2022-09-26 Reporting SIG Meeting notes

Stanford University

Announcements /
Reminders

• Would like to be working with hosting providers to get a sense of who is willing to make a commitment to offering LDP hosting
• Who should this go to? PC?
• Is it possible to host LDP through a vendor different from your FOLIO vendor? (EBSCO for FOLIO, ID for LDP?)
• EBSCO still saying LDP is not secure, would like to get some set answers on that
• Also more transparency on cost
• Options:
  • survey institutions again about hosting provider and use of reporting solutions (add hosting to current page)
  • talk with the vendors directly to ask for some kind of commitment or policy or pricing model
  • could give a technical presentation - how LDP is hosted by several institutions, how to avoid pitfalls around security
  • have vendor presentations on their hosting services (EBSCO, Index Data)
• reporting seems to be secondary to FOLIO, not considered a core service (only a few in-app reports in FOLIO that are not consistent), which means vendors offer their own solutions (Panorama for EBSCO, LDP for ID) and can choose not to support others
• only interact with hosts when there is a problem/upgrade, curious what communication and testing are like for others about upgrades; could be another topic for the survey or a presentation
  • talk to Cornell!
  • having this kind of second system for reporting is common for IT more broadly, but seems like our hosting providers are still struggling with this workflow for getting LDP updates that doesn't impact users; testing is important, especially as LDP software becomes more complex
  • At Duke, communication around upgrades isn't perfect either
  • Would like vendors to have a set of answers about how they host something like LDP - how do you handle updates, etc.
• As a SIG, how could we incentivize hosting providers to either skill up for hosting LDP or make it easier for institutions to connect their FOLIO to a separately hosted LDP; ask for their concerns in either of these scenarios and establish what the requirements are for offering that service
• note: Reporting SIG came up in the PC, Angela wrote up a big reply
• if vendors really want time in a SIG meeting, all they have to do is ask for time; they have been told this repeatedly
• Good to involve the various councils, OLF, etc. in these questions
• Ingolf, what do you think about TC, Systems SIG weighing in on security concerns? Should we partner with them to come up with guidance?
• ask EBSCO why LDP is not secure but FOLIO is?
• Next steps
  • survey institutions to get a complete list
  • talking to vendors: have a solution you're looking for, talk to vendors about what they have. come up with questions about the services provided, the level of expertise, long-term commitment, any barriers/requirements (but cost is going to be tricky)
  • talk to technical/security experts within the FOLIO community about whether there are security concerns
  • should we do more outreach to SIGs - what do you need from reporting, be more visible; listening session about in-app reporting
• Reporting SIG should/could be leading discussions about the dashboard
• put on journalist hat - rather than saying, "why is LDP not secure,?" ask "how do you as a hosting provider ensure data security?"

RM Working Group

• group is working on RM-related derived tables for Metadb and adding comments to columns for folio-analytics 1.5
  
  • see RM Derived Tables to Convert from LDP to Metadb
• for latest query development updates, see RM Prototype and Query Development Status
• Meetings are biweekly on Tuesdays 11am-noon ET; contact Sharon Beltaine if you would like a calendar invitation
• Meeting Recordings are here: FOLIO ERM-RM Report Dev Teams
• Next meeting is Tuesday, September 6  11am-noon ET

Reporting SIG Documentation Subgroup

• Lotus documentation is live on https://docs.folio.org/docs/
• Morning Glory documentation is complete and submitted
• Nolana documentation will be in progress soon
• Additional Context
  • The Reporting SIG has representation on the Documentation Working Group, which is building end-user documentation for https://docs.folio.org/docs/ (mostly linking to existing documentation over on GitHub)

External Statistics Working Group

• no updates currently
• new organizational/tracking scheme for JIRA, with pointers to queries in folio-analytics repository
• New organizational structure for External Statistics reports
  • external statistics reports (e.g., ACRL) typically require running queries from different functional reporting areas
  • these reports will be captured in JIRA under one UXPROD-XXXX report cluster issue, then the descriptions will point to each of the queries required to run them on the folio-analytics repository
  • institutions will need to rank each of these 8 new UXPROD-XXXX report cluster issues
  • each reporting development team will take responsibility for the queries in their area for the external statistics clusters

Product Council

For all recent work on FOLIO Reporting SQL development:

• https://github.com/folio-org/folio-analytics/commits/main

• How to deal with External Stats reports?
  • maybe subteam leads check in about that
  • probably wait until after Metadb conversion is more complete
• ask for presenters: hosting experiences from implementers
• Annual Reporting Goals
  • (in progress) Support the transition from LDP to Metadb (e.g., update derived table and report queries, update documentation, outreach, new training)
  • (ready to start) Developing training/onboarding for new SIG members/report users (esp. FOLIO-specific data model and transformation stuff)
  • Improve communication between SIG and developers of apps so we hear about data model changes in advance
  • continued advocacy on part of the SIG to governance groups
  • (ready to start) Review JIRA issues, clean up, revisit strategy for JIRA
• Regular review of Milestones
• Exploring new recruitment/onboarding strategies (e.g., buddy system)
• Guest presentations: Foliage (Mike Hucka and Laurel Narizny from CalTech)
• Demo latest version of LDP app, any new features?
• Training: Using APIs
• More work on asynchronous collaboration, how to engage in discussions and question answering more broadly
  • consider connecting discuss.folio.org with a Slack channel, to make sure any forum topics get highlighted on Slack as well?

Review and update Topics for Future Reporting SIG Meetings