2022-02-03 Product Council Meeting notes

Date

Attendees

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
5 minAnnouncements

Lotus code release deadline is pushed back a few weeks: Lotus (R1 2022)

  • Feb 11: platform core dev freeze
  • Feb 18: platform complete dev freeze
  • March 14-25: bugfest
  • April 18th: release

National Science Library in Namibia went live on FOLIO last week.

 45 mins

Authority Control

  • Demo of new functionality

Discussion goals:

  • Informational to learn about new features of authority control
  • When does the PC need to learn about major development in functionality

Presentation

FAQs

Clarifying that no MARC authority data is being stored; a more generic schema is being used (authority.json) and stored in mod-inventory-storage. When the development team gathers for building the Entities app, this schema could be used as a start.  This follows the pattern of mod-inventory-storage and mod-search for instance/holdings records.  The intention is not to constrain what the Entities app developers might do, and might point to future work to simplify the functionality now being done in the Inventory app.  For Lotus: just authority storage and management; work on "control" is expected to start in Morning Glory.

In the course of creating the MARC Authority app, there have been improvements made to the Stripes table view component to make it more accessible to screen readers.  John Colburn has been making these updates and working with Zak to get them integrated into other apps as well.

Data Import is used to add authority records to the system; there is not a "New" action.  This is in line with feedback from the QuickMARC testing libraries.

This MARC Authority app needs approval from PC for inclusion in the Lotus release.

There are concerns about the process by which a new app was developed and how late in the development process that PC learned about it.  For instance, we would want coordination between the group that conceived of the Entities app and this development of the MARC Authorities app.  The MM SIG could have been learned about the development of the authority schema and the use of mod-inventory-storage earlier.  The PC is interested in reviewing functionality as it is being conceived because it doesn't want to ask TC to perform unnecessary technical reviews.  Can the SIG updates be used to raise awareness of this kind of upcoming functionality?

Does PC endorse this app being added to FOLIO? No objections from PC members.  PC asks TC to perform a technical review of the MARC Authorities app.

Taking a step or two back, should the PC be in a position to not accept something that an organization has devoted effort and money into building?

15 minCommunity recruitment: discussion of how to recruit more POs and/or developers

Getting Started for Product Owners has information about product owners.

Lucy: There are companies in China that want to join the development effort; can videos and resources be created to help assist that? Can the videos that are on Google Drive now be updated to current? The WOLFcon Asia Pacific Conference is tentatively scheduled April 23, and that would be a good time to share this information and recruit developers.

5 minfuture topics:

Functional criteria for FOLIO
Data sync team update

Next week is the SIG update meeting, the template for reports from SIG conveners is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1268qg6EoxMwgqnmQkgeUycZkZJQs-No4rJr5xizvamw/edit#

Chat log

09:33:50 From  Khalilah Gambrell  to  Everyone:
    Lotus Release timeline: Lotus (R1 2022)
    
    Feb 11th: Platform core dev freeze 
    
    Feb 18th: Platform complete dev freeze
    
    March 14th - March 25th: Bugfest 
    
    April 18th:  Go Live
09:34:11 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Overall schedule for Lotus has been pushed by a sprint, no change to MG planned, is my understanding
09:34:49 From  Khalilah Gambrell  to  Everyone:
    Morning Glory timeline: Morning Glory (R2 2022)
    
    June 3rd: Platform core dev freeze 
    
    June 10: Platform complete dev freeze
    
     June 24: Module release deadline
    
    July 4 -15: Bugfest 
    
    August 8th: Public Release
09:35:41 From  Khalilah Gambrell  to  Everyone:
    Lotus timeline: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=5210536
09:35:57 From  Khalilah Gambrell  to  Everyone:
    Morning Glory timeline: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=5210570
09:42:19 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Using ElasticSearch
09:42:52 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    It's a JSON authority representation
09:42:57 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    so, the practical upshot is that we can make use of Authority records without having to depend on MARC at all
09:42:59 From  Felix Hemme (ZBW)  to  Everyone:
    https://github.com/folio-org/mod-inventory-storage/blob/master/ramls/authorities/authority.json
09:45:02 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    +1 Ian
09:45:36 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    Fascinating decision!
09:45:41 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    +10 to Spitfire for building it this way
09:47:01 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    The Future of Libraries is MARC-less!
09:49:55 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Data import integration and ES
09:51:35 From  Charlotte Whitt  to  Everyone:
    Eventually we hope also to use Elasticsearch in Users and many more apps, but that do not mean that we will store Users in mod-inventory-storage?
09:53:50 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    from a SysOps perspective, it's great not to have yet another module to install and connect.
09:55:26 From  Aaron Trehub  to  Everyone:
    Have to leave for another meeting...
09:57:31 From  Charlotte Whitt  to  Everyone:
    Entity Management Vision written by the working group lead by Jason Kovari (Cornell): https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/MM/Entities+App%3A+Vision
09:58:15 From  Charlotte Whitt  to  Everyone:
    Sounds good, Vince
09:58:55 From  Owen Stephens  to  Everyone:
    It might be an interesting thing to do to compare that vision to what is delivered by this work - as I think the work there was focussed on authority, even though as a vision it wanted to consider broader impact of entity management
10:00:31 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    No control
10:00:50 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Just storage and management
10:02:22 From  Owen Stephens  to  Everyone:
    I’m afraid I have to leave the meeting for a bit - I’ll catch up with the demo later thanks Khalilah
10:08:39 From  Felix Hemme (ZBW)  to  Everyone:
    Thanks Harry for the clarification
10:08:41 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    Reflecting on what you said earlier, I note there is no "New" action in the MARC Authority App.
10:14:20 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Is MARC Authority app only searching records of source=MARC?
10:14:30 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    At present
10:15:17 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    In the JSON schema, there is a field that indicates whether it is "MARC" or "FOLIO".  I think you said we don't have the notion of a "FOLIO" authority record at the moment, so there isn't a record being stored as that native JSON schema, right?
10:15:53 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    There's an API for that, isn't there
10:16:00 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    ?
10:16:26 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    we do have a FOLIO Authority record schema, which is what is searched and all, but there is no front-end for editing that record directly.
10:16:35 From  Felix Hemme (ZBW)  to  Everyone:
    Yes, you can POST to this storage according to https://s3.amazonaws.com/foliodocs/api/mod-inventory-storage/authorities.html#
10:16:55 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    Ah, fascinating...thanks, Ian and Felix.
10:17:57 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    I look forward to editing FOLIO-native records at some point in the future, but it doesn't sound like that was the driving factor for this development
10:18:30 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    Yes, that makes sense.
10:19:24 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    I wonder about that, too...just calling the app "Authority".
10:19:39 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    That would better set the expectations for what is to come.
10:22:22 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    To me, I think the current naming makes more sense. This was built MARC-first, and it could, frankly, be MARC-only while we wait on the entity management WG that could result in a wholly new UI/set of UI apps that could potentially replace it.
10:23:24 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    So maybe the "MARC Authorities" app would go away when the "Entities" app overtakes it?
10:23:31 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    I, for one, think that this is great work.
10:23:47 From  Tod Olson  to  Everyone:
    ++Brooks
10:25:30 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    Falcon +10
10:25:56 From  Tod Olson  to  Everyone:
    Thank you KG for the demo and discussion. This is really interesting. Nice way to build toward a non-MARC-centric future.
10:29:54 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    I also feel like I heard about this for months in various fora. It was included in the roadmap back in November.
10:31:03 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Isn't that outside the scope of the SIGs, though? The technical implementation?
10:31:43 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    In an app-based model, we also need to expect flexibility in how ideas for apps come about.
10:32:11 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    Peter++
10:32:12 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    I would move to approve this for inclusion. It's functionality that has been requested and highly-ranked by existing and potential adopters. It significantly enhances market fit and has high strategic impact for the project.
10:32:23 From  Ann-Marie Breaux  to  Everyone:
    the quickMARC, Data Import, and Entity Management groups are all subgroups of MM SIG
10:32:36 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    ++Ann-Marie
10:33:21 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    Owen++ "we can move as an agile community"
10:34:16 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    I would argue that we don't need permission to move forward with particular developments, so much as consent as to whether to include it in the standard community build
10:35:57 From  Owen Stephens  to  Everyone:
    I agree with that Ian - but this is my point about the existing modules. They are already part of the community build and there’s no process or option (as it stands) to do something different to that
10:39:39 From  Owen Stephens  to  Everyone:
    That makes sense to me Ian - I definitely think being clear about how this works (whether it’s this model or something else) is the right way to go
10:40:24 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    and I would agree that there needs to be a mechanism for making sure an already-accepted set of code is continuing to meet the articulated needs.
10:40:57 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    this could cover both new areas of functionality as well as the necessities of maintenance
10:42:19 From  Owen Stephens  to  Everyone:
    That’s a huge statement to finish on!
10:42:58 From  Karen Newbery  to  Everyone:
    But Harry, didn't you argue against that very statement regarding the LDP?
10:44:07 From  Kristin Martin  to  Everyone:
    That has been part of the discussion of the Scope-Criteria group.
10:44:08 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    Karen, I did not..
10:44:21 From  Felix Hemme (ZBW)  to  Everyone:
    Thank you Khalilah. Bye
10:44:59 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    There is no question that LDP is critical to many libraries.
10:45:41 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    The question is why is PC even making judgement calls as to what is important or what isn’t.
10:46:19 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    And taking that into account with our current and unscalable release process implies that we need a major change.
10:46:52 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    Harry and Kristin, I would love to continue this conversation in Slack.  would y'all be willing to pick this up in #folio-product-council?
10:47:29 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    sorry, not just Kristin, also Karen (tracing chat backlog).  also, everyone interested
10:49:37 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    I think so, if I have time.
10:51:12 From  Ian Walls  to  Everyone:
    of course.  I just think this is a very important topic for the community to talk about as we move forward
10:52:03 From  Kristin Martin  to  Everyone:
    A small group of us is considering this topic and I think we'll be ready for a fuller discussion with PC shortly. I don't see this as the end!
10:52:37 From  Harry  to  Everyone:
    +100 Kristin & Ian!
10:53:13 From  Karen Newbery  to  Everyone:
    Thanks, Kristin!
10:55:04 From  Peter Murray  to  Everyone:
    SIG convener update document> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1268qg6EoxMwgqnmQkgeUycZkZJQs-No4rJr5xizvamw/edit#
10:55:50 From  Brooks Travis  to  Everyone:
    Thanks, everyone!
10:55:53 From  Karen Newbery  to  Everyone:
    Stay safe and warm!