2022-05-12 Product Council Meeting notes
Date
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Attendees
Aaron Trehub, Alexis Manheim, Angela Zoss (Old), Anya, Brooks Travis, Charlotte Whitt, Christopher Spalding, Dung-Lan Chen, Gang Zhou, Ian Walls, Ingolf Kuss, Jana Freytag, Jesse Koennecke, Karen Newbery, Marc Johnson, Martina Schildt, Martina Tumulla, Maura Byrne, Owen Stephens, Paul Moeller, Peter Murray, Raegan Wiechert, Stephanie Buck twliu, Tod Olson
Goals
Discussion items
| Time | Item | Who | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 min | Announcements |
| |
| 45 min | SIG Convener updates | All | See "SIG Convener Updates" heading below For a future PC meeting: focus on a process for gathering the planned features for customization of FOLIO as a new "theme" |
| 10 min | WOLFcon planning | Martina S. | "PO work and recruiting" was proposed as a session with POs presenting walkthroughs of their tasks and discussing how to lower the barrier to being a product owner in the project. Is this something that people would like to come to? Is there someone willing to be the session planner? Charlotte Whitt volunteered to be the session planner. Many sessions have been submitted, and although the deadline has passed new sessions can still be accommodated. |
| 20 min | Marshall Breeding: Open Systems whitepaper | Here is a recent post by Marshall Breeding, sponsored by Clarivate (currently owners of Proquest/ExLibris): Noting that there is a lot of content about Alma—more so than any other solutions and including large blocks of text from Ex Libris, the whitepaper introduces confusion about "open" by talking about "open systems", and stating that only one installation (Alma and WMS) is better than multiple installations (FOLIO). This paper makes broad statements about "openness" and how Alma's flavor of openness is better, but there isn't a deeper exploration. The whitepaper makes mention of vendor user groups but doesn't acknowledge FOLIO's SIG structure. It seems like the engagement with FOLIO was with the top-level website. A form of response can be addressing FOLIO's answer to openness on the folio.org website. Another is to discuss the extent of FOLIO's APIs and the practical examples that libraries using FOLIO have created, shared, and in some cases have adopted into the broader project. Ian, Tod, and Jesse volunteered to think about how to respond (direct response, improving our website and pointers to the aspects of the project that already exist) and see if there is someone from Community Council and the Outreach SIG. |
SIG Convener Updates
Reporting (Angela Zoss)
- The SIG has been going through a visioning process lately, trying to articulate our goals and scope
- Query development efforts continue, expecting another release during the summer
- Documentation continuing in conjunction with Documentation Working Group
Metadata Management (Felix Hemme, Raegan Wiechert)
- Heather MacFarlane (Ebsco) will be temporary co-convenor from mid-May to mid-July
- For the past three weeks, we have had demos from four PO’s about new/changed Lotus functionality and Morning Glory plans
Consortia (Noah Brubaker)
- Consortia SIG discussed the Consortia admin tool and requirements. This month’s topics included batch process and ERM among others.
Accessibility – dormant at this time
SysOps (Ingolf Kuss)
- SysOps SIG is currently reviewing a draft document on FOLIO Technical Pain Points - DRAFT - Google Docs . This will be a discussion starting point for Tech Council goals & objectives
- Demo by Nassib Nassar and Wayne Schneider on FOLIO Reporting Platform LDP 1.x. The recording to this session is here https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/sys-ops-mgt-sig/2022-04-29T09:55/
Implementers (Ian Walls)
Implementers Group is now regularly syncing up with Support SIG on known P1-P3 issues
Planning sessions for WolfCon
Discussed Marshall Breeding’s latest report.
Support (Anya Arnold and Debra Howell)
Support sig has also been attending the implementers sig- to get their perspective on issues.
Privacy (Carsten Schwill and Adam Chandler)
Public Library (Adam Murray)
User Management (Maura Byrne)
- UM-SIG discussed several UI issues this month.
- UXPROD-3644 - Getting issue details... STATUS - The user record requires an email address in the UI (as well as a selection of something in the “Preferred contact” field), but is not required in the backend. In several libraries, patrons may not have an email address. This causes trouble with notices and with editing the record in the UI (changes won’t save if there is no email address in the record).
- UIU-2443 - Getting issue details... STATUS - When a URL for a user record edit screen is copied to a new tab or window, then closed, Folio displays a blank screen. In other apps, this action directs the user to the parent page of the one just closed.
- Other issues that involve more than the UI:
- There is some development work on putting a separate PIN field in the user record (right now, any PIN set by a patron will be stored in the password field, overwriting the password).
- We discussed whether there should be fields in the user record that should be set behind special permissions. The SIG decided against advocating for that.
- We were asked to reconsider including Statistical codes in the user record. The SIG decided that the Departments field and custom fields should take care of reporting needs that statistical codes would resolve, and there was no need to add the field.
- We were given a URL for the latest (Kiwi) documentation for the Users app, and were asked to give feedback on the new information there.
App Interaction (Martina Schildt)
- Spend some time on planning for Wolfcon sessions
- Workflow sessions: libraries walk through cross-app workflows from beginning to end
- Sessions to focus on existing and good working workflows
- Sessions to focus on pain points in workflows
- Field based permissions:
- AI is curious to learn whether there are fields that need special protection through granular permissions
- Results so far: rather extend “action” menu for each record and be able to select actions related to workflow steps -> in discussion
- Next meeting around controlled digital lending
- In chat:
- UI customization rather than permissions
- It would be awesome if we could start plan for when to do all the planned features for customization of FOLIO
- It’s a huge ‘theme’ if we gather all customization features we have written up over time
Acquisitions (Dung-Lan Chen)
- Acquisitions video working group will have its first meeting at noon on May 12
- Dennis demoed invoice/voucher/fund/budget export functions which will be available in Morning Glory
- Acquisitions UAT for invoices/voucher/fund/budget export started last Thursday (May 5) and will continue thru May 12
- Making moderate progress in discussing topics on Implementers Topics list, several topics have discussed (ex POL & Inventory matching) since the last SIG Conveners updates to PC
- Had one meeting designated to discuss fiscal year rollover and invited Greg Hotton of Okanagan College to share with the group about their recent fiscal year rollover experiences
- The group had a Q&A regarding WolfCon 2022 Acquisitions related sessions and what we are expected to do/contribute
- Dennis posted in ACQ SIG slack channel looking for interest in putting together a session around “Workflow change or innovation inspired by Folio” to see if enough content/responses to plan for such session. Received positive feedback about attending such session if it’s offered
ERM (Martina Tumulla & Martina Schildt)
- Discussions around searching in Agreements app
- Update on latest development
Open Access (Björn Muschall) - not available today
- Further discussion on task list details
- Further dev refinement and discussion on Charge information and invoice integration
- Updates on latest developments
Resource Access (Jana Freytag)
- Discussion about item status and deletions and what statuses we are concerned about being able to be deleted
- Bug: item with status Lost and Paid, have action Mark as missing associated UIIN-2009 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- Reporting cross Meeting
- Support Delivery Requests via Patron Edge Service UXPROD-3646 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- WOLFCon Session Gathering
- Fee/Fines: How to set up and use export to Bursar
Chat Log
00:15:14 Brooks Travis: Messaging could be through OKAPI, as well, but we need mod-pubsub to implement delivery guarantee… 00:15:52 Owen Stephens: I was struggling to find the address of that page today - have we got that general information on a wiki page somewhere? 00:15:58 Peter Murray: https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/sys-ops-mgt-sig/2022-04-29T09:55/ 00:17:20 Owen Stephens: That would be great - thanks 00:30:33 Brooks Travis: UI customization rather than permissions 00:30:48 Index Data: +1 Brooks 00:31:03 Maura Byrne: +1 Owen and Brooks 00:31:26 Index Data: It would be awesome if we could start plan for when to do all the planned features for customization of FOLIO 00:32:00 Index Data: It’s a huge ‘theme’ if we gather all customization features we have written up over time 00:32:07 Martina Schildt | VZG: +1 Charlotte, this is asked for a lot 00:32:27 Maura Byrne: +1 Charlotte 00:42:58 Tod Olson: Must step away for a bit. 00:45:21 Dung-Lan Chen: +1 Owen re: searching function consistency cross apps 00:47:30 Owen Stephens: One area where its difficult for us to deliver is cross app searching. For example eHoldings users want to find eHoldings items that have agreements linked - which is definitely challenging right now 00:47:46 Ingolf Kuss: +1 Charlotte 00:48:30 Ian Walls: I think the Platform can provide solutions to certain cross-cutting concerns: if you need full-text searching power, here's Elastic. Need to send messages between Apps? Here's Kafka. etc 00:48:44 Tod Olson: back 00:48:45 Peter Murray: Ian++ 00:49:49 Tod Olson: ++ need POs 00:51:51 Ingolf Kuss: +1 Ian 00:54:27 Alexis Manheim: Definitely a good idea for a session! 00:54:37 Maura Byrne: +1 Alexis! 01:00:22 Ian Walls: https://librarytechnology.org/document/27160/white-paper-open-systems-in-the-age-of-library-services-platforms 01:00:29 Tod Olson: The Wikipedia on Clarivate has some useful background on that company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarivate 01:01:21 Owen Stephens: The “Library Technology" paper is called a white paper, and was comissioned by Ex Libris, 01:02:01 Brooks Travis: He’s also just flat-out wrong about a lot of stuff 01:02:13 Owen Stephens: It's a very specific view of what “Open" means. 01:02:21 Owen Stephens: 100% Ian 01:02:23 Tod Olson: ++Books 01:02:38 Tod Olson: ++Ian, confusion about "open" 01:02:49 Gang Zhou | SHL: From Alma's perspective 01:03:24 Charlotte Whitt: But how should the FOLIO project best address where Marshall Breeding is ‘flat-out wrong’ 01:03:38 Charlotte Whitt: A blog post? 01:03:45 Owen Stephens: I think looking at the practical aspects of "openess" - i.e. how easy it is to exploit that openess - is a fair thing to do. Sadly this paper does not do that IMO 01:05:31 Charlotte Whitt: Yes, indeed Owen 01:06:02 Owen Stephens: This is the passage that particularly riled me: “A proprietary application lacking APIs likewise defies practical interoperability and is a closed system. Whether open source products overall achieve a higher level of practical openness depends on specific implementations and on the strength of the APIs delivered versus relying on access to source code.†01:06:07 Brooks Travis: Sandbox and guest dev key are the two that really jumped out at me, at first 01:06:23 Ian Walls: they also cited "KohaCon" as a user group; it's a conference 01:08:30 Gang Zhou | SHL: What is FOLIO's definition of openness 01:08:37 Jana Freytag | VZG: Maybe invite all the critics to WOLFCon to show them the community ;) 01:12:41 Peter Murray: "transparency and community aspects" YES! 01:13:35 Tod Olson: Additionally, the FOLIO UIs use the FOLIO APIs, there is nothing hidden and reserved for the apps. 01:14:02 Ian Walls: for me, open means empowerment. you don't have to ask an authority to give you something you need, you can work to meet that need (with others or alone) and it can be of benefit to all 01:14:07 Brooks Travis: +1 Tod 01:14:41 Brooks Travis: That’s why our logo is a bee 🙂 01:16:07 Jana Freytag | VZG: The System is the queen ðŸ 01:16:16 Jesse Koennecke (he/him): +1 Jana 01:16:38 Tod Olson: ++ Jana 🙂 01:16:49 Brooks Travis: +1 Peter 01:17:04 Tod Olson: ++ 01:19:37 Brooks Travis: Clap back ðŸ‘🻠😄 01:19:47 Jana Freytag | VZG: +1 Tod! 01:20:15 Owen Stephens: +1 to that Jesse 01:20:43 Peter Murray: I've got a mental draft of a personal response on my blog about some of the details of the whitepaper, but that would come from me not the project. 01:22:56 Brooks Travis: I’m still floored by him saying we don’t have a sandbox… :/ 01:23:47 Maura Byrne: I'd be willing to look over any drafts to check the rhetoric. 01:24:20 Brooks Travis: I would be, as well 01:25:30 Maura Byrne: +1 Dung-Lan 01:25:34 Peter Murray: Community Council does have a working group about the main FOLIO website. They are quite far advanced in their work, but I don't think they have anything ready to show yet. 01:27:37 Tiewei Liu: https://openlibraryfoundation.org/projects/ 01:29:27 Peter Murray: I just migrated VuFind's Jira to the OLF—it is well over 10 years old. 01:29:52 Peter Murray: "I" == is me with my OLF Infrastructure Coordinator hat on. 01:30:31 Anya: Thank you