Your Banner Self-Service Pages Are Trying to Tell Everyone Everything

By Rebecca Benya, Consultant | David Kent Consulting

Blog 3 of 5 | Banner Extensibility Series

Banner Self-Service 9 (SSB9) comes with a lot of functionality. That’s useful when your institution uses it. When you don’t, all that delivered functionality can create clutter, confusion, and questions for faculty, students, and staff.

This is Part 3 of my series on Banner Extensibility, focused on practical ways institutions can improve Banner without replacing it or building custom applications.

In Part 1, Your Banner Doesn’t Need a New ERP to Feel New Again, I looked at Theme Editor and how institutions can improve branding, visually distinguish environments, and give Banner a more current appearance.

In Part 2, If Your Users Don’t Understand Banner, It’s Probably Not Their Fault, I covered Text Manager and how changing delivered terminology and instructions can make SSB9 easier for users to understand.

Part 3 tackles another common usability problem: sometimes the information on the page simply doesn’t need to be there or needs to be reordered.

Banner Configure Page Components (Customize Page Components, CPC) gives institutions a relatively simple way to hide or reposition delivered components on Self-Service pages. For institutions trying to simplify SSB9 without maintaining custom code, it’s a tool worth knowing.

When Delivered Banner Creates Questions You Never Needed

Here’s a situation I’ve seen in the field.

Students log into Self-Service and see information related to midterm grades. Then the questions start.

How is my midterm grade being determined?

Why don’t I see a midterm grade?

When will my professor enter it?

Faculty and advisors start getting questions about a process that the institution may not even use.

The problem started because the information was visible. Banner delivered it, so it appeared on the page.

That confusion creates support calls, documentation, training, and sometimes inconsistent processes. A screen that shows options your institution doesn’t use makes people wonder whether they’re missing a step.

Sometimes the simplest solution is to stop showing them the option.

Delivered Doesn’t Mean You Have to Display It

Banner Self-Service 9 must support a wide range of colleges and universities, which means SSB9 ships with features many institutions will never use. Those institutions have different academic policies, business processes, integrations, and technology strategies.

Your institution probably doesn’t use every feature Banner delivers.

Yet users can still encounter components associated with those unused features. That can mean empty sections, unused tabs, status information that has no relevance to your processes, or tools that users shouldn’t be using.

Over time, those elements add up.

An experienced Banner administrator may look at a page and immediately know which fields matter. A faculty member who logs in a few times each semester doesn’t have that context. Neither does a student trying to complete a task quickly.

Every unnecessary component asks the user to make a decision: Does this apply to me? Should something be here? Am I supposed to do something with this?

Banner Configure Page Components, commonly referred to as CPC, gives institutions a way to reduce that noise.

What Banner Configure Page Components Actually Does

Whether you’re trying to hide midterm grades from a student Self-Service page, reorder sections that don’t match your workflow, or remove tools your institution has never used, Configure Page Components is one of the most practical SSB9 customizations available, and one of the least known. CPC is a Banner extensibility capability that controls which elements appear on delivered SSB9 pages and in what order, without modifying the application itself. 

You can hide components that your institution doesn’t use. You can also reposition components when the delivered arrangement doesn’t fit the way your users work.

Some common examples include:

• Hiding Mid Term Grades
• Hiding unused items under the gear icon, or Tools menu
• Repositioning information on a page so the most relevant content is easier to find
• Reordering sections on a page, tabs on a page or fields on a grid

These can sound like small changes. From a usability perspective, small changes can have a meaningful impact.

Consider the midterm-grade example. You could create documentation explaining why students see the field even though your institution doesn’t use it. You could prepare advisors and faculty to answer questions about it. You could tell students to ignore it.

Or you can hide it.

That’s the type of problem CPC is particularly good at solving.

CPC Is Simpler Than You Might Expect

One reason Configure Page Components can get overlooked is that administrators may assume changing a delivered Banner page requires development work.

CPC is much lighter than that.

There is some initial setup. Directories need to be established on the application server, and appropriate security needs to be configured so authorized users can access the tool.

CPC is also application-specific, so the application you want to modify needs to be set up to use it.

Once that foundation is in place, the work is straightforward.

Log into Self-Service Banner and navigate to the page you want to change. From that page, access Configure Page Components using the gear icon, or Tools menu. You can then add the JSON configuration that controls the components you want to hide or reposition.

You’re working directly from the page you’re trying to change. That makes the process much easier to understand than maintaining a separate customization whose relationship to the delivered page may be less obvious.

The JSON itself is also surprisingly simple for many common changes. You don’t need to be an application developer, although a basic understanding of JSON is helpful.

Make a change, test it, and confirm that the resulting page behaves the way you expect.

Your Changes Persist Through Upgrades

Upgrade maintenance is one of the first questions Banner administrators should ask about any customization.

Configure Page Components changes are stored on the server and persist through upgrades.

That makes CPC particularly useful for institutions that want to improve Banner usability without creating another customization that must be reapplied every time the application is upgraded.

Persistence doesn’t eliminate the need for testing.

Your upgrade process should still include validation of the Self-Service pages where CPC has been configured. A delivered page can change, and you want to make sure your existing configuration still produces the intended result.

The difference is that you aren’t starting over and rebuilding the configuration simply because you installed a new version.

The Details That Can Trip You Up

Configure Page Components is relatively simple, but there are a few technical details to understand before you start.

You Need Some JSON Knowledge

You don’t need advanced programming skills, but you should be comfortable reading and editing basic JSON.

For many changes, the configuration is small and understandable. The important part is knowing exactly which component you want to affect and making sure the JSON is valid.

A missing bracket or incorrectly structured configuration can turn a simple change into unnecessary troubleshooting.

The Page Needs an xe-section Tag

CPC depends on the structure of the delivered page. The component you want to configure needs an xe-section tag in order for Configure Page Components to work with it.

That means CPC isn’t automatically an option for every element you see on every page.

Before planning a larger cleanup effort, confirm that the components you want to change can actually be addressed through CPC.

Mobile May Require Its Own Configuration

This is an easy detail to miss.

If the component you’re configuring has a separate mobile configuration, you’ll need to configure that as well.

A page can look exactly the way you intended on a desktop browser while still displaying the unwanted component on a mobile device.

Include mobile testing when it applies to the Self-Service application you’re modifying.

CPC Is Application-Specific

Setup and configuration need to be considered in the context of the individual Self-Service application.

If you successfully use CPC in one application, don’t assume every other Self-Service application is already prepared for it. Confirm the setup before you begin making changes.

None of these requirements make CPC particularly difficult. They do mean that a little planning before you start will save time.

Start With the Pages That Generate Questions

You don’t need to review every Banner Self-Service page and start hiding and moving things.

Start with the pages your users already tell you are confusing.

Talk to your registrar’s office, service desk, functional Banner administrators, the people who train faculty and students. Ask what questions they repeatedly receive about Self-Service.

Look for questions such as:

“Why is this here?”

“Am I supposed to fill this out?”

“Why is this blank?”

“Should I be using this?”

“Where am I supposed to enter this information?”

Those questions are useful usability data.

Some will point to training issues. Some may reveal a business process that needs clarification. Others will identify information that simply shouldn’t be displayed or moved.

That last category is where Configure Page Components deserves a closer look.

Start Here Now

Pick one Self-Service application where users regularly encounter unnecessary information.

First, identify the specific page and the components that are causing confusion. Be precise. “Faculty Self-Service is confusing” isn’t actionable. “Faculty see Gradebook even though our institution doesn’t use it” gives you something concrete to address.

Next, make sure that application is set up to use Configure Page Components. Confirm the required server directories and security are in place.

Then navigate to the page and determine whether the component you want to change can be addressed with CPC. Check the page structure, including the required xe-section tag.

Create the JSON configuration and test the change.

Test with the people who actually use the page. Also test mobile behavior when a separate mobile configuration applies.

Then pay attention to what happens after the change. If a recurring question disappears from your service desk or faculty training sessions, you’ve improved the page in a measurable way without rewriting the application.

Simplifying Banner Without Rebuilding It

There’s a pattern across the first three parts of this Banner Extensibility series.

Theme Editor lets you change how Banner looks.

Text Manager lets you change what Banner says.

Configure Page Components lets you control what users see.

Those capabilities address different problems, but they can work together to make delivered SSB9 pages better fit the institution using them.

A confusing page doesn’t always need a redesign. Sometimes the best improvement is removing the field, tab, status, or tool that shouldn’t have been part of your users’ experience in the first place.

Kent Perspective

The institutions we work with often discover that CPC opportunities have been hiding in plain sight. A registrar who has been answering the same midterm-grade question every semester already knows exactly which page component needs to go. The barrier is usually awareness that CPC exists, not the difficulty of using it.

When we assess an institution’s SSB9 environment, we look at the gap between what the delivered pages show and what the institution actually uses. That gap is almost always larger than people expect, and the changes to close it are almost always simpler than people assume.

If your institution would like a second perspective on where Banner extensibility tools can simplify your Self-Service pages, we’re happy to share what we’ve seen work.

Coming Next

In the next article in this series, we look at creating custom pages – when your institution has data that needs to be maintained and no delivered Banner page supports it. Before You Build Another Web Application explores how Page Builder lets institutions create custom pages deployed within Self-Service and Application Navigator, without building a standalone web application.

Key Takeaways

• Banner Configure Page Components (CPC) is a delivered extensibility tool that allows institutions to hide or reposition elements on SSB9 pages without modifying application code.
• CPC configurations persist through Banner upgrades, although configured pages should still be included in upgrade testing.
• Removing unused fields, tabs, statuses, and tools can simplify Self-Service and reduce avoidable user confusion.
• CPC requires minimal initial setup and basic JSON knowledge, making it accessible to Banner teams without requiring significant application development.
• Start with pages that already generate questions. They’re usually the easiest places to identify changes that will matter to users.