Page Comparison

These two organizations will discuss their delay decisions

Texas A&M -

For most of July the librarians and staff at Texas A&M University Libraries tested side-by-side processing in Voyager and FOLIO.  Any task that they performed in Voyager was repeated in FOLIO to compare the functionality and efficiency of the two systems.  Feedback was gathered informally during this exercise and from a formal survey in August.  Based on this exercise we have decided not to go live with FOLIO in September as planned.  The most significant factors are:

1. Implementation of FOLIO in mid-August of 2021 will have a significant negative impact on workflows and productivity
2. Critical functionality was not to be fixed or released until Iris Hotfix 3 which limited our ability to fully test and plan for the migration in mid-August
3. Inconsistencies with the OCLC single import and data import app made the system unreliable and inefficient
4. Data syncing and data integrity issues were still apparent in the Iris release
5. FOLIO’s lack of EDI invoicing and line limitation (an outside vendor issue & hotfix 3 timing)
6. Inconsistent fine charging along with no batch fee processing will have a negative impact on patron public relations
7. Lack of a demonstrable instance of EDS with our FOLIO data far enough in advance of our fall semester (this is an issue specific to Texas A&M, it is not a FOLIO development or functionality issue)

Here is a report with our functional area analysis related to jira tickets.

Tod and Christie for Chicago: Tod:

Back in May made hard-no go decision; really been going for July. We knew would be bit of a challenge to do that. Espeically because we knew fall would be coming - wanted to get FOLIO up and running in time for preparations for going on site. Still still had concerns: partly with state of FOLIO, particularly around data import and notices . We also were + still working out our migration from OLE. I think most of inventory Inventory and much of circ had been worked out; still other issues: data models were changing and our data is not the most straight forward. We 're also looking at have a wide range of integrations we have - and didn't have enough time to work out integration with remote storage , to really work that integration out in detail. One big thing we have: lots of local applications, built in Microsoft Access, original implementors are departed without knowledge transfer; they were Lots of legacy (with no knowledge transfer) Microsoft Access apps automating workflows, and we are still in progress of migrating them to something that can work with FOLIO. Timeframe reviewing biz requirements + implementing this in new platform - would have been more valuable, but couldn't.  Then it became clear our reopening plans would happen at same time as going live with FOLIO and would impace the same front line staff (2 monumental transitions at the same time) → Moving forward in summer just wasn't a good option (project situation and our situation)

Christie: Death by a thousand cuts: we didn't have the staff to deal with all of the work arounds and the reopening at the same time + a lot of workflows for which there werent workaround - our hope was that by postponing, these workflows then have more work arounds available.

Tod: We seem We hadn't realised how much of a time sink those legacy apps would be, so we dcided to work on mimicking them in FOLIO first - which is not satisfying, but feels like least bad strategy.

Major challenge combining getting FOLIO up and running at same time as opening up the libraries to the public again during the summer:
1) 2 monumental transitions at same time for front line staff - so not a good option.
2) We hadn't realised how much summer time is research time and so access must be maintained.
3) The 10 days we needed to be down fell right when the uni was asking us to open.

We seemed to have automated a lot of things that pees havent - and so also thining staffing. And so all of this autoamted workflow has to be transitioned - and we need to the staff to do that!  _ It was clear that summer is time for research - they need that time for access! We weren't so cognisent of that particular demand.

Christie: And the 10 days we'd need to be down fell right when the uni was asking us to open - and that gap would have prevented the services we needed to provide. 

Julie: peers haven't - and we needed all of those automated workflows to be transitioned. But we didn't have the staff to do that + deal with all the work arounds + reopen all at the same time → Death by a thousand cuts. Hopefully by postponing, some work arounds won't be needed anymore later on.

What influenced the original transition date? Tod: Fiscal year boundary is most attractive. OLE is open source - contractual arrangements around it with people hired to provide support + work for keeping existing software up to date (our systems continue to age). Analogy: Comercial system with support end = gun to your head. In our case, we have a system that is aging, there are fewer people to fix breakdowns in workflows and systematic errows - that's more like a ticking time bomb. Risk vs. discomfort. Texas A&M+ the ticking time bomb of aging system with few/no staff who know how to fix broken workflows (vs. a gun to head when commercial support runs out). What we want is to get past migration and transform these things into a platform we want to maintain, and it may make sense to keep some of those old apps as new FOLIO apps - we're trying to get over the gap that let's us get implemented. 

Paula recognises Tom Wilson from Uni Alabama, retiring in a few weeks, today is last meeting with us! Don't know who replacement is yet, but Uni Alabama is still very commited to FOLIO.