the features specific to your lifecycle.

Spending one or two days in person or a handful of sessions virtually with an expert can pay dividends through multiple cycles. It’s not about learning how to do everything in a compressed period of time; that’s impossible. But working through activities such as application building and workflow design help trainees learn what to do, and how to conceive their use of Slate. Developing that underlying understanding of the system is what unlocks its full potential, and yours as a Slate user.

Support

At the intersection of diagnostics and training lies support. You may know what you need or conceptually how to configure it but turning your vision into a functional process in Slate remains a difficult endeavor. That’s where our experts can help. We’ve been in your position before, working as directors and operations managers, and we know how to help you navigate the often less-than-straight path between where you are and where you’re going.

Support may take the form of strategic counsel, which helps you chart the path forward through focused consulting calls. Or maybe you need assistance with technical troubleshooting and guidance on specific Slate configurations offered via . Pair these together and know that you have a partner in your Slate work who can help you execute successfully while you learn, grow, and continue to optimize your Slate database.

The End Goal: Make Slate Work for You

Evaluating your challenges and opportunities, acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to address them, and locating resources to help you along the journey are essential steps to managing any system or process. They’re also difficult objectives to accomplish while facing the day-to-day demands of work in enrollment management, donor engagement, and student support.

Your end goal is to leverage your Slate database and make it work for you, rather than you working for your database. That requires investment. It requires analyzing your processes in Slate, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It requires adding new skills to your Slate repertoire. And it requires engaging with fellow users and experts in the Slate community.

Let us know if we can help. You can find me in the community forums or in the Slate Slack community. Feel free to reach out, connect, and let us know what challenges you’re facing. We can help make the solutions you need a reality.

The post 3 Ways to Combat Slate Stasis appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

Fast forward to today, and Agentforce has changed dramatically. What was once an emerging capability is now a much more mature, enterprise-ready platform, especially for complex environments like higher education.

This post looks at how much Agentforce has improved since February 2025, and why those improvements matter specifically for colleges and universities.

1. From “Advanced Bots” to Truly Autonomous Agents

In early 2025, Agentforce already stood apart from traditional Salesforce bots — but it still required careful scoping and strong guardrails.

Since then, Salesforce has significantly strengthened Agentforce’s core intelligence:

• Agents now reason across multiple steps and systems, rather than executing isolated actions.
• Context persists across interactions, allowing agents to understand where a student, staff member, or advisor is in a process — not just what they asked last.
• Agents can evaluate outcomes and adjust for the next appropriate actions dynamically.

You might be asking why this matters for higher ed. Student journeys are rarely linear. Admissions, financial aid, advising, and registrar interactions often span weeks or months. Agentforce is now far better suited to handle that reality without forcing institutions to over-script every scenario.

2. Dramatically Improved Accuracy Through Better Grounding

One of the biggest concerns institutions raised in early pilots was accuracy — especially when agents needed to reference policies, deadlines, or program-specific rules.

Since February 2025, Agentforce has improved how it:

• Grounds responses in trusted institutional data
• Restricts answers to approved knowledge sources
• Applies tighter reasoning boundaries for regulated or high-risk topics

Specifically for higher education, this is critical for areas like:

• Financial aid eligibility and deadlines
• Academic policies and degree requirements
• FERPA-sensitive scenarios

Institutions can now deploy agents with far more confidence that their answers will align with official policy — not somewhat generic AI responses and replies.

3. Builder Experience: From Experimental to Admin-Friendly

Early Agentforce implementations often required close collaboration between admins, developers, and AI specialists.

Today, the Agentforce Builder experience is significantly more approachable:

• Natural-language configuration helps admins focus more on describing what the agent should do, not just how
• Improved testing and simulation tools allow institutions to validate behavior before go-live
• Iteration cycles are much faster — reducing the risk of “set it and forget it” AI

Why this matters for universities:

Most institutions don’t want AI systems that require constant developer intervention. The improved builder experience puts more control in the hands of:

• Salesforce admins
• Enrollment and other operations teams
• IT service management teams

This aligns better with higher ed’s staffing models and budget realities. The goal of having more of a “clicks not code” Agent is here!

4. Enterprise-Grade Governance (A Huge Leap Forward)

Governance has arguably seen the biggest leap since early 2025.

Agentforce now includes stronger:

• Monitoring and observability of agent behavior
• Audit trails for actions and decisions
• Controls to define what an agent can and cannot do

Universities must balance innovation with compliance, transparency, and trust. Improved governance means Agentforce can now be positioned as:

• A supported institutional platform, not an experiment
• A system that IT, compliance, and functional leaders can jointly approve

This shift alone has made Agentforce viable for many institutions that initially stayed on the sidelines.

5. Expanded Use Cases Across the Student Lifecycle

In early 2025, most Agentforce discussions centered on service deflection or basic support use cases.

Today, institutions are exploring much broader scenarios, such as:

• Proactive outreach to students at risk of missing key milestones
• Guided support for admissions and onboarding workflows
• Internal agents supporting advisors, registrars, and IT staff
• Knowledge discovery across siloed systems

The improvement isn’t just technical — it’s conceptual. Agentforce is no longer just about answering questions; it’s about supporting decisions and next best actions.

6. What’s Changed for Higher Ed Strategy Since February 2025

The biggest shift isn’t that Agentforce exists — it’s that institutions can now ask bigger, more meaningful questions, such as:

• Where can agents reduce administrative burden without compromising trust?
• Which student interactions benefit from continuity and memory?
• How do we scale support without scaling headcount?

These questions were harder to answer confidently in early 2025. Today, the platform has caught up to the ambition.

Final Thought: Agentforce Is No Longer a “What If?” for Higher Ed

Back in February 2025, Agentforce was exciting — but cautious optimism was warranted.

Now, it’s clear that Salesforce has invested heavily in:

• Accuracy
• Governance
• Admin usability
• Enterprise readiness

For higher education institutions, this marks a turning point. Agentforce has moved from emerging technology to a practical platform capable of supporting the complexity, nuance, and responsibility that higher ed demands.

While early 2025 was about experimentation, today is about full adoption.

If you’re interested in maximizing the expanding capabilities of Agentforce at your institution, the experts at SIG can help.

Further Reading

If you’d like to explore Salesforce Agentforce in more detail, the following official Salesforce resources provide additional context, documentation, and product updates:

• Agentforce Overview
  https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce/
  A high-level overview of Agentforce, including core capabilities and how AI agents operate across the Salesforce platform.
• What Is Agentforce 360
  https://www.salesforce.com/products/what-is-agentforce-360/
  An explanation of Agentforce 360 and how it supports building, managing, and scaling AI agents across the enterprise.
• Agentforce Getting Started Guide
  https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce/guide/
  A practical guide outlining how organizations can begin implementing Agentforce.
• Agentforce Developer Center
  https://developer.salesforce.com/developer-centers/agentforce
  Technical documentation, APIs, and developer resources for extending and customizing Agentforce.
• Salesforce Announces Agentforce 3 (June 2025)
  https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2025/06/23/agentforce-3-announcement/
  Official announcement detailing major improvements in governance, observability, and enterprise-scale readiness.
• Salesforce Announces Agentforce 2dx (March 2025)
  https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2025/03/05/agentforce-2dx-news/
  Overview of earlier enhancements focused on embedded, proactive, and cross-workflow AI agents.

The post Agentforce Then and Now: How Salesforce’s AI Agents Have Rapidly Matured — and What It Means for Higher Education appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

While Slate AI can assist with practical tasks like outlining how to build a query or structure a portal, its real value resides in assessing patterns, prioritizing attention, and making better-informed decisions.

Slate AI is available throughout the native Slate interface and responds based on where a user is working. Whether someone is reviewing a record, looking at a query, drafting a message, or pulling together leadership reporting, the AI operates within Slate’s existing data model and permission structure.

In practice, this works best when users come in with a clear question or goal, rather than treating the AI as a shortcut to an answer.

Moving Beyond “How Do I Build This?”

For newer Slate users, AI assistance around foundational tasks can be genuinely helpful. Being able to ask how to structure a query, think through form design, or draft portal content can lower the barrier to getting started and reduce friction early on. That alone can save time.

Where we tend to see more impact, though, is when teams move past building and start using Slate AI to understand what their data is telling them. For example, when reviewing a person record, Slate AI can summarize activity across visible tabs and highlight notable changes or patterns.

Instead of clicking through multiple sections to get oriented, staff can quickly get a sense of what matters and decide where to dig in further.

Turning Queries into Insight

Slate has always excelled at producing lists and reports. Slate AI adds value once those lists exist by helping users interpret what they are seeing.

A common example is an admit-to-deposit query. Rather than counting who has and hasn’t deposited, users can ask Slate AI to look for differences in behavior between the two groups or identify segments that may warrant additional outreach. Similarly, teams reviewing incomplete applications can use AI to surface patterns around engagement timing, communication gaps, or stalled activity that may not be obvious from a static report.

The AI is not making decisions or predictions on behalf of the institution. What it does well is help staff notice patterns faster and ask better follow-up questions, which then drives more focused action.

Slate AI’s pattern recognition can be useful to student success and advancement teams as well. By taking a list of students and having the AI comb for at-risk factors or a list of donors and looking for trends, we can find diamonds in the rough that can help the advisor or gift officer make distinctions.

Supporting More Intentional Communication

Slate AI can also help with drafting emails and text messages, particularly when teams are trying to balance clarity, tone, and relevance. Rather than starting from a blank page, users can ask the AI to draft or refine messaging based on audience, timing, or purpose, then adjust as needed before sending.

For example, teams re-engaging incomplete applicants might use Slate AI to vary tone or calls to action tailored to where students are in the process, rather than sending the same message to everyone. The goal here is not automation for its own sake, but more thoughtful and consistent communication at scale.

Designing with Portals and Staff Workflows in Mind

One practical consideration as teams think about using Slate AI is where different types of work should live. Slate AI operates within the native Slate interface and is not available inside end-user portals. Because of this, institutions need to be intentional about how they divide work between staff-facing analysis and external-facing experiences.

In practice, this often means using Slate AI upstream to help staff interpret data, identify priorities, and decide what action is needed, then designing portals to reflect those decisions. For example, a team might use AI internally to identify students showing early signs of disengagement, while keeping the student-facing portal focused on clear next steps and required actions.

Institutions that tend to be most successful treat portals as curated, audience-specific experiences and reserve analysis, pattern recognition, and decision support for staff working directly in Slate. This keeps portals simpler and more focused, while still allowing teams to take advantage of AI-assisted insight behind the scenes.

Helping Leadership Focus the Conversation

Slate AI can also support leadership-level work, particularly when preparing summaries or reports that need to be reviewed quickly. Teams can use AI to help synthesize enrollment trends, prepare board-ready summaries, or frame scenarios for budget and planning discussions.

Rather than spending time pulling numbers together, staff can focus on what the data suggests, where risks may exist, and what options leadership should be considering. The AI helps accelerate understanding, not replace judgment.

Designed to Augment, Not Replace

Technolutions has been clear that Slate AI is intended to augment human expertise, not replace it. AI features are designed to support review, interpretation, and efficiency, while keeping institutional control firmly in human hands.

Slate AI operates within Slate’s secure, cloud-based infrastructure and follows the same governance and security standards as the rest of the platform. Data remains institutional, requests are ephemeral, and all AI interactions respect existing permissions and security policies.

A Shift in How Teams Use Slate

In practice, Slate AI represents less of a technological leap and more of a shift in how teams approach their work. Institutions that see the most value are those that use AI to sharpen focus, challenge assumptions, and better understand what is already in their data.

When used intentionally, Slate AI helps teams spend less time assembling information and more time acting on it.

The post How Slate AI Can Help Teams Sharpen Focus, Challenge Assumptions and Better Understand Their Data appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

At SIG, we want to assure you that we are here to support you throughout this transition. We understand that moving existing rules and processes to Flow can be overwhelming and time-consuming. That’s why we recommend starting early – planning ahead will help you avoid last-minute stress.

Why This Matters
Many schools we work with have been using Salesforce for years, and often, administrators inherit orgs full of legacy automation tools. While Salesforce offers a “Migrate to Flow” tool, it’s important to approach this carefully. A rushed migration can disrupt the automations your organization relies on every day.

Where to Start

1. Identify Active Automations
   Head to Setup > Process Automation and sort by Active status. This will show you which Workflow Rules and Process Builder processes are still running.
2. Plan Your Migration
   Once you know what’s active, you can start mapping out how those processes will look in Flow.

We’re Here to Help
Salesforce no longer provides support for migration-related questions—but we do! Our team has helped organizations audit, streamline, and successfully migrate their automations to Flow. Whether you need:

• A comprehensive assessment of your current setup
• Hands-on help building new Flows

We’ll tailor our support to fit your needs.

Let’s Make This Easy
SIG is committed to being your trusted partner during this transition. If you have questions or concerns, reach out anytime. Together, we’ll ensure your migration to Salesforce Flow is seamless and effective.

Contact Us

References:

Salesforce Workflow Rules and Process Builder Announcement

Salesforce Product and Feature Retirement Philosophy

The post Future-Proof Your Salesforce Automations: Transition to Salesforce Flow Builder with Confidence Now appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

By Shannon Gallagher, Senior Consultant

Why this Matters Now

FAFSA simplification removed self-reported need-based earnings. Beginning with 2024-25, schools must report Federal Work Study (FWS) earnings by calendar year to COD so they’re used in needs analysis. Colleague now supports batch reporting, reducing manual entry and the risk of errors.

Federal Work Study Earnings Reporting in Ellucian Colleague Webinar

Learn how to report Federal Work Study earnings to COD using Ellucian Colleague—what changed, how to prepare, step-by-step processing, and hard-won lessons from this first reporting cycle.

Watch Webinar

What changed (at a glance)

• Scope: Report only Federal Work Study earnings (not institutional or state).
• Timing: Calendar-year earnings aligned to the FAFSA income year (e.g., 2022 for 2024-25).
• Submission: One-by-one on COD or batch via Colleague (recommended).
• Corrections: Continue submitting corrections through the COD processing window.

Prep checklist (before you run anything)

• Confirm payroll source: Do you use Colleague Payroll?
  • If yes → wages populate from the Pay-To-Date file.
  • If no → obtain a calendar-year FWS earnings file from Payroll (FWS-flagged only).
• Award status hygiene: FWS awards for the two impacted award years must be in an accepted category (mixed-action awards require care).
• ICER requirement: Student needs a federally flagged ICER in one of the two award years.
• Access: Ensure staff have the new forms: PFWS, VFWS, CBDE, FCAW/VCBE; update FAUP to load Campus-Based responses.

How the Colleague process works

1) Build your work file — PFWS

• Enter the calendar year (e.g., 2022).

• Colleague selects students with FWS awards and a valid ICER in either award year.

• If on Colleague Payroll, earnings auto-populate from Pay-To-Date. Otherwise, you’ll add amounts in the next step.

• You can run in simulation first; if needed, clear and rebuild the work file.

2) Review & maintain — VFWS

• Validate the selected students, edit/add earnings (if not on Colleague Payroll), and export to Excel for spot checks.

• Statuses progress from Added → Changed → Sent → Received/Error.

• Tip: Once a record is Sent, you can’t delete it—submit a change instead.

3) Create & transmit — CBDE

• Generates the campus-based outbound file and updates statuses to Sent.

• Works with TDClient directly or produces a file for EDconnect.

4) Load responses & fix errors — FCAW / VCBE

• Set FAUP to load Campus-Based responses.

• Received = done. Error = review the reject code, correct, and resend.

Lessons learned from the first cycle

What went smoothly

• Batch creation/transmission via CBDE is straightforward.

• VFWS gives a clear, editable view (and easy Excel export).

Where teams stumbled—and the workarounds

• Mixed-action FWS awards: ICER/citizenship data may not pass; make the award accepted for the year, then resend.

• “Error” won’t resend: Change the earnings amount (even +/-$0.01), save, then correct it back—this flips status to Changed so CBDE can pick it up.

• Apostrophes in names: Some responses wouldn’t load; removing the apostrophe in the response record allowed the import (while COD accepted the data).

• Address length: Over-length addresses caused file import failures. Fix by expanding the address length setting or shortening the address in the response file.

• Invalid destination mailbox ID: Rare; coordinate with COD and IT. If timing’s tight, submit those few students manually on the COD campus-based site.

• Multi-college districts: Ensure the correct entity ID is applied per student; some instances required manual intervention.

Practical tips to stay clean and compliant

• Align early with Payroll: Confirm how FWS flags and retro changes are handled so the Pay-To-Date file (or your import) reflects true FWS earnings.
• Communicate the calendar-year lens: Resist reconciling to academic-year CWS totals; calendar year ≠ award year.
• Bake in a QA pass: Export VFWS to compare wages to Payroll’s source file before you send.
• Document rerun steps: Keep a short SOP for clearing PFWS, re-building, and resending targeted students.

Ready to streamline your next FWS cycle?

See the end-to-end walkthrough, configuration tips, and error-handling in action.

• Watch the webinar
• Talk with a SIG Colleague expert to validate your setup, build a test plan, or co-pilot your first clean run.

The post Federal Work Study Earnings Reporting in Ellucian Colleague appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).

Pell Freeze Dates: A Critical Decision Point

Pell Grant administration can feel like a moving target—especially when you’re managing modular terms and late start classes. Selecting the right Pell freeze strategy in Colleague impacts compliance, student eligibility, and financial aid operations.

What Are Pell Freeze Dates?

Also known as Pell census dates or Pell recalculation dates, these are the points when a student’s enrollment is “frozen” for Pell Grant eligibility. After this date, adding or dropping courses typically won’t increase Pell awards.

Options in Colleague

Colleague offers flexibility in how institutions define Pell freeze dates. The most common approaches include:

• Census Date – A single fixed date across the institution.

• Title IV Cutoff Date – Driven by institutional census settings and ICER processing.

• First Official Census Date – Locks Pell eligibility once initial requirements are met.

• Award Period Census Date – Uses the earliest census date within a term.

• Last Class Census Date – A flexible option for modular schedules and late-start courses.

Key Considerations for Success

Choosing the right strategy is only the beginning. Institutions should also:

• Test thoroughly – Run real enrollment scenarios in Colleague to confirm expected behavior.

• Coordinate with the registrar – Align Pell rules with census dates for courses and modules.

• Communicate with students – Clearly explain how schedule changes may impact aid.

• Balance equity and compliance – Provide flexibility without creating excessive withdrawal-related adjustments.

Takeaway

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Your Pell freeze date strategy should reflect your calendar, student population, and compliance goals. By making an intentional choice, testing rigorously, and communicating proactively, you can simplify administration and ensure students receive the aid they deserve.

Watch the Webinar

Catch the full SIG Connect 365 session to see real-world examples and hear expert recommendations from Senior Consultant Shannon Gallagher.

The post Effective Pell Freeze Strategies in Ellucian Colleague appeared first on Strata Information Group (SIG).