Onboarding - Welcome to Banno!
We’re happy to have you as a part of the Banno group! Whether you are an apprentice, a full time hire, or just looking for a refresher, our onboarding page will help get you up to speed and ready to get to work. You should now have, or will soon be receiving, a laptop with the basics installed. Here we’ll not only provide you the tools you need to get moving, but also the information you need to become a part of the team.
If you have any direct questions that you can’t find here, please see our Banno Group FAQ.
Who are we?
The Banno group began as a startup acquired by Jack Henry in 2014. Since then, we’ve kept doing what we did before, but on a bigger scale. Our group is highly remote, with over half of our team not being tied to any specific JHA office. The primary offices the rest of the team works from are Cedar Falls, IA and Springfield, MO. Over the course of your first week you’ll get an in-depth introduction to our products, including the entire Banno Platform. You’ll be introduced to your teams and begin to learn how we work as a whole. While we have an org chart we do not model our communication around it. If you need to speak to someone, or you have a question, you can reach out to anyone at any time. We value each other as people first, and will always put our team members’ health and well-being above deliverables and process. We look forward to showing you exactly how that works.
What to Expect on Day One
Much of your first day will be acclimation and familiarizing yourself with what you’ll be working on. You’ll receive your ID badge, set up your laptop, do some paperwork, and perform other standard first day activities. JHA onboarding will take some time from the next several days. Outside of that time, you’ll begin attending any team meetings (like sweeps, standups, and retrospectives). You’ll get some one-on-one time with your team lead to set expectations and to ask any questions specific to your team. You’ll also have some down time, during which you are encouraged to explore BannoDocs, Slack, any relevant Team Drives, or other knowledge bases that will help you understand the environment better. If you have any questions, the #org-new-hires and #org-faq channels in Slack are there specifically to answer any questions you have.
What is Slack? How do we communicate?
As a highly remote team, most of our communication happens digitally. We primarily use email for communication that isn’t terribly time-sensitive, Slack for general chat and quicker communication, and Google Hangouts if we need to speak face-to-face. The larger Jack Henry group uses Teams for chat. Ask your team for expectations of availability on that platform. Zoom is used for larger meetings, such as Digital All Hands meetings and the Monthly Meetup.
We have built up a set of guidelines we follow when it comes to communication. These have been built up over years of being a highly remote company, and help ensure that the lines of communication stay open, even if we aren’t in the same building. Be sure to review our Communication Guidelines within your first day or two.
What kind of meetings can I expect?
We try to keep meetings as brief and infrequent as we are able, but at our scale, they are unavoidable. Most meetings follow some basic guidelines to ensure they are able to be quick and on-track. Most standard meetings are outlined as a part of our SDLC. Other meetings specific your team might include daily standups, where the team discusses their current status, plans, and blockers for the coming days, or regular retrospectives. These retrospectives are generally informal meetings where the team can offer feedback about what is working well and what could be improved, and also serve as forums for team-level announcements.
What kind of accounts do I need to keep track of?
To be honest, quite a few. Banno sits in a unique place in Jack Henry. A portion of the team uses the same Jack Henry imaged machines as the rest of the company, but a large portion use macbooks with root access. As such, we employ quite a few workarounds to ensure we can keep using our machines the way we need to while still being compliant with Jack Henry policies. We have a wiki page tracking all accounts you’ll have to track the exact sets of credentials you’ll use.
Most importantly for your first day, to access most internal sites and tooling, you’ll need to follow this guide to set up VPN and the associated tools. In your inbox, you will have instructions for accessing Associates Only. You will need this for benefits enrollment, PTO requests, training, and for part-timers, clocking in and out. It is important to get this set up as soon as possible. While some sites will be accessible in-office, VPN is needed to access most things.
How do I take PTO?
Taking time off, and balancing your life between work and home, is vital. For the specifics on our PTO system, see our guide on taking PTO. It’s always important to keep in mind, however, that we prioritize the well-being of our team and their lives over the time spent on the clock. If an emergency happens that takes you from work, don’t hesitate to take care of what you have to take care of. Let someone know, preferably your team lead, and work out the details once you’re back on solid ground.
Are there other tools I should know about?
Probably! Luckily, we have a short rundown of what we use across all of our teams. Your specific team will certainly have more tools you’ll need to spin up on, but we’ll leave those to your team to define. Generally, we use the Google suite pretty heavily, while the greater Jack Henry utilizes Microsoft products heavily. Day-to-day, you’ll find yourself using Gmail, Google Drive, and Hangouts alongside Slack for general communication. Our engineering team uses Github heavily, with other teams using it if needed. You will also see Zoom for video chat on larger meetings. This allows for much larger meetings than Hangouts, and allows us to more easily record meetings for later consumption by the team.
Our team also tracks customer information through jSource. jSource is a software system used for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at JHA where all client and customer data is maintained. To be able to use jSource, you’ll need to [complete jSource training](/guides/helpful hints/jsource-training). Not all team members will need to use jSource. Ask your team lead if jSource is right for you.
What if I have questions or need help with my computer?
Our Ground Control team handles most computer and account related things. The answer you’re looking for is likely on Mac Help. If not, check out the avenues for getting help listed there.
Where can I find our policies?
As we work in the fintech sphere, we have access to a lot of sensitive information. Most policies can be found in JHA’s policy center, which you will be directed to on a regular basis via email as new policies are updated and require review.
The Banno group also maintains its own separate policies specific to us, and can be found in the sidebar under Policies. We also have information about dealing with customer sensitive data.
Engineers should review the Banno Secure Coding Guidelines document as well as the JHA Secure Development Standards policies. As engineers at Banno, we have access to the sensitive information of our customers. We must ensure that the code we write is secure and that we’re keeping our users’ data from being compromised. New engineers will be asked to review this information during onboarding and current engineers yearly. If you have suggestions for better practices, please add a PR to the wiki repo for review.
Finally, all new team members should read through our How We Work page for guidelines on how we deal with our team members as humans.
I’ve been here for two hours and I’ve heard thirty terms I don’t understand.
Yeah, we get that a lot. We maintain a glossary of industry- and domain-specific terms for when something new pops up. If the term you’re looking for isn’t there, feel free to either open up a pull request or, if GitHub is one of those new words, bring it up in #org-faq in Slack and we’ll get it added!
How are customer issues handled?
We have a full write up about just that.
Team Specific Onboarding
Of course, a single page can’t cover every team’s needs. For more in-depth information specific to your team, follow the links below: