In the Metadata Management SIG, the Entity Management Working Group has completed their charge and drafted a Vision for a FOLIO Entities App. This vision has been presented to both App Interaction and MM, and received approval from MM. An epic and features have been created in JIRA. Chicago is interested in entities such as authorities and would like to see work continue. ACTION: Ask Jason Kovari to come to a future meeting and explain in more detail what is needed. The Metadata Management SIG has 2 active subgroups. These are Data Import (PO Ann-Marie Breaux) and Metadata Record Export (PO Magda Zacharska). (The MARCcat subgroup has not met since October 2019.) There are also have a number of active & inactive working groups, including a group currently considering FOLIO’s representation of bound-withs and analytics, a group working on metadata management-related reports (in concert with the Reporting SIG), and the entity management group mentioned above. Ann-Marie has created and shared a number of Data Import demo videos. Missouri State colleagues gave an update to MM recently on their experiences thus far using Inventory. They’ve been discussing the desired elements and their order for results displays (middle pane) and for item record displays (right pane). Charlotte has created slide decks that allow each institution to mark up their preferences. They have begun a conversation about the display of empty fields. They will discuss this in the context of Inventory; then we will bring it to App Interaction to consider cross-app implications as well as whether any proposed changes might be adopted FOLIO-wide.

The Resource Management SIG and Acquisitions Small Group spent some time reviewing reporting needs and what needed to be an in-app report and what could be fulfilled by the LDP. Members are interested in being able to export search results to a CVS file for maximum flexibility. The main SIG also discussed how to model print + online subscriptions, although did not reach any conclusions. They could be handled as a package, but then the electronic title would need to be tied in via the Receiving Record, even though it wouldn’t be received. Using Agreements and then attaching the electronic e-resource to the same PO as a print could be another possibility. Both Acquisitions Small Group and the Resource Management SIG reviewed how to use Expense Classes, both a reporting a tool to indicate the breakdown of a how a fund was spent, and potentially as a limiting factor, such as to force a subject fund to spend a certain amount on print versus electronic, or monograph versus serial. The process of fiscal year roll over and how to freeze funds was discussed by the Acquisitions Small Group. The SIG considered a proposal from Leipzig to be able to encumber funds on a PO or indicate that an invoice is for a future fiscal year. This discussion is ongoing with Acquisitions Small Group. Both the Resource Management SIG and Acquisitions Small group considered bulk editing of funds, communicating PO information to vendors who lack integration, and organization types. Acquisitions Small Group also discussed integration of orders with EBSCOnet and importing invoice information with Edifact. The ERM subgroup focused a lot of work on the Licenses app: improvements to the display of licenses and their amendments; relationship of licenses to Agreements, and license export. The ERM subgroup also considered display enhancements to Agreements, an ERM Dashboard to provide an overview of upcoming activities and Agreement statuses, and the management of prefixes and suffixes to URLs, within the internal knowledgebase.

In the Resource Access SIG, regarding loans, they reached decisions on overrides, permission escalation and claimed returned: search & resolution. Regarding fees and fines: they addressed handling of aged to lost items with no fees charged, changes to Actual Cost processing based on developer input, and adding a Grace Period for Recalls and move both grace periods from Loan Policy to Overdue Fine Policy. Annalisa Di Sabato from BNFC gave us a presentation on patron notices and some request pick slip enhancement ideas.  They decided whether to allow Recalls, Holds, Pages on items with the status Recently returned If pages are allowed, should the item status change to Paged. Requests in-app report: UXPROD-925 can be marked as a duplicate and the status changed to closed. Requests – preventing local pages and other policy changes – small group outcome/documentation is here. In general circulation, they discussed location uniqueness and created User Stories for UM SIG: UXPROD-35 and UXPROD-37. They had a great presentation from Vandana Shah on Reports for the Circ apps which gave us a good overview. They discussed the desirability of having the last patron who borrowed an item being retained after loans are anonymized. Knowing who last borrowed an item is important in case it is discovered after an item is returned that there is damage to the item, or components are missing. There was a general discussion on Covid/Corona impact on library circulation.

The User Management SIG has been going through most of the outstanding JIRA tickets related to User Management. They have de-prioritized some tickets that have been addressed through other tickets. UXPROD-242 (Protect fields from being overwritten in user import) has been ranked fairly high-priority, but isn’t being worked on at the moment. Leipzig has taken on some development on JIRA tickets that largely address the UI. UXPROD-1811 (Implement patron PIN as separate password field): This was ranked fairly low by many institutions, but the 4-digit PIN currently has to take the place of the value in the password field, which some institutions found concerning. They’ve been discussing bulk user loads and are trying to spec out how to improve bulk user loading.  They are scheduled to continue discussing it in two weeks. They talked about Tod’s Discuss post about SSO/SAML integration for user authentication. There was some interest in Grouper and Active Directory integration, to make User permission assignment a little smoother.

In the App Interaction SIG, in last meetings they discussed the general printing in FOLIO. There is a collection of use cases across FOLIO. Those use cases are for printing results from results lists as well as complete records. There are two possible approaches: template approach/controlled export and print screen in front of me. They did some tests for printing in browser, those were not satisfying across apps. The next actions are to get some patterns (Kimie will provide export results mockups), POs will write stories for export and for printing; those will need ranking by institutions to see prioritization. Plans for next meetings include inviting SysOps to talk about permissions management in a single tenant and discussing display of empty & unmapped fields.

The Reporting SIG looked at how can FOLIO participating institutions help with FOLIO Reporting. Institutions can contribute a Test Data Developer to work with the Reporting SIG to assist the reporting community with curating and generating test data for our development environment so that report writers can test their queries with substantial data sets; contribute an SQL Developer to work with subject matter experts in the Reporting SIG to understand report requirements, then to develop new, open source report queries for the FOLIO community; and contribute a SME (Subject Matter Expert) to help SQL developers understand report requirements. Our highest need is currently for a Resource Access SME to join our RA/UM Reports Working Group. The Reporting SIG has completed documentation of its 20201005_folio_personal_data_fields (a list of fields with personal data) for maintaining GDPR compliance for the Library Data Platform for FOLIO reporting. Thanks to the Product Council and the Product Owners for moving this issue forward and starting needed documentation and procedures to help the FOLIO project maintain GDPR compliance. The Reporting SIG continues to recommend that the FOLIO community review, address, and document GDPR compliance for the entire FOLIO platform in consultation with GDPR experts. The Reporting SIG working groups for all functional areas are collaborating on derived table query development for the Library Data Platform. At this time, 30 of 40 derived table queries identified so far have been written, tested, indexed, and posted on the FOLIO Analytics GitHub at https://github.com/folio-org/folio-analytics/tree/master/sql/derived_tables ERM test dataset from Leipzig has been implemented in the Library Data Platform test environment. The ERM report development group has restarted with Axel Dorrer as lead. There are two approaches on using eHoldings app data are considered: either eHoldings will be enhanced to provide data for reporting or LDP will be enhanced to pull data out of eHoldings. The Reporting SIG developed and distributed its Reporting Survey to all FOLIO participating institutions who identified a reporting representative. All reporting representatives have completed the survey, so the Reporting SIG can begin reviewing results. Many thanks to all those who submitted reporting survey responses for their institutions! The Reporting SIG reps attended the Resource Management SIG meeting to discuss reports being built in the finance applications. Reporting SIG reps attended the Resource Access SIG meeting to review reports being developed for both Resource Access and User Management.

The Consortia SIG continues to discuss the idea of an open source bib utility. They considered options for software.  We spoke with Theodor Tolstoy about using Libris and Kirsten Wilson about using ReShare.  It looks like ReShare is the better option. This idea grew out of discussions in the Consortia SIG, but that is not the right place for it.  The idea needs a new home.  This week they will talk to Sebastian Hammer about whether it would make sense as part of the ReShare project.

The Accessibility SIG has developed a Keyboard Testing Checklist, which is in the final testing phase and will be ready to share soon. Easily walk through an aspect of an app to test for keyboard navigation. VPAT activities are on pause. Tehey did get some vendor responses, most would require a meeting and demo to provide estimate. One vendor did give the range 20K-65K. They haven’t engaged any more in this area and will be focusing on the accessibility statement. (Examples of accessibility statements: WordPress; Openstax; Drupal) UC Boulder screen reader testing continues (schedule). Completed: Organizations app; Custom fields; Date picker. Future: Apps menu; Orders app; Data import; Open/closed loans.

The SysOps SIG is giving guidance to the Support SIG (on what error messages should look like). Q2 deployment issues (in Q1 it was fine, problematic in Q2; Streaming GETs). Jason Root is in contact with the developers. Experiences with Q2 release: there are too many platform changes in this release, collisions during migrating permissions, migration is mostly working, but it is slow, there is a need to talk about permissions with the App Interaction SIG. In the data migration subgroup, an effort for development of bulk APIs for migration is being made.

In the Support SIG, the Support Dashboard has been updated to include an “Affected Institution” Chart. This month saw a number of P1 bugs identified, resolved, or in process. To date the SIG has triaged over 60 tickets. The Support SIG continues meeting Monday mornings to provide operational support for production libraries by processing and reviewing all existing support tickets. Additionally, Support SIG members check on outstanding tickets throughout the week. The need for documentation to assist with troubleshooting has been noted.  Lack of clarity regarding how a function is intended to work delays bug identification. A big shout out to Ann-Marie Breaux who has been extremely helpful and responsive with the data import related issues!

In the Implementers SIG, the group came up with new definitions for feature rankings: R1 = Urgent; R2 = High; R3 = Medium; R4 = Low; R5 = Not needed. Cornell identified some features they had ranked as “go-live” that will not be worked on before their planned implementation.  They will look at each one to determine if there are possible workarounds and encourage other Round VI libraries to do the same. Emma Boettcher, the PO for item status, spoke with the group about which item statuses should be prioritized for development. Ann-Marie Breaux, the PO for data import, spoke with the group about development plans for batch import features needed for the Round IV libraries.  There is also ongoing discussion about this in the Implementers Slack channel.

In the Community Outreach SIG, the group has now moved to a monthly meeting cadence. The community newsletter will also go out once a month. The Customization and Hosting section of the website has been updated; they are working to update the Platform and Roadmap section to reflect the current roadmap. They plan to implement an awareness campaign over the next couple weeks around the 100th Sprint cycle to show how far the project has come. Please note that virtual conference deadlines are approaching for ACRL and ER&L

The Forum Facilitators reports that planning continues for fall Forums. The archive of Forums can be found here.

Product Council reports that the September 7 and October 1 PC meetings were cancelled to give that time slot to the Vision and Strategy Group (see update below). Between September 10 and October 8 the PC only met on September 24 where some of the recently implemented libraries gave status updates.  All report general satisfaction but some noted that the lack of documentation and batch import hampered their normal operations.  Chalmers celebrated their first anniversary on FOLIO.  The Privacy SIG needs to be rebooted and PC members are encouraged to call for volunteers, especially for a convener.  The OLF has asked for volunteers to serve on the OLF Board and for two Senior Program Officers, one for Membership Development and one for Strategic Projects & Initiatives.

The Technical Council is Using a new Kanban board to review Technical Debt. Confirmed new release numbering scheme of  YYYY-N.S, where: YYYY = Year; N = The Nth maintenance release that year (1,2,3,4); and S = sequence/number of releases with the YYYY-N tag. They reviewed and approved recommendations for UI Testing frameworks. BigTest v1 (current tool) is unsupported. They will move from BigTest to Jest or RTL going forward and re-implement all current BigTest tests in Jest or RTL. The deadline to re-implementation by Q3-2021 (giving teams 12 months). This impacts only teams/persons that are working with Stripes (i.e. Stripes Force): BigTest v1 (current tool) is unsupported, they will need to move from BigTest to BigTest v2 and re-implement all current BigTest tests in new BigTest v2. The deadline to re-implementation by Q3-2021 (giving teams 12 months). In terms of End-to-End Tests: the current tool – Nightmare JS, is unsupported. They will replace Nightmare JS with BigTest V2, and re-implement all current Nightmare JS tests in new BigTest v2 over time – no deadline yet. They reviewed progress/status of Architectural Blueprint items. They reviewed GitHub’s plans to change the default branch from “Master” to “Main” and are evaluating how to proceed. Looks like Git will make it easy on us – few changes. They reviewed the new Search Architectural proposal. A summary of architecture: a new module is needed to handle Full Text queries, feed ElasticSearch via Kafka queue, this can work for any/all data in FOLIO modules, we understand that Inventory is the area with highest needs. The open issueis  how much, if any, business logic needs to be part of this model (like understanding/dealing with relationships between modules and data entities (Instance/Holdings/Items). Next Step: More narrowly define the scope of searching Inventory and propose an effort – action: Vince Bareau and Mikhail Fokanov – timeframe to fit with project capacity planning … TBD whether this can be deployed with the next (Honeysuckle) release of FOLIO. The Tech Council expects a presentation on October 14.