Trials and agreements

We’ve touched on agreements for trials and so far have a simple flag for marking whether an agreement is a trial or not. So in the agreement listing (the search/filter screen) there will be a filter to support the use cases:

• show me all agreements which are currently being trialled
• show me all agreements, excluding trials

Is this too simple, do we need to support other use cases such as?

• show me all agreements which we have ever trialled
• show me all agreements which we trialled and decided not to acquire
• show me all agreements which we trialled and decided to acquire

Thoughts from Chalmers:
We would like to be able to filter trials that are current and those that have been trialed but not acquired.

From Chicago’s perspective, we would like to see what is currently be trialed, but probably would not group that in with resources that we’ve purchased/licensed. We would also find it useful to get a record of resources trialed but not purchased, along with reasons why. Sometimes we also trial more than once, but I don’t think a history has to be more robust than notes. However, a date last trialed could be helpful. Finally, it doesn’t really matter, if we acquired a resource whether we did a trial or not. Once the resource is acquired, the trial becomes irrelevant.

From VZG: We agree to this proposal:

show me all agreements which we have ever trialled
show me all agreements which we trialled and decided not to acquire
show me all agreements which we trialled and decided to acquire

Thanks Kristin. Following up on a couple of points -

we would like to see what is currently be trialed, but probably would
not group that in with resources that we’ve purchased/licensed

Do you think that the default list of Agreements (i.e. the Agreements landing page) should filter out trials?

Sometimes we also trial more than once, but I don’t think
a history has to be more robust than notes. However, a date last
trialed could be helpful.

This has got me thinking about the start and end dates for a trial. In our current model each trial would have a separate agreement. Would the start and end date for the agreement always be the same as the start and end date of the trial?

Thinking through your scenario, to see the last date an e-resource was trialled the user would preview the e-resource/package and view the associated agreements section (i.e. search in the E-resources section of the ERM app, select the item to open the preview panel on the right, then expand the “Associated agreements” section). In the list of associated agreements we would display some key information, including the End Date - (would this be the agreement or trial end date?). Does this support your requirement well enough? I’ll be mocking this up at some point.

Hi @goguthorpe, assuming a Trial is a type of agreement, so long as we could filter those out, it should be fine.

In thinking about the multiple trials situation, if each trial is a separate Agreement, then at the end of the trial, if we didn’t purchase it, we want the Agreement to be inactive and have it indicated somewhere. Then, looking up a resource, there would be a way to see the number of times and dates that a resource was trialed? That makes sense.

As for dates, I think the Agreement would always begin with the same start and end date as the Trial. I am trying to think through the implications of the trial that converts to a subscription or purchase. Would the time spend trialing the resource be recorded as a separate Agreement of type “Trial” and then a new Agreement created upon licensing? I think it would make more sense to convert the Agreement to a version that is licensed/purchased/subscribed, so then the dates Agreement would extend beyond the trial.

VZG: We do agree that it is more important to filter “active trials” and “Agreements trialled and not acquired” than “Agreements trialled and acquired”. Transforming the trial Agreement to a licensed Agreement instead of creating a new one seems sufficient.

Is a Trial a type of agreement or a status of an agreement?

In this discussion, a Trial is mentioned as a type of agreement.

On here, it was said to be a status of an agreement, which we (UB Kassel) would agree to.

Is there a consensus (Sorry if I missed some part in the discussion due to my vacation)?