New Features in FIS Banner 7

Most of the changes in FIS Banner 7 are behind-the-scenes, including a completely new technical infrastructure, and many changes to internals of the Oracle database. While these improvements are necessary to keep our installation up-to-date and capable of efficient support by both the vendor and the UCSC Data Center, they are pretty much invisible to the end-users.

However, there are a small handful of enhancements to the FIS application itself, which will hopefully help improve efficiency and satisfaction a bit here and there. Below is a short list of those enhancements.

[Note: The form samples below are smaller and fuzzier than the actual FIS Banner 7 will look on your workstation… don’t worry!]

New feature list:

Increased Form Size
Colorful FIS Sessions
Improved Readability for Mac Users
Journal Voucher Improvements
FIS Reports in PDF
Option Menu via Right-Click
Form-to-Form Navigation
Menu Page Enhancements

Increased Form Size

The first thing you’ll notice about FIS Banner 7 is the increase in form size, which allows more information to be displayed per form, and reduces a certain amount of scrolling around. For example, the FGIBDST Budget Summary form in FIS Banner 6 only has room for 6 lines of query results. In FIS Banner 7, FGIBDST has room for 12 lines of query results.

Colorful FIS Sessions

You now have the option to customize your FIS session with colors. For example, you can change the colors of scroll bars, buttons, highlighting, and form background. For more detailed information, click here.

Improved Readability for Mac Users

The increased form size and ability to customize colors has greatly improved the readability of the FIS forms for Mac users. The font is much sharper, and contrast has improved overall. (Remember: the sample below is a screen shot; the real form will be bigger and crisper.)

Journal Voucher Improvements

Copy/Reverse Journal Vouchers

The ability to copy or reverse previously posted Journal Vouchers has been added to FIS. Both FGAJVCD (used by central offices) and FZAJVCD have received this enhancement.

When creating a journal voucher via FGAJVCD or FZAJVCD, you may now use a new feature to copy an existing posted journal. This is a time saving feature for recurring journals. Additionally, you now can reverse existing posted journals that were previously posted in error. For more detailed information, click here.

Encumbrance Liquidation Journal Enhancement

 The Encumbrance Liquidation Journal form (FZAJVEL) will now display an alert if the Encumbrance (Purchase Order) sequence entered is already closed.

Also, the Encumbrance Number being processed will now automatically populate into the Document Reference number field as you tab through it from the encumbrance line Sequence field:

FIS Reports in PDF

FIS reports created using the Oracle Reports tool are now available via PDF delivery to your desktop. Among the reports in this format are FZRPOEL, FZRSFND, FZRDITD2 and FWROLAD. A complete list of PDF-capable reports will be available as of the upgrade. (Reports programmed using other tools such as SQL and C will still only be available via printout.) For more detailed information, click here.

Options Menu via Right-Click

Access to the Options Menu, which is currently accessed via the File menu, has been improved to allow access via Right-Click of your mouse.

Form-to-Form Navigation

You can now navigate directly from form to form, without returning to the Main Menu between forms.

Function key <F5> will pop-up the direct access “Go To” field at the top of the form. Type in the name of the form you want to go to and press <Enter>.

For more detailed information from the FIS Banner Training Manual, click here.

Menu Page Enhancements

The Main Menu page includes two new sections:

Banner Broadcast Messages

This area at the bottom of the Main Menu screen will display any date-critical announcements of general interest to FIS users; for example, any upcoming planned downtime.

My Links

This area at the right of the Main Menu screen can be customized by the user to allow for quick navigation to websites external to FIS.