2024-06-05 Meeting Notes

5 min

Note-taker

Laurence

10 min

UAT

Amelia Sutton

FOLIO development is moving towards using UAT for new features. UAT will check that new features meet the desired needs while there is still time to add to the feature. Also to check for anything not working properly. Acquisitions SIG has started doing this - see Routing lists UAT. Amelia has started creating UAT for the second half of profile pictures (showing profile picture at checkout, and validation for external links). Amelia will let SIG members know when ready, ask for volunteers for the testing. Or can try doing in a future Users SIG meeting. Testing shouldn’t require a dedicated test environment, can probably be done in Snapshot. Amelia has created a User Acceptance Testing page in the User Management SIG site.

General gripes and workarounds

Maura Byrne

Number of users shown in UI when filter is applied is not accurate

Karen

It would be nice to be able to easily see how many users are in a certain patron group just by selecting that patron group in the Users search filter. Unfortunately, this does not result in accurate numbers. This can be seen if you select patron group A, note the number, then select patron group B, note the number, and then select both patron groups A and B – the numbers don’t add up correctly. Amelia explained that this is a result of how the database used by FOLIO on the backend works. Numbers greater than 1000 are estimated. If you use Postman, then you need to have ‘Limit=0' or you get an estimate, not an exact number. The Lists app. (new to Poppy) does make getting an accurate number possible, without needing to use APIs. Also can do workaround of exporting file, opening in Excel, and counting number of records. See also UIU-3148

Inventory had this issue, but switching to Elastisearch solved the problem. There is a plan to implement Elastisearch in Users, but currently low priority. Was discussed in Users SIG before, but concern was raised about the autocomplete feature, which could raise privacy issues, and also increase the risk of editing the wrong user. Would be good if autocomplete could be disabled if Elastisearch were to be used in Users.

Amelia will ask the developers about using Elastisearch in Users.

Problem of fields getting overwritten during patron load

Olga

The patron/staff field was added for ECS multitenant environments. Staff will be able to login to other tenants, patrons will not be able to login to any but their home tenant.

For libraries that load user data directly via APIs, there is no way to protect fields from being over-written. This makes using the patron / staff field impossible.

At 5C, user information is received daily in a CSV file. The file is converted to JSON using a Python script, which can also add values as needed. Generally, the file is compared to the previous day’s file, and only records that have changed are added.

Ability to hide unused fields. Templating feature

Olga

Have had complaints about FOLIO having too many tabs, fields, etc. Important or searched-for information can be hard to find. It would be nice if institutions that never use certain fields, such as middle name, could choose to have those fields not be displayed. Also would be nice if could have templates, similar to what the Orders app has – the templates determine what fields display, and can pre-populate fields.

Amelia will check out how templates work in the Orders app. The ability to have certain fields not display should be do-able. Should have a discussion as to what fields can be designated as “hideable”. Will discuss concept at a future SIG meeting.

Multiple email addresses

Uschi

Some students never check their University email accounts, only their personal email account. The University account does not permit forwarding of emails. It would be good if could have multiple email addresses stored in a user record, and have notices sent to all stored addresses. Also nice if could have a blank copy of the email sent to a staff account, for diagnostic purposes.

Notices is also an RA topic, good to bring up in RA SIG. Uschi will add to the RA Gap list, for future discussion there.