January News from PIAC

Polaris
1

Innovative staff introduced Jed Gilmore, Vice President of Customer Care. Jed is the customer care senior leader for Innovative and the other product teams under the Academic & Government segment of Clarivate, including ProQuest, Ex Libris, and more.

Items PIAC brought to Innovative for January:

  1. 2023 Upgrade Schedule

  • Polaris 7.4 release date: Late March 2023

  • Polaris 7.5 release date: Late Q3 (goal of March/September release cycle)

    • For the new Multiple pickup option, PIAC asked if III will help libraries currently using separate branches for curbside, drive-up window, etc., transition to this new pickup option. Samantha Quell said the team had not planned for any automated clean-up or removal of branches but will now consider possibilities.
    • The new Weeding process/functionality was added for a contractual obligation. The site asked for a way to send weeding through an approval workflow: staff pull together list, and it moves up for approval or is sent back. Samantha said the plan is to use item record sets or a new type of record set to facilitate the process. Weeding criteria templates and toolbar reports may also be used to help staff find items to pull from the shelf and alert staff to items which shouldn’t be included.

Moving forward, Innovative hopes to stick to a March/September release cycle. 6 months between software releases allows the team to tackle bigger development items.

  1. Known issues log - last updated in October

PIAC noted the list was missing some reported bugs. Jesse Jensen posted an updated list to the Supportal on 1/25/2023: Known Issues for Polaris 6.2–7.3

  1. Confusion over API documentation

PIAC raised questions around the API terms of use (Clause 4f) and the Developer Resources.

  • Do they conflict with each other?
  • How do the terms of use impact libraries with existing custom tools and apps that use the API?
  • Where can customers find all policies/terms of use for Innovative/Clarivate?

Samantha forwarded the two documents to III’s legal counsel for comment on whether they conflict. She included examples of customer-built tools. Waiting for reply, so the agenda item was tabled until next month.

  1. LX Starter

Samantha shared an update on LX Starter from Taylor Fisher. The rollout is in Wave 2 (small/medium/large libraries with English-only notifications) and is progressing nicely. They are on-track to roll out Wave 3 by early summer. The list of enhancements for Wave 4 is still being built and does not yet have a timeline. Samantha can share more information when there is an updated feature list and timeline.

If you have questions, concerns, frustrations, praise, or suggestions, PIAC is here to represent Polaris libraries to Innovative! Please feel free to reach out to Debra (dwischmeyer@ccslib.org) or to any PIAC member.

January 2023 Newsletter Draft.pdf (460.6 KB)

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