Acquisitions SIG meeting structure improvement

Owned by Dung-Lan Chen
Last updated: Feb 02, 2024 by Heather McMillan
4 min read

(Created on 8/31/2023 - Participants of Acquisitions SIG meetings are welcome to edit this page or provide feedback)


  • Meeting schedule - currently weekly on Tuesdays at 1 pm Eastern and every other Friday at 9 am Eastern
    • Frequency reduction?
      • change to "once a week, alternating Tuesdays and Fridays" was suggested
    • Adjust meeting time?
      • perhaps look at different meeting time to allow more/easier participation for people from different time zones if meeting frequency is reduced?


  • Meeting discussion "buckets"/categories
    • Implementers Topics
    • Feature refinement: Dennis' raises questions that need the group' input or features being developed that need to be reviewed with the group, etc.
    • Big Picture/Future oriented topics: Hear not in the weeds, bigger picture topics (Acq SIG previously had a small group for in the weeds topics and the large group for the bigger picture topics)
      • Brainstorming ideas to get bigger picture feedback for Acquisitions.
    • Sharing and Collaboration: Show & tell, help each other out kind of demo & discussions from those who are more experienced using FOLIO functions
    • Priority's for Acq SIG and other SIG's. Information about broader issues. We talk a lot about the fine details, but a broader vision for what we all want. What problems do we want Acquisitions to address? What would make FOLIO better than other systems?
    • What other topics to work on besides feature refinement (mainly from PO point of view?!)


  • Ways to make meeting participation more meaning/helpful/valuable
    • Homework before each meeting, examples of homework
      • ERM SIG usually has homework sent out before the meetings – a Google doc for communicating homework that people can look at and fill in before, during or after the meetings
      • Ask people to review the next 2-3 Implementers Topics before the meeting if discussing Implementers Topics is on the agenda for that day, so people have a chance to look at the topics more closely and be prepared for discussions in SIG meetings

      • Having the homework responses written giving your example or opinion is useful for po’s to refer back too. Also, the document can be added to after the meeting.

    • Address related Implementer topics at the same time rather than going in numerical order. This will help with an overall workflow and have more of the right people in attendance.  

    • If a meeting is cancelled: Have it as a homework block of time and ask people to do a specific task. Like User Acceptance Testing.

    • If we want more curated meeting topics, need more people to organize different portions. Appoint someone to curate each area for the SIG.

      • 1 person working on topics.
      • 1 person giving people advance warning.
      • 1 person working on future presentations.

    • Need a way to rank the priorities of the implementer topics.



SIG Convenor agenda planning parking lot -

  • Topics that SIG members expressed interest in discussing
    • Ways to handle multi-volume sets (discussed in 10/10/23 SIG meeting)
    • GOBI API integration show & tell
    • EDI ordering integration with other vendors (planned for 10/17/23 SIG meeting)
  • Contacted Ann Marie since early August to join one of Acquisitions SIG meetings to provide guidance and details for continuous discussion of Implementers Topic # 99 (Ann Marie responded no development date has been set but happy to talk with the group if we would like, invited her to join our meeting for Implementers Topics discussion)
  • Jenn Colt and Natalya Pikulik of Cornell agreed to come to Acq SIG to demo ProQuest/Coutts EDI ordering integration they set up in FOLIO but they encountered some issue and waiting for it to be resolved before they come to demo in Acq SIG (see Slack communication thread originated on June 30 Corrie Hutchinson's EDI ordering instruction question for more details and follow up - most recent follow up with Natalya via the original Slack post was Sept. 6)
  • Aaron Neslin identified a list of Implementers Topics that were submitted by Duke with no one else attached their name to show interest yet - Topic # 33, 35, 36, 57, 60, 67, 69, 73.  My thoughts either we give a time period (a month, two months) with the topic numbers and ask SIG members to review and attach their name(s) if of interest or we can review each one briefly in one or two SIG meetings and add interested parties names to the topics accordingly.  Anything remains as Duke only can be determined by PO as to what to do with those topics.
  • Ideas for SIG meetings
    • As more institutions joining FOLIO, we see increasing numbers of Slack post by new implementers about issues or unusual behaviors they are experiencing and looking for help.  It's a bit challenging to answer some of the questions when the context or details are lacking or insufficient, so an idea .... perhaps we can add a 10-15 mins time slot in each meeting (if time permits) for people to bring questions they have to the group by doing screen share of what they are experiencing to help people see and understand the issue better to provide feedback or for PO and PO team to troubleshoot and resolve the issue(s)