Meeting Minutes for 09/07/2021

Solr Upgrade (Minute 01:00)

• The search engine that powers Pika is called Solr.
• The upgrade will begin at 9pm MTN 09.07.21.
• Things to be aware of for the Solr upgrade.
  • Going to have to remove all existing indexes.
  • Once the process begins, there will not be search results in production until a full reindex is completed on the new version of the Solr.
  • This is universal for all production sites.
  • Most indexes do not take that long so it should be done within a few hours.
  • Marmot’s index is quite large and will take a long while for full reindex around 9 hours.
  • The Genealogy database will also see a full reindex.
  • Memory usage is somewhat different so Pascal has been playing with the settings in test with no issues but will not know how it affects the production site until it’s under the full production workload.
  • Throughout the week Pascal may have to make memory adjustments.
• Since Marmot’s full reindex takes so long to finish, Pascal needs to think about ways to change it so that we are not doing a full reindex every night. Instead, they could do indexing in a smarter way for example, if no settings have changed just do indexing of the sideloads that were updated the day before. Pascal will spend time during the next quarter to figure out better ways of indexing.

Overdrive Updates (Minute 6:10)

• External Services
  • Database offerings, not handled the same way as normal API records.
  • Will see these as checkouts in “My Checkouts” in Pika since those are provided in the API.
  • There is other handling that we will handle as far as integration with Pika.
• OverDrive sent out a notice that they are changing how the download links will work through the APIs. 
  • Sounds like OverDrive will have a universal landing page and the download actions will come from the page.
  • They announced that it will go into effect in November so the Pika team will have to do some work to update those links.  

Demo of new features, bug fixes, and documentation for the upcoming release (Minute 7:52)

• Release Notes

Discussion of development priorities for the next release (Minute 29:59)

• Road Map 
• Once Solr is upgraded in production there are search bugs that Pascal will focus his time on fixing during the last phase of the search improvements.
• Some of the oddities with Novelist will be looked at during the series improvement projects. 
• The other priority that they want to schedule is the Marmot patron password project for the end of the year. The Privacy, Security, and Accessibility committee is working on implementing patron passwords for Marmot. This will mean new development requirements that will need to be implemented in Pika. 

Other discussion topics 

• Priority Survey discussion/questions (Minute 31:23)
  • There should be only one survey response per library or library system
  • Ashley noticed some unfinished surveys so make sure to finish your survey before the survey close date. 
  • The Pika team has been whittling down the number of stories now that they have gotten to the backlog of things.
  • The team will always provide the breakdown of the user stories since the links are not accessible. 
    • Ashley uses the links as a tool to track the private boards for internal use.  
• Confluence Documentation hub (Minute 33:09)
  • You will start seeing some different links to Pika documentation. 
  • This has been a project that Marmot has really flushed out in 2020 and 2021. 
  • Now, all the Pika documentation is going to live in Confluence which is the new Marmot content management system for documentation.  
  • There is a lot of flexibility when you can search for things that were lacking on the Marmot website.
  • We are still working out some of the finer details about how the searching is going to be the most functional for users.
  • The documentation is broken out into categories on a single page that includes all the documents. There is some nice navigation available on a single page.
  • Related documentation at the bottom of each page shares tags or labels so you can look around at other documentation.
  • There is a navigation menu on the left.
  • In the near future, we will be linking a link to the Pika documentation page in Confluence. New documentation will be created and available in Confluence.
  • The links will be available when logged in as a Pika admin on your Pika sites.  Click on one of the blue help bubbles the link will take you out to the Confluence site instead of a Google doc.

• Udemy Courses as shared sideload possibility (Minute 36:31)
  • Ashley has been working with Stephanie from the Anne Arundel Library to get their Udemy records sideloaded.
  • Stephanie discovered that Marc records are generic.
  • If you are going to be offering Udemy as a supplement or replacement for your LinkedIn Learning courses, there is a possibility to create a shared sideload much like the one we have for Creativebug.
  • You would have to provide your library’s ID or institution code to insert that information using Pika and the URL replacements into the generic records.
  • It is a nice option that could well mirror what we had for Lynda.com without much work or effect on the part of the library staff. 
  • Udemy is a collection of subject area content. 
  • The Pika team could include some kind of generic image that would be applied to all the records for Udemy.
  • If you are interested email pika@marmot.org. Once Ashley hears back from a few libraries she will move forward with the shared sideload.     
• Reports from libraries on special projects
  • Anne Arundel library is deep into a website redesign and rebranding.

The next meeting is Tuesday, December 7, 2021