If Your Users Don’t Understand Banner, It’s Probably Not Their Fault: 2026 Text Manager Insights

By Rebecca Benya, Consultant | David Kent Consulting

Blog 2 of 5 | Banner Extensibility Series

Banner 9 has several ways to customize its products without changing baseline code. This is Part 2 of the Banner Extensibility series, looking at practical ways higher ed institutions can improve BannerSelf -Service (SSB9) for the people who use it every day.

In Part 1, Your Banner Doesn’t Need a New ERP to Feel New Again, I covered Banner Theme Editor and how institutions can use branding, color, and other visual changes to improve Banner Self-Service 9 and Administrative Pages. But appearance is only part of the user experience.

The words on the screen matter just as much.

Sometimes One Word Is the Problem

A client recently came to me with a problem in Financial Aid Self-Service. Students were confused by a button.

The client explained it this way:

“This green button is where a student clicks and the list of Terms and Conditions to receiving financial aid appears and the student accepts. It is so close to where the student must accept or decline their loan offer that they are leery of clicking a button that says submit. Is there an easy way to change the word ‘Submit’ to say ‘Terms and Conditions’?”

There was.

Banner Text Manager to the rescue.

With a few simple steps, the button was renamed from “Submit” to “Terms and Conditions.” The underlying Financial Aid process didn’t change, and no baseline code was modified. The button simply told students what would happen when they clicked it.

Think about the student’s perspective. They are making decisions about financial aid and loans, and a button labeled “Submit” sits close to controls where they accept or decline a loan offer. Being cautious about clicking it is reasonable.

The screen wasn’t giving them enough information to make a confident decision.

Banner Doesn’t Always Speak Your Campus’s Language

Every institution develops its own terminology. Departments have local names. Processes have familiar names. Students and employees learn a vocabulary based on how their institution operates.

Banner comes with its own terminology, and the two don’t always line up.

That difference can show up in a button label, field description, instructional text, prompt, or system message. The Banner wording may be technically accurate while still leaving the user wondering what to do next.

When that happens often enough, users call the Registrar’s Office or Financial Aid, submit a help desk ticket, or email someone who can explain the screen.

One confusing phrase doesn’t sound like a major IT problem. Multiply it across Banner Self-Service 9 applications and repeated transactions, and those small points of confusion create real work.

IT teams already have upgrades, integrations, security, reporting, projects, and daily support competing for their attention. User-facing wording can easily fall to the bottom of the list.

A small wording change can be a quick win for users and for the people supporting them.

What Banner Text Manager Actually Does

Banner Text Manager gives institutions a supported way to change user-facing text displayed in Banner Self-Service (SSB9) and administrative pages without altering baseline code.

Depending on the page and application, that can include labels, buttons, prompts, instructional text, and system messages. Instead of asking users to learn terminology that doesn’t make sense on your campus, you can adjust the wording to something they understand.

Text Manager works in both on-premises and SaaS environments, making it part of the broader Banner extensibility toolkit regardless of your deployment model..

More Than Button Labels: Text Manager Features

Buttons are an obvious use case, but they are only one place where terminology matters.

Consider the questions your support teams hear repeatedly:

“What does this mean?”

“Which option am I supposed to select?”

“Why does Banner call it that? We call it something else.”

Those questions are useful data. They point directly to places where Banner usability may be improved with clearer wording.

Text Manager can also localize text and messages based on personas and language requirements. This allows institutions to make instructions more appropriate for the people who see them.

The goal isn’t to rewrite every sentence Banner displays. Start where the confusion already exists.

Small Changes Can Reduce Support Work

Functional Banner administrators often know exactly where these problems are. They hear the same questions repeatedly and understand the business processes behind the screens.

Text Manager gives IT and functional offices a practical way to turn that knowledge into improvements.

A functional office can identify confusing language. IT or the Banner administrator can determine whether Text Manager can address it. The team can agree on replacement wording, test it, and make the change.

That is a manageable project with a specific outcome, especially compared with putting “improve Banner usability” on a project list.

What Happens When Banner Is Upgraded?

Anyone who has supported Banner for a while knows the next question: What happens to these changes when we upgrade?

Text Manager changes persist through upgrades. Once the translation is configured, you don’t need to recreate it after each upgrade.

You should still review those changes periodically. The Banner page may change. Your business process or campus terminology may change. Ellucian may deliver different baseline wording that makes a translation unnecessary.

Institutions should maintain a record of their Text Manager changes and periodically confirm that the business reason for each change still exists.

Banner Text Manager and ADA Compliance

Text Manager also has a role in accessibility.

As institutions prepare for the Title II requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Banner accessibility is receiving increased attention. Some accessibility issues require changes to the underlying application, but there are situations where modifying displayed or announced text can provide a useful remediation.

One example is Ellucian open defect PD0022018, opened March 19, 2025, for Student Registration 9.33. The defect is classified as Severity 2-High and, as of the information currently posted by Ellucian, is in a Reviewed state. The summary identifies an accessibility issue in Banner Registration Self-Service where combo boxes used to select a term do not announce to screen reader users that the control is a combo box.

Ellucian’s posted workaround uses Text Manager to modify the text presented to the user. This gives institutions a way to provide screen reader users with additional information while the underlying product defect remains open.

Text Manager shouldn’t be viewed only as a cosmetic tool. The wording presented to users can affect whether they understand what a control does and what action they need to take.

Text Manager also isn’t a substitute for accessibility testing or product fixes from Ellucian. But when clearer or additional text can address a specific problem, having a supported way to make that change is valuable.

A Practical Way to Get Started with Text Manager

You don’t need to start with every Banner application. Pick one area where you already know users are having trouble.

First, make sure your environment is set up to implement Text Manager and that the staff responsible for maintaining it have some basic training. Text Manager is relatively easy to use once the environment is ready and the team understands how translations are identified and applied.

Then create a small project around one application or functional area.

Ask the people who support that process to identify wording that causes the most confusion. Help desk tickets, recurring emails, training materials, and questions staff answer every semester are good places to look.

Create a list of the labels, buttons, prompts, instructions, and messages that should change. Document the current wording, proposed translation, where it appears, and why the change is needed.

Have the functional office review the translations before implementing them, then test the changes with the appropriate personas. If a change is intended to address an accessibility concern, include the appropriate accessibility testing.

Once you have a process for identifying, reviewing, implementing, and documenting translations, you can move on to another application.

Banner Extensibility Can Start Small

Banner Theme Editor, which I covered in Part 1 of this series, gives institutions a supported way to change what users see. Banner Text Manager gives them a supported way to improve what Banner says.

Both are practical examples of Banner Extensibility that can improve the user experience without altering baseline code.

Text Manager works with Banner Self-Service 9 (SSB9) and Administrative Pages, supports on-premises and SaaS environments, and its changes persist through upgrades. More importantly, it gives institutions a practical response when users repeatedly say something on the screen doesn’t make sense.

Pay attention to those questions. They may be telling you exactly where to start.

If your institution is looking at Banner Extensibility and you’re not sure which capabilities you’re positioned to use, David Kent Consulting can help assess your current environment, identify practical opportunities, and help your team get started.

Kent Perspective

One pattern we see across Banner institutions is that confusing terminology often goes unaddressed because no one is sure whose responsibility it is. IT sees it as a functional issue. Functional offices see it as a Banner configuration issue. Meanwhile, students and staff keep calling to ask what the screen means.

The institutions that make progress on this start by giving someone ownership of the translation list and treating it as ongoing maintenance, not a one-time project. A small cross-functional effort, one application at a time, consistently produces the most practical results.

If your institution would like a second perspective on where Banner Text Manager fits in your environment, we’re happy to share what our Text Manager consultants have seen work.

Coming Next

In the next article in this series, we look at page-level complexity: when SSB9 pages try to serve every user at once, they end up serving none of them well. YourSelf Service Banner Pages Are Trying to Tell Everyone Everything explores how Configure Page Components helps institutions simplify what users see.

Key Takeaways

• Banner Text Manager is an Ellucian tool that replaces confusing system-generated wording in Banner Self-Service 9 (SSB9) and Administrative Pages with language that matches campus terminology.
• Changes made with Text Manager persist through Banner upgrades, although institutions should periodically verify that their translations are still relevant.
• Text Manager is available for both on-premises and SaaS Banner environments.
• Banner Text Manager can support accessibility and ADA compliance efforts when modifying or adding text helps address a specific usability or assistive-technology issue.
• Start with one SSB9 application where users are already experiencing confusion, document the current wording and proposed changes, test the appropriate personas, and build a repeatable process.