An update on the AURORA for Advisors project

The University of Manitoba embarked on an initiative in 2017 to modernize the Banner ecosystem. Phase 1 was focused on the Banner Administration pages and completed in 2018 – Banner Administration Pages have been continually refreshed on a yearly cycle since then.

With Phase 1 complete, the project team has been working to refresh the Aurora Self Service user experience and has continued work to develop a foundation to support new capabilities for an improved student and staff experience. This will include improved usability, mobility, capability and introduction of new features.   

Aurora Self Service Refresh is divided into 4 different stages over the next three years, in order of release to the University community: 

• Aurora for Advisors
• Aurora for Students
• Aurora for Academics
• Aurora for Administrators

The 1st stage– Aurora for Advisors— has been in development for about 12 months and the team includes Advisor working group representatives from faculties/academic units, Student Affairs, Grad Studies, Privacy and Records Management, Change Management and Project Services and IST.  This past fall the technical and functional work was completed and this provided valuable guidelines and feedback to enable Pilot Groups to start working with the new Aurora Self Service for Advisors in March 2021. 

What does this mean to you?  

If you use Aurora Self Service today to perform tasks or access information in students’ records, this refresh will modernize how information is displayed and how you navigate the system. The project team developed Aurora for Advisors, focusing on the Advising Student Profile and Banner Document Management (BDM). This will create the opportunity for digital notes and electronic document storage in BDM for student records. This will also allow increased transparency and efficiency in advising and communications between advisors and students.  

Training & Upcoming Advisors Meeting 

Advisors will receive an invitation to an upcoming meeting this spring that will share information about development done by the working groups, and feedback from the Pilot Group experiences. Information about access to training materials and Q&A training sessions will follow. This meeting will be a follow up to the Town Hall meeting held in June of last year where advisors were shown a look/view of the new features. You can view the previous town hall notes on the website. Aurora for Advisors is expected to go live in late spring 2021. 

How will this Refresh improve Aurora for Advisors?   

• A new look and feel that is intuitive and modern  
• Greater flexibility to run Aurora for Advisors on any browser, tablet or mobile device  
• Integrated Student information with a “view at a glance” capability, including a picture
• Digital advisor notes capability with electronic document storage through BDM allowing transparency of information
• A solid foundation to deliver additional capabilities that can be utilized in the future
    

Please note this first stage will only affect Academic Advisors and other frontline staff providing services to students; all other users will continue to use Aurora Self Service as they do today.   

Office of the Registrar and Enrolment Services