CONTINUED DISCUSSION ON BOT TRAFFIC AND PERFORMANCE
We began our discussions with the issues regarding bot crawlers and service slowdowns. Clarivate is working on a crawler response and getting hosted libraries protected behind Cloudflare. They have seen an uptick in crawler activity for Polaris hosted libraries in the last 2-3 weeks, as of 08/24, and they are working on more aggressively blocking international sources. There are numerous groups of crawlers coming from numerous sources, making it more complicated to block them all.
General slowdowns, including ERMS timeouts, could be from a variety of different factors including legitimate third-party software traffic, so it may vary from library to library. Currently there appears to only be a small percent of hosted libraries having issues, so please make sure to speak up via support tickets with as much detail as possible if you are experiencing slowdowns.
Statement from Clarivate Customer Care:
We understand some of the Polaris customer base is discussing slowness and challenges with Polaris stability.
We take system performance and stability seriously and all issues should be investigated by our support team.
We are seeing high volume currently, so if a support case is urgent, or taking longer than expected, please use escalation pathways (escalate the case or write to iiisupportescalation@clarivate.com).
Generally, we are seeing slowness/stability issues in these areas:
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Most of the slowness/outages reports we are seeing are due to automated traffic (bots/crawlers) temporarily causing slowness and outages. The impact can be sustained and repeated.
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We have seen a large uptick in reports in the past several weeks, for both Clarivate hosted and self hosted customers, and have created a support article, which we can enhance as needed, to address initial questions: Crawlers and Botnets in the Polaris Environment (Support Center login needed, also attached).
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Our cloud team reports that their CloudFlare Magic Transit testing is going well and expect it to be rolled out to the hosted customer base before the end of the year, but do not yet have exact timing. In the meantime, geofencing for systems experiencing sustained impact is our current recommendation. Every time you have an issue please open a support case so we can consult.
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A small subset of the Polaris hosted user base has reported replicable slowness with specific functions, which we are investigating with our cloud and networks team.
- If a library is experiencing slowness for a specific Polaris function (or sets of functions) they should open a support case with as many details as possible, so we can assess.
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Any other system performance/stability issues should be reported to our support team so we can triage.
- We have a feedback loop with our development teams and make improvements to stability and security in each release, so it’s important to upgrade to new releases on a regular schedule.
KNOWLEDGE PORTAL
Clarivate has moved over all information from the previous documentation site to the new Knowledge Portal. They are also moving away from having multiple copies of documentation, such a document for each version of Polaris, but instead will have only one set of documentation, which will include version notes. They will begin keeping track in this way with Polaris 8.2 and forward.
The legacy desktop staff client help is no longer being updated because there is limited new development for the client, but some workflows where the client document had the best description of the process still need to be ported over to the current Knowledge Portal.
PIAC suggested that a useful way to organize information would be in a way that instructs how to use a function etc. In support of this idea, Clarivate is already investing more into short e-learning videos and plans to expand based on customer needs, those can be found in the training section. They may look at creating additional links etc. throughout documentation to these videos to aid in discoverability and ensure that all pertinent information is centralized.
PIAC pointed out that documentation has a variety of uses & primary intentions, for example, teaching versus troubleshooting. This means that some of the same content may need to be organized differently to effectively fulfill these needs.
CUSTOM TOMS
PIAC expressed some of the confusion and complication libraries are experiencing surrounding the creation of a new Types of Material (TOM) using the MARC Expression Language (MEL). Clarivate shared that they initially wanted to create a preview function but ran into a problem that precedence can cause issues and potentially give misleading information that are nearly impossible to represent in a Preview screen. They may look closer at providing some sort of partial preview option in the future. Part of what will inform how they proceed is whether libraries are starting from scratch or seeking out others to share with/from. Thus far, most are starting from scratch because of variances in local cataloging processes, but as more time passes that may change. PIAC suggests webinars on the subject.
Clarivate is also working to clarify their role in assisting with the creation of new TOMs via MEL. Much like wit
h the CCL language in PAC filters, there may be a limit to the amount of support for creating complex MELs from scratch. Don’t forget as IUG members, you can also reach out to the community for help.
POLARIS UPGRADE PROCESSES
PIAC expressed that there appeared to be less consistency recently regarding the Polaris Upgrade process. Clarivate explained that the update process has been changing to fit other changes within their structure and that they are working on standardizing more of the update process. They also hope to begin gathering/maintaining individual library data/needs to further improve this process moving forward, which will be beneficial to help catch anomalous issues that come up during updates before they can cause a problem.
Statement from Clarivate Customer Care:
We are evaluating our upgrades process to improve communications, efficiency and consistency. We will share the results of that evaluation with PIAC in an upcoming monthly meeting, to get your feedback and share updates with the user community. In the meantime, if individual Polaris admins have an issue with upgrades communication or QA, please escalate to discuss with our management team: iiisupportescalation@clarivate.com