2023-3-21 - Consortia SIG Notes

• Thanks to the Consortia SIG group; reviewed as part of this process
• Thanks to community, sales documentation, competitive analysis, MOBIUS, and FOLIO Implementer interviews

UXPROD-4049: Enhanced Consortia Support

• Ultimately where all features will be written/assigned

Documentation being added to the Consortia SIG space on the FOLIO wiki

• Is that the right place?  Need to discuss further

• Upon login, the system will apply a primary affiliation = active affiliation
• Users with more than one affiliation can switch their active affiliation which changes their experience (context) in FOLIO
• Affiliation changes allows a user to switch tenants without leaving FOLIO; in particular, allow a user to move from a Consortia tenant to a separate tenant 
• Permissions control access, view, edits, etc. of user with multiple affiliations
• A user with appropriate permissions can view and edit affiliations of other users
• User record contains an affiliation accordion where you can see the affiliations assigned to a user and the permissions that user has with each affiliation

• Each library staff manages their own settings; users are not able to modify settings for other libraries
• A new option for Consortium in Settings; only visible to those who have permission
  • Where members are added/removed and where record sharing is managed
• New permissions that will allow users to manage settings on behalf of other members; i.e. a consortia manager

• New application that allows configuration changes for multiple members at a time
• First step is to select the members for which configurations are being made: sets context and is sticky 
  • Form compares values for all identified members
  • Shows differences in settings between libraries by displaying a blank for settings and a toast message displayed
• This approach is seen as a significant improvement to the user experience of managing complex settings across member libraries
• Terms or controlled vocabularies can be added to individual members and/or share across members for consistency
  • Allows for consortial terms/vocabularies to be shared across the consortium
  • Display shows terms shared between selected libraries and individual terms
• Policies and templates can be managed and shared between/with member libraries
• Shared settings only edited at the consortium level

• Might be good to categorize the setting 'type' of pages?
  • Yes
• What settings does the Consortia SIG as the most important to manage at a consortial level?
  • Question from Dennis for the SIG
  • Future agenda item
• For the  permission functionality mean that there is a shared user database or do certain permissions enable something like a virtual view of all users or is a complete list of users only visible in the consortia tenant?
  • The design ATM is emphasizing privacy at the moment; users are only visible in their home tenant
  • No common list of users
  • Changing affiliations allows a user to view a list of users in that tenant
  • Users with a tenant affiliation will appear in that tenant's list of users
    • Still working on how to edit a user with affiliations in each tenant when its not their primary affiliation
  • Link to some of that consortia app functionality
• Does this have an impact on consortial borrowing?
  • It shouldn't; focus is on the Consortium Manager app and how to allow management of multiple libraries
• Will there be a sandbox/demo server specially for the consortial extensions to test them?
  • EBSCO in discussions about the best way to test
  • Modules are already ending up in snapshot
  • More to come
• How does the tenant know it's the "consortia" tenant?
  • Installation of the Consortium Manager module/app
  • More technical answers likely, but not known at this moment by Dennis
• Comment from Peter S.: This comes close to our requirements for a consortia admin tool and the role of some kind of superuser. It seems to be valuable for managing general configurations in a multi-tenant environment and it looks quite familiar to me compared with the ILS admin tool which is currently used at GBV.
  • Possibility for sharing information between Dennis/EBSCO and GBV
  • Demonstration?  More to come
• What is the vision for libraries being on a shared vs. single tenant?
  • Created to open the door for consortial management of multiple tenants
  • No intention to encourage libraries to be in a single tenant vs. a shared tenant
  • Tenants could be divided separately than by library
• Functionality is an enhancement, not a replacement 
  • Goal is to add functionality without being disruptive to what already exists