News from PIAC - May 2024

Ingram Migration to sFTP

Last year, Ingram began notifying customers about an impending switch to sFTP for EDI acquisitions traffic. Since then, Innovative and Ingram have been working to ease the transition for customers by adding support for sFTP in Polaris 7.6. Ingram has also clarified that they will continue supporting non-secure FTP in the near future, but customers can move to sFTP at their convenience.

Libraries that are ready to move to sFTP and are already on Polaris 7.6 can update their Supplier records following the instructions in this Supportal article.

Those using Polaris 7.5 or earlier are encouraged to schedule an upgrade to Polaris 7.6 to take advantage of the new sFTP functionality. A patch is also available for 7.5 - customers can contact iii Support for additional details.


Digital Accessibility Audits

Some libraries have reported an increase in digital accessibility audits which aim to ensure that an organization’s digital presence meets adequate accessibility standards. These audits typically include the library’s website as well as 3rd party vendors such as the public catalog.

Innovative is familiar with these audits and has met with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The tests that the OCR runs tend to focus on the use and functionality of screen readers and keyboards and will flag things that are not accessible to these devices. Polaris services, including PowerPAC, meet this threshold.

The Vega team regularly performs VPAT analysis work to check for accessibility. Vega Discover currently meets all WCAG 2.1 AA standards and work is being done to meet the recently released WCAG 2.2 standard.


Web-Based System Administration

Innovative continues to develop functionality behind-the-scenes to move System Administration functions out of the Polaris client into a web-based solution. Initial development limited the implementation to AD FS, but in recent months, Innovative has added support for Azure for customers using a single domain. There is planned work in Polaris 7.7 that will address customers with multiple domains, such as consortia.

These features are still in development, but Innovative’s long-term goal is to implement a central authentication service for all web-based Polaris tools, including Leap.


Innovative Phone Alerts

There are currently 6 Polaris customers serving as beta partners for Innovative Phone Alerts - Innovative’s replacement product for voice and SMS notifications. As of mid May, one library has gone live and two more are planned by the end of the month.

After this initial wave of beta partners, Innovative will move on to the group of Early Adopters. Customers interested in being Early Adopters for IPA should contact their account manager.

IPA utilizes existing PAPI and export functionality to send notices to the notification vendor, Cirrius Impact. Once the notification information is received from Polaris, Cirrius delivers the notice to the patron and reports back to Polaris. Because this functionality has already existed for other 3rd party vendors, implementation can generally move pretty quickly.

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