Vendor app in FOLIO

Hi everyone,

The vendor app is live in FOLIO. Now it needs review and testing. We know there are pieces that still need refining, and that work continues behind the scenes. But we also need your feedback on the app, so that we can ensure it meets the community’s expectation for functionality and that we catch as many bugs as possible before libraries begin implementing.

To get to the vendor app, go to http://folio-snapshot-stable.aws.indexdata.com/, log on with user name diku_admin, password admin. Then go to the vendor app in the top menu bar.

We have created some sample vendors, representing a range of vendors - large and small, international, P/E, governmental entity, etc. Keep in mind that this sample data is refreshed every time the FOLIO environment is refreshed, usually daily. That means any changes you make - adding new vendors, editing existing vendors - will be wiped out when the data is refreshed.

Please exercise the app:

• Build a new vendor
• Edit an existing vendor
• Search for vendors
• Try the various filters

Leave your feedback in the comments below. Do you understand all the fields in the vendor record? Are there things you like? Don’t like? That should perhaps work differently? Is there anything missing? We’ll work on any bugs, and address any questions or comments about additional or differing functionality.

We expect that there will be more formal User Acceptance Testing, but we’re interested in starting with your initial feedback and first impressions.

It’s exciting to have this first piece of FOLIO Acquisitions live! Now we make it awesome.

Thanks for starting the Discuss post, Anne-Marie! I will be asking Duke staff who work with vendor records currently to review and provide feedback.

One quick item from me is that I would prefer the filter options to start out collapsed. On my small screen (using a laptop today) the first filter option takes up all of the space under the search in the left frame. Also, getting through all of them to filter by vendor status at the end requires too much scrolling.

Okay, I promise not to start a new comment for every bit of feedback I have, but I did play around briefly and noticed an issue.

I attempted to edit the Taylor & Francis record by adding an Alternative Name. I added the AKA then selected “Update Vendor.” The only response to my clicking the button was that it turns a darker blue. Not sure if I had successfully saved the change to the record or not, I clicked on the X in the upper lefthand corner of the screen to close the record. I got a prompt telling me that my changes weren’t saved and asking if I wanted to exit the record anyway. I said no, the screen closed, then I tried clicking on the “Update Vendor” button again. Still no change other than the button changing to a darker blue. I went to try again to close out of the record, and now the X neither closes the record nor triggers a pop up asking me if I am sure I want to leave because I have unsaved changes.

FWIW, I tried this in both Firefox and Chrome and had the same result.

Interestingly, I was able to create and save a new vendor, and even edit the new vendor and save it. But when I tried to update an existing vendor (I tried both Alexander Street and EBSCO), I am having a similar experience to Virginia, in that clicking “Update” does not save the changes.

Thanks, Ann-Marie, for the discuss post and feedback opportunity!
The app seems very nice, my colleagues and I will have a closer look and do some detailed testing this week.

But I do already have some small feedback/questions on the filter functionalities, that seem important to me:

• It would be great to collapse the filter catagories by default. It takes a while to scroll down (esp. the country list), just like @VirginiaMartin writes.
• There seems to be no way to search for the name of a vendor’s contact person. For me, this might be really helpful, e.g. when I receive an e-mail or call and want to look up some details on the contact. Of course I could also search for the vendor and then open the contact section, but it would be nice not to have to.

EDIT: I experience exactly the same update/close issues for existing vendors Virginia described.

Here is a comment from our Head of Acquisitions: “Was able to easily add in a new vendor. One thing I did not like – having the EDI code a mandatory field. That will not apply to many vendors. I made something up to satisfy the field requirement. Everything else was fine.”

Hi Virginia,

Thanks for the suggestion. I agree about starting with the filters closed - I hate having to scroll to see all the filters. Maybe also rearranging so that the active/inactive filter is at the top. I’m starting a list to review with Dennis and the Acq Small Group.

A-M

I was unable to edit some vendors and saw the same behavior first identified by Virginia. I was also only able (in Firefox) to navigate via the scroll bar on the side. Page Up and Page Down, or up and down arrow did not move me through the page.

For some of our large vendors, we have multiple accounts (and within accounts subaccounts). For example, with one vender we have two accounts one of which has over 60 billing subaccounts. Is it possible to change the AP vendor number via a bulk edit (even frequently used numbers can change occasionally).

Virginia and Kristin:

Interesting that editing an existing vendor hangs, but you’re able to create and edit a new vendor. We’ll log that as a bug.

Virginia: it’s actually probably easier to make a new comment for each different feedback, so no worries if there end up being lots of comments!

And Chrome is definitely the preferred browser for FOLIO.

Annika:

Thanks for confirming the edit problem and collapsing the filter categories.

Thanks also for the suggestion of searching by a contact person. We were assuming you would know the vendor, search the vendor, and scroll down to the contact details.

Question: Do other folks think it would be helpful to be able to search by contact name?

Yes, searching by a contact name is helpful.

Kristin:

re: EDI being a required field. Are you sure that’s happening? Could they try again? I just tried creating a new vendor, and was able to do it with just the vendor name, absolutely no other data.

That said, it seems like we should ensure any required fields have an asterisk next to them.

Some comments by our Head of Payments:
When adding address and contact information, I was not sure how to add more than one category to the same information. Is that possible? For example, if the contact information is the same for both orders and payments, can you add the address once and select both categories, or do you have to add it twice and assign one category to each?

If I wanted to print or download a list of vendors, perhaps one that I had filtered, is that possible? Would I be able to select fields to include in the download?

All in all, I thought it was pretty straight forward and simple to use and navigate. I would agree with the individuals who suggested that the search filters be collapsed as the default rather than open.

I also created a new vendor without anything in the EDI field.

Scott:

As of now, Chrome is the most stable environment for FOLIO. I’m not sure what the current Product Council thinking is in terms of support via Firefox or other browsers. Definitely best to test (for now) via Chrome.

For now, there are not any bulk edit options anywhere in FOLIO, though I know that’s planned at some point. I’ll take a note on the accounts and we’ll discuss.

[Good! And the point on collapsing the search filters is noted.

I second Scott’s suggestion that we be able to print or export a list of vendors that has been filtered. This functionality is available in Aleph (though somewhat cumbersome) and is invaluable for quick “reporting.”

Thanks, Virginia - noted.

Hi Ann-Marie,

This is great! The app is already fun to use. I was not sure to what details you need feedback a this point os there might be points in my notes that are a bit “over the top”:

• In general the app feels easy to use. I experienced very few glitches using Chrome
• When setting up a second email address for a vendor the app was not able to update the vendor record. I tried this several times.
• Generally the default language could be set to English and not Afar
• When you review a vendor record and expand several sections and than click on the edit button the same sections should be expanded on the edit-screen and the screen could show the same section you were reviewing before (so the user does not have to scroll down again)?
• For the contact information there is no ZIP-code field. Is this on purpose? Does the display work for UK addresses
• The country dropdown under “Contact people” -> “Address” is not working for me. I cannot choose any values.
• Does the URL for a contact person need to be mandatory?
• The country code for the phone number is missing a leading “+” or “00”
• I don’t understand the display in the “FTP Details” section
• For OH interfaces it would be useful to note the coordinator for the interface account. Every user has their own login so only displaying one might be confusing in this section. The coordinator is the person from the institution who has the permissin within our systems to set up a new user or assign additional permissions.

I hope this is somewhat useful. Let me know if you have any questions.
Sebastian

Hi Ann-Marie,

thank you for editing this post and taking care of our feedback. To my mind, the vendor app is great and easy to use.

Here are just some bits and bobs:
I agree to @annikaschroeer, that being able to search for a contact name would be great.
Then I had the same problem as @Sebastian in selecting a country for contact people. Same applies to selecting a default language for contact people (although both required).

In almost every section you can “add” information which is great. Is there a limit?

When you ask for a claiming interval (vendor information), could you add that this is entered in days (in a former system we would have entered the number of weeks)?

This is just a bagatelle, but in the filter section, there is a typing error in “technical support”.

I asked some colleagues for further feedback and will let you know what they think.
Thank you!

Hi Sebastian - thank you so much for all this feedback! Please see replies interspersed above.

Here’s more background on the FTP section (which is a subsection of the EDI section) - let me know if additional questions. Keep in mind that for v1, FOLIO will only support EDI orders and invoices.

• FTP format: select Secure FTP or plain FTP
• Server address: address from which the FTP files will be retrieved
• Username & Password: Assuming there’s a logon once you contact the FTP server, what is the library’s logon?
• FTP Transmission mode: select ASCII or Binary
• FTP Connection mode: select Active or Passive
• Order/Invoice Directory: once logged on to the FTP site, if orders are stored in a subdirectory instead of the root directory, specify the subdirectory. That way FOLIO can change to the proper subdirectory to place orders or pick up invoices.
• Scheduling: If you want to schedule orders to be sent or invoices to be checked at a specific time, use the scheduling section.
• There’s also a “check now” button in case you want to look for/download any new invoices immediately.
• Notification Options: If someone at the library wants to receive an e-mail when any EDI transactions happen, or only when specific EDI transactions happen, they can use the Notification Options section.

Hi Martina - thanks so much for your feedback! Please see above for comments interspersed.

Hi Ann-Marie! Thank you for your answers.

Unfortunatelly the system is not working for me today with the fllowing error message:
“ERROR: in module @folio/vendors, operation GET on resource ‘records’ failed, saying: Failed to fetch”
and I do not remember a 100% but I think I was playing arround with the exsting accounts.So this problem has most likely already been caught.

You are right. Using the notes field should be sufficient for the coordinator info. And if the majority of platforms only use one login per institution it does make sense to have the field setup as it is.

My problem with the display was more related to the FTP scheduler where you can set specific days of the week to collect files from the vendors ftp-server. I am sorry for not being more specific. The setup display seemed all right but in the vendor overview display all weekdays showed up in a more or less unstructured manner. Again, unfortunately I cannot login today to make a screenshot of it. I will let you know if I can reconstruct the problem.

Ahh - I understand now - the scheduler part needs some refinement to make it more clear. Will add that to the list. Thanks for the clarification!

Stacks has confirmed there is currently no limit, and no plans to impose limits unless a reason surfaces in the future.

Hi everyone,

Thank you again for all of the feedback on the vendor app (so far). We reviewed it all this afternoon, and Dennis is entering a number of these as bug fixes and enhancements in Jira. There’s a few we’ve flagged for more discussion, since they are larger asks or may be tied to FOLIO-wide efforts such as bulk editing or exporting of search results.

Stay tuned for more info from Dennis next week. Hope everyone has good weekends!

A-M

The library staff who do most of the work with creating and maintaining vendor records at Duke looked at the vendor app and provided the following feedback:

• It is easy to use.
• The vendor app has all of the fields we currently use as well as a few more.
• We added a new vendor and deleted it with no problems.
• We had the same problem in the contact name section with country as there were no countries listed and it would not allow you to type. [Note: Ann-Marie has addressed this in additional Discuss posts since these notes were written].
• I [Deb] created EBSCO as a new vendor. I then thought I would add the EDI information and did not have any problems. However, when I tried to add the FTP information I received the error box below.

And also questions:

• What is the ERP code? [Virginia note: I know we have discussed relabeling/renaming this field, but I thought I’d note that our staff weren’t able to figure out what ERP stood for].
• We also were wondering about if the default language could be changed to English. [Note: Ann-Marie has addressed this in additional Discuss posts since these notes were written].

It’s great to have the first ACQ app available! Here is some feedback:

• Accordion ‘contact information’ / ‘adress info’
  The selection from the list should be made more intuitive, regardless of whether only one category or several categories are selected. Before saving, you should be able to see which selection was made, for example by listing the categories again individually.

• Accordion ‘contact information’ / ‘phone number’
  The arrows for selecting a country type just show 1 to -1. What is the purpose of thoose arrows up and down?

• It’s a bit time consuming to select the default language for almost every field, again and again. Could a library select a language as default so you won’t need to select it anymore (only if the language differs from the standard)?

We also have some more feedback now from the staff who will be working with the app.

Features/appearance

• mandatory fields should be marked (*) to identify them before saving
• maybe “vendor information” should be renamed into something like “payment information”, as all the data for a vendor is vendor information
• will there be a better keyboard integration? There is a lot of scrolling, if you tab through the fields, they cannot always be filled in (e.g. dropdowns), every field once tabbed into is marked as “changed” even when not changed
• language dropdowns should not be in alphabetical order only. Maybe the most usual languages (defined in the settings?) could be displayed on top
• when choosing severeal “catagories” for a contact person, it would be helpful to see the selection at one glance. At the moment you have to enter the field and scroll to find the selected values
• it would be helpful to be able to mark a contact as “former employee”, not just as a note, but as a kind of status

Issues/Problems (in addition to the ones already reported)

• It’s not possible to set a country for a contact person

A slightly more technical question:
Will it be possible to link/refer to/identify contact persons? Will they have an ID of their own? It might be useful to link to them from other app contexts. Or (the other way around), if there might some day be a kind of “contact persons app” - might the contacts added there be referenced from the vendors app? Maybe vendors and contacts could be slightly more seperated.

+1 That’s exactly what I thought when I created a test vendor. There’s a notion of a Contacts app, but I have no knowledge about how far the considerations have gone yet. See http://ux.folio.org/prototype/en/contacts?view=full

Hi Virginia - see comments interspersed above

Hi Felix - please see replies interspersed above…

Hi Annika,

Please see above for comments, interspersed.

Hi Felix,

Here’s what I just wrote to Annika:
This current structure will be the format for the first iteration of vendors and contacts. I believe the intention is to make this richer and more separated in subsequent iterations. In the future, if we have an Organizations app and a Contacts app, then we’ll be able to link contacts to specific organizations. That way, when a contact moves from one organization to another, you can keep the basic info about the person, but change their organization, phone, e-mail, etc - kind of like LinkedIn does for people and the organizations they work for.

I’ll also add: an Organizations app could also be helpful for showing relationships between organizations, e.g. divisions or subsidiaries withing a larger company. Right now the vendor app is a flat structure, with no way to show hierarchy between different vendors. However you can relate vendors to each other by adding AKA names or notes. For example if you had separate vendors for EBSCO Subscriptions, Flipster, EBSCO Information Services, and GOBI Library Solutions, you could retrieve them all at once by putting in “EBSCO” as an AKA on each of the separate vendors.