Outage Communications
The group had a discussion related to how the communication coming from the Status Page could be improved after the recent outages in the data center for some customers resulted in some conflicting updates and general confusion. Clarivate is reviewing their internal communication processes and how they can improve the information and timing of updates between the cloud/server team and the support team to ensure that updates are sent both accurately and timely.
Clarivate Staffing Updates
There have been some changes to the support leadership covering Polaris and the Vega Suite. Clarivate introduced Matt Baker, Clarivate’s new Regional Support Director in North America. Matt will be overseeing the support teams that provide Tier 1 support to Polaris and Discover customers. Liz Biggs is the Senior Team Lead for Polaris and Discover Tier 1 support. Caitlin Spears (Director, Customer Care) continues to oversee subject matter experts in product functionality for Polaris and Vega Suite (led by Gail Maitland, Manager - Customer Care and Ann Rakes, Senior Manager - Customer Care) and technical experts (led by Wayne DeCarr, Manager - Customer Care).
Clarivate continues to hire additional support staff as they move to a tiered support model. The new model is designed to provide faster responses to issues, but customers are encouraged to continue providing feedback through case satisfaction surveys.
Documentation Updates
During IUG, Clarivate launched its new Knowledge Portal. Going forward, all new Polaris documentation will be posted to this page, rather than the legacy documentation.iii.com site.
The documentation team will continue migrating existing content from the legacy site over to the new Knowledge Portal.
Marketing and Announcement Emails from Clarivate
The group had an extended discussion related to streamlining, consolidating, and publicizing the process for receiving announcements from Clarivate, particularly regarding product releases and webinar announcements. In short, both Clarivate and PIAC will work to better communicate these in advance, so customers are aware of upcoming webinars and other announcements. Internally, Clarivate will bring this feedback back to its Marketing team.
In the meantime, if you are not currently signed up to receive announcement emails for Polaris releases, you can sign up to receive them from the Email Preference Center. This is for all of Clarivate’s products, so be sure to select Public Library Software in the dropdown for your area of interest.
Verizon Email-to-SMS Functionality Continued Deprecation
As part of its continued efforts to decommission email-to-SMS functionality, Verizon has announced its plans to eliminate this service by March 2027. Polaris’ native text message functionality relies on this service to send notices and receipts via SMS. This aligns with changes already made by other US carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile.
Libraries looking to continue sending text messages from the ILS should explore other products such as Vega Interact or other third-party options.
For more information, see Clarivate’s support article (Supportal login required).