The Ellucian Ethos Framework is a data integration platform designed for higher education institutions and their business structures. The Ethos Framework can be extended to include other Ellucian products for greater analytics, workflow, and mobile capacities.
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Microsoft Entra ID
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Microsoft Azure Active Directory or Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution supporting restricted access to applications with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) built-in, single sign-on (SSO), B2B collaboration controls, self-service password, and integration with Microsoft productivity and cloud storage (Office 365, OneDrive, etc) as well as 3rd party services.
We have not used any other product similar to this, but for us, it made sense that the first product we tried was made by the company who developed our ERP system because they know the system inside/out. Solutions made by other companies that only look into documentation does …
Ethos Integration is a work in progress. Some API's are still not available under this framework. However, it has the advantage of being an abstraction layer on top of the database, supports the publish-subscribe model. Since some Banner 9 modules still do not support the direct SAML2 connection, Ethos Identity (EIS Server) is a necessity for SSO.
It is especially good for organizations that are otherwise in the Microsoft ecosystem (Microsoft 365 applications). Microsoft Entra ID is really well supported sign-in method in various SaaS-applications and they often have step-by-step guides how to deploy the SSO with Microsoft Entra ID. It's less suitable for organizations that might use other productivity tools than M365 or do not have Windows-based computers.
Single Sign-on helps ease the user experience, allowing users to avoid typing multiple passwords.
The identity and management are straightforward to use and easy to connect to other applications, as well as third-party applications.
The support of remote work. Nowadays, many people work from home and need to access their accounts. Microsoft Enterprise ID gives secure access to the company data.
Operational reporting: This does not replace or provide an easy platform for operational reports or warehousing. It would be nice if they provided a full stack.
Learning curve: Training and documentation are minimal.
Probably the most primary thing is just the interface itself. It's frequently changing and so oftentimes we kind of have to go back and redocument our processes for our IT staff because the steps that they would take to perform a task one month. Now it's a totally different staff, new dashboard, even a new name for the product or the feature. So it would be nice if that stuff was a little bit more consistent.
MSFT Entra ID has been essential for managing our geographically dispersed team. We're confident that it will scale with us as grow, and we'll be able to take advantage of additional security and ID management features as they become necessary. Being able to centrally manage our user access from anywhere with a small support team is such a relief.
I mean it's pretty good. It is click, click. I mean, oftentimes I can go to the expert or layer two support to get help. Suddenly I go to them. So it has to be pretty useful to be honest. I do a lot of, and there's a lot of, you could do research quickly online to find out how to do certain things. I think that's the only thing we can improve to in terms of kind of a best practice path is setting up it. But because I'm it profess of tons of years in co-management services, I can figure it out. But for others they may not be able to figure it out. You still need an IT person of course to translate all of that. But to me pretty straightforward. I come from the days of directory from 2008, 2000, Microsoft server 2000.
Support from Ellucian for Ethos Integration was generally good. The help in building Ethos was adequate, and resolving issues were handled professionally. However, for Ethos Identity module, the support in building the cluster failover architecture was lacking. After over a month of open engagement, the issue still has not been resolved.
I have not needed to engage support for anything at this time. I have been able to find the answers either online or in a knowledgebase. I tried to skip the question but it would not let me, so I rated a 9 based on other interactions with Microsoft support I have had
Make sure you use a good partner. Our implementation was a bit longer and more problematic than we expected. Our partner got it done, but, in my opinion, some of their inexperience and staffing issues were evident.
We have not used any other product similar to this, but for us, it made sense that the first product we tried was made by the company who developed our ERP system because they know the system inside/out. Solutions made by other companies that only look into documentation does not mean they would be able to create a product that could do such integration well.
We've used other Microsoft products and we've also used some standalone products, like each application you can have its own identity, so we've looked at some of those too, but we try to use the Entra ID as much as possible because it offers a wider range of reliability.
Microsoft Professional Services' technical knowledge is appreciable as consultants design the solution as per customer requirements. Mapping of features per user specifications and assisting Customer IT engineers to implement so they can manage and administer the services.
I think it's had positive. It's enabled us to make authentication easier and more streamlined across the organization from frontline workers to back office workers.
It's allowed us to really adopt authentication policies and methods that suit that user and their work environment.
