Here’s the recap from PIAC’s January meeting with the Polaris folks.
Recent Outages and Response
It was reported by members during the recent data center outages (January 14th being the most recent) that updates from support were conflicting with what was being reported on the status page. Innovative said this was largely due to specific customer circumstances being different and the need for case-by-case handling. Innovative agreed to work on a better internal process for sharing information more consistently, but stressed that the best way to keep track of larger outages is to follow the updates on the Platform Status page. It was noted that the page is updated every four hours and PIAC asked that they revisit that policy to update more frequently even if the status hasn’t changed since the last update to assure customers the issue is still being addressed. We also recommend subscribing to all environments that impact your site. This can be used to track both planned and unplanned outage updates. You must be logged into the support center to have the option to subscribe. Clarivate has a Knowledge Base article as well as a video tutorial on how to use the Status page if you need further assistance.
Data Center Hosting Webinar
Innovative is hosting a webinar March 4th at 11am Eastern for hosted customers to give an overview of hosting and answer a few questions such as:
- What’s different between on-prem and the hosted environment?
- What level of administrative access would I have?
- Best practices for keeping data secure in the hosted environment?
- How much can hosted cater to customer needs?
- What’s done for data privacy?
- What’s done to ensure libraries’ data is secure?
- Where is my data stored?
Look for the Webinar announcement soon and if you have any suggestions for topics you would like to see covered, share those with the committee.
QZ Tray Certificates
PIAC again brought this issue to Innovative and asked if they would revisit the decision to not “build in” the certificate needed to properly setup and use the QZ Tray Utility. Customers have shared the challenges and frustration of either having to request and install the certificate per workstation or manually accept the certificate pop-up each time it’s used. Innovative maintains that providing a private key that will be installed on a local device is a security and data concern and goes against best practices and accepted industry standards but did agree to investigate the issue again.
Billing Notices in LX Starter
Innovative is aware of an issue in LX Starter where some bill notices are being duplicated. The issue seems to be limited to manual bills. The Polaris and Vega teams are investigating the best way to total the amount owed in LX Starter. Please open a support ticket with local examples and asked to be linked to existing support tickets on the issue with manual bills.
PIAC also brought up that LX Starter notices cannot display the total account balance. It was suggested that maybe Polaris could export the total balance with each billing line item, so LX Starter could more easily “merge” an account balance total into the final notice output. The Polaris team will work with the LX Starter team to explore this possibility.
Coming in 8.1: Cancelled Hold Reasons (MEEP winner)
Innovative demoed the new functionality coming in 8.1 for adding a cancellation reason to inform patrons of why their hold was cancelled. Once the option is enabled in System Administration, a System Administrator table will be used to create custom messages that can then be selected by staff from a select list. The option will be available from both the Patron Account and Hold Request Form and are planned to appear on Polaris generated notices, with support for LX Starter notices coming at a later time.
Feedback from the Cataloging Forum
The PIAC committee discussed with Innovative some feedback from the recent IUG Cataloging Forum. The IUG steering committee has also summarized and shared a more comprehensive list as well, but our discussion largely centered on improving cataloging functionality in LEAP. The two core concerns we focused on were the ability to view and edit multiple records at once and a free-text MARC editor option.
The expansion of the Find Tool Window coming in 8.1 (another MEEP winner) is hoped to be able to add better multi-window support.
The free-text MARC editor, however, is a more challenging obstacle. While a free-text MARC editor solution could potentially be developed, managing and maintaining two complex components that run side-by-side and functionally do the same thing is problematic and would likely take most or all of our development points in one or more future MEEP cycles, thus slowing down development in other areas; but a bigger concern was accessibility. A free text editor in the browser that has complex business logic components that also meets the latest accessibility requirements might not be possible, and even having a non-accessible option available could be viewed as a form of non-compliance. Customers are encouraged to share specific benefits and use cases of a free-text editor (easier copy/paste, faster spell checking, easier to enter diacritics, etc.) on the Idea Exchange as it may be more feasible to implement specific functionality in a format that supports accessibility.
PIAC will continue to work with Innovative to address the concerns of the community and thank you to everyone that has shared their thoughts, ideas, and concerns in the forums and on Discord.