June 27th 2024 – meeting notes

Customer Support Advisory Group Meeting Notes – June 27, 2024

The group was asked to discuss customer requirements for a Known Issues System.

To aid the discussion the group used the following examples:

  1. The current Content Known Issues page
  2. Salesforce Known Issue platform (as an example of current KI systems)

What type of information would be helpful for Known Issues System specifically for the ExLibris customer community.

  • What do we need to capture from the Community regarding known issues requirements? Survey?
  • Can we collect/discuss our own use cases and build a standard set of requirements then survey the community?
  • What do we like from Salesforce?
  • What is out of scope?
  • What are our must haves?

Feedback on the Content Known Issues page

  • Format is difficult to navigate
    • An option to search would be useful
    • Link to incidents/jiras would be useful
    • What are the privacy issues from known issues from the old Alma KI doc?
    • Tags/categories/keyword and filtering would be good.
    • Unclear how KI made it to the list
    • What searching is needed?      
      • Content – by vendor name
      • Narrow by product/functional area then search for keywords
      • Ability to search in Alma would be better

Feedback based on Salesforce KI platform

  • ITIL compliant
    • Searchable
    • Clear interface
    • Ability to link to other Support tools (e.g. Helpdesk systems, JIRA etc)
    • Ability to see the impact of a KI – how many incidents linked/how many customers affected
    • Escalation triggers

Summary of  discussion on Business Analysis in relation to an ExLibris KI System

Needs:

  • Details of an incident’s full  lifecycle – when does an incident get a KI?
    • Escalation/Impact – how is that applied? What triggers escalation?
    • Fields required – standard set/checklist would be very helpful. It may help to standardize information collected during incident triage as well.
      • Product/ Instance/Functional area/screenshots/replication steps/impact
    • An option to search is essential (by keyword and tags)
    • Links to other information would be useful e.g  incidents/jiras
    • Would like info on how ExL classifies issues – Based # of cases submitted, or some other criteria
    • Ability for institutions to endorse or “Me too” issues
    • Do we need a separate Section for issues reported after a Feature Release?
    • Need an archive of resolved or completed cases (Keep closed and fixed issues tab, similar to Content KI)
      • Sometimes takes a while for information to be trickled down, would be good to be able to review older ones
    • Include Workarounds
      • Can link to KB article if available
    • Include Analysis/errors/replication steps/effect
    • Status – where is at ExLibris Support
      • Tier 1, T2, Development. etc
    • Priority
    • Include # of institutions reporting the issue
    • How many institutions are affected?  How does that translate to impact and urgency? How is business affected?
    • How will Consortia KI be managed. May be issues with under calculating impact

What do we want to ask the community for the survey? For KI and general support issues.

  • Would having a known issues document solve most problems?
  • How long it takes to solve issues – metrics would be good.
    • Lifecycle of support calls. What should we expect (ask ExLibris)
    • Seems like there are no updates on cases unless it’s escalated (don’t want to abuse/cry wolf for most cases), or wait to get updates from
  • Acknowledgement of case
  • Needing to repeat the issue – sometimes triage is a long iterative process. And when we think we have given the full information there has been some misunderstanding and delays happen while discussions are repeated.
    • Asked for examples, screenshot when one is already provided
  • How is chat used?
    • What level of support is solved via Chat – Would like to know what chat should be used for
  • How much research is done before submitting a ticket?
    • For consortia – do cases go through a central support office to be vetted first
    • For local institutions – is there an IT or support office that helps troubleshoot issues
  • Do you find that cases are closed before being fixed?
  • Do you get responses on cases with documentation that is outdated?

The group will continue to discuss requirements. Once we have more information about Scope from ExLibris we will survey/ask the community.