2023-04-25 FOLIO Implementers Meeting Notes

Date

25 Apr 2023

Recording

https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/implementation-group/2023-04-25T11:00/

Attendees

TK

Recommended Resources and Pre-Reads

What is an API?
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API
An amazing source on the FOLIO Wiki: Working with FOLIO APIs
The #learning-apis channel in slack is a friendly place to get help
Upcoming session at EBSCO User Group, for anyone attending: https://ebscousergroup.org/schedule/building-web-apps-to-streamline-folio-workflows/

Agenda

Housekeeping
- Since last we met...
- Incomplete Actions
- Future Sessions
API Basics for Total Absolute Beginners
- What is an API?
- Why do we do things with APIs in FOLIO?
- What can I do with APIs in FOLIO
- How do I do those things?
- Where can I learn more?
Closing
- Any actions or follow through?

Notes

Time	Topic	Notes
05:00	Goal of the session	Create a lesson plan to teach colleagues how-to recreated the cool stuff we hear about + record their solutions too. Put our heads together to create a basic version that other people can use. People who have great ideas don't always have the skills or language to implement them. So this is something for people just starting out.
08:00	Tara starting the presentation	Presention agenda
09:24	What is an API?	You already use APIs! Behind the scenes... Why do I care if FOLIO already does this? What does an API go out and "get" us? What is JSON Sending Data to FOLIO.
14:22	Can I hurt FOLIO? ':-(	With Great Power... ... who care if you blow up snapshot, amiright?
15:23	Let's make a requset in Postman	Our mission: Place a request to get records for all users who belong to a certain Patron Group. Step 1: Gather what we need Step 2: Set up our environment Step 3: Add a collection and a request Step 4: Set our headers and Host Step 5: Figure out how to get the users? Let's break it down Step 6: Let's run this puppy! Step 7: Profit Seems like a lot of effort for nothing.
23:33	Fancy flows in Postman	You don't have to use Postman!
26:04	Now it's your turn!	Wouldn't it be awesome if... ... FOLIO had an offline circulation tool? Need more ideas Challenge! Questions? Tools Resources
27:40	Q&A: It is possible to do this in 30 mins?	You might not get them going completely in half an hour, but motivate them to get involved and learning. Dunno how to do what I want to do, but I now have an idea how to find that. Fairly good intro, but may lose people after 2/3rds. My questions: Can I get my paraprofessionels to do something more efficiently than in the UI? Was awesome; the particulars of any tool will be the mud - so focus more on the universal pieces, without going into the tool specifics - i.e. show it in Postman but gloss over how Postman works, "for more details on this, go to this training". Very good presentation. Gives a taste of what you can do without getting into the weeds of the tool. 1 query for circ, and 1 query for bib-data. Then provide links to more information/ training. Very nice explaining the notions of environment and templates - keep that! It shows the reusability.
37:57	What did you hate about this presentation? How did I totally fail?	Here's Postman, suddenly we're doing complexe queries - could there be an intermediary step? What do you want attendees to do after this presentation? Owen's done similar training (0,5 day) Your last question "What can you imagine using this for" is the most important, otherwise they're not invested. Good to highlight this is not rocket science, but they still can't do anything after this presentation, they need to be motivated to go and do more work. So can that side of it be built up more? Aim is also to reduce anxiety and fear; create a low-stakes tutorial. Future idea: tutorial to use CQL with these APIs. Can the examples used be loaded into Postman? Share your Postman- things so that other people can use them? Go on to Snapshot and break it is good; but then "stick with GET" - maybe that's too cautious? Creating a load of data from a spreadsheet shows more powerfully, what Postman can, than getting a report. But different audiences have different views of what will help them. Compelling case for APIs is how much time you can save all the time, and you CAN fix mistakes. E.g. show POST then DELETE. Indeed, this is very usefull when adding thousands of records. Grab records and do something with them. Examples of what you can't do with APIs? Well, FOLIO works with APIs - FOLIO eats its own dogfood, there's no other secret sauce, this is it.

Implementers SIG

2023-04-25 FOLIO Implementers Meeting Notes

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