Endeavor Consortium Work Group
Quarterly meeting
CPE, Frankfort, KY
June 1, 2006
Present
Shirley Ackerman (KY Hist. Soc.), Titus Anderson (UL), Dave Block (UK), Perry Bratcher (NKU), Charlene Davis (KDLA), Rose Davis (WKU), Margaret Foote (EKU), Paul Fuller (KCTCS), Alex Grigg (Lexmark), Margaret Prentice Hecker (KSU), Ray Hyatt, Jr. (UK), Tari Keller (UK), Todd King (EKU), Leonor Lopez (KSU), Aleeah McGinnis (Murray State Univ.), Sheri Myers (NKU), Granuaile O’Flanagan (Morehead State Univ.), Cathy Reilender (Midway), Nelda Sims (WKU), Michael Stapleton (KCTCS)
Guest
David Carlson, Director of Customer Operations and Support, Endeavor Information Systems, Inc.
Meeting called to order at 1:00 p.m. by Tari Keller, moderator
Introductions
Welcome to two new consortium members: Kentucky Historical Society (represented by Shirley Ackerman), and Kentucky Wesleyan College (not represented)
Endeavor update
David Carlson acknowledged the problems with Endeavor’s (EISI) customer support over the past few months. He said that the “black hole” that seemed to swallow incident reports was caused by a support model that was designed several years ago to support Voyager, which was Endeavor’s only product at the time. That model has proven to be inadequate for supporting Endeavor’s current multiple-product line, resulting in delays in closing incident reports.
Mr. Carlson outlined steps taken to address support problems:
· The “universal analyst program,” a new model for support: The person who takes an incident report—whether by telephone or e-mail—“owns” the incident and is responsible for gathering the technical help required to resolve it.
· Staffing:
o Crosstraining: Support analysts are cross-trained on every Endeavor product.
o Three new senior support analysts
· Open hours: Support hours have been reduced from 16 to 12 (7 a.m. CST to 7 p.m. CST).
· E-mail workflow: Incident report e-mails are generated on the same day or first following business day.
Mr. Carlson evaluated the results of the changes:
· 2006 is the first year since 1998 that more incidents are being resolved than are being reported
· Average close time has diminished from 4 weeks to 2 weeks. The goal is 3-4 days.
Good things “in the pipe”: Voyager 6.1 is due by 12 June, 2006. Early release problems have been few and minor. 6.1 includes support for ISBN-13. Documentation and “Road to” links will be “live” by release date.
The new OCLC control numbers will be incorportated into 6.1, and available as a patch to the Voyager 5 clients. The Voyager 5 patch will be issued on or about the release date for Voyager 6.1.
Update on Voyager 5 problems
Tari Keller reports that MFHD keyword server still not working. Josh Rasey (Endeavor) is hoping to use our test server to figure it out. UK’s sorting and post sorting problems have been resolved successfully. Other institutions expressed concerns about keyword regens, but Morehead and EKU reported successful regens. Tari Keller. Suggested that many of our problems with the last upgrade was related to upgrading *through* Unicode, i.e., doing the Unicode data conversion (a prerequisite for Voyager 5) *and* the Voyager 5 upgrade in close succession. Josh Rasey is said to be close to solving the headings keyword problem. Also, many sites do not have Voyager 5 training databases. Mr. Carlson suggested that each affected site open their own incidents at “customer priority 1”.
Upgrade discussion
There was general agreement
that an upgrade to Voyager 6.1 is necessary in order to pick up ISBN-13
support. However, August was judged to be too soon because there are still
significant unresolved problems—including
non-sorting search results in Murray State’s OPAC-- from
the Voyager 5 upgrade, and August dates are probably already booked. Paul
Fuller asked that the minutes reflect that the last upgrade occurred when the
majority of KCTCS classes were in session. A December upgrade date would give
KCTCS three weeks of upgrade times when classes are not in session. The group
agreed that December was more reasonable, and Tari Keller asked that the
members suggest earliest possible upgrade dates in that month. She will
coordinate the upgrade scheduling on behalf of the groups.
A firm decision on upgrade date is requested by 6/24.
Training issues
Leonor Lopez and Alex Grigg asked for help with their respective training databases. Tari Keller offered to help the, both.
Mark Paul asked if there were a streamlined way of copying sysadmin settings from production to training. Apparently there is no good way to reproduce production in training. Many settings can be copied, but much of the sysadmin configuration must be done manually.
Next meeting
8 September, 2006. Send proposed agenda items to Tari. One possible item is the U of L / Endeavor training budget.
Adjourned by moderator at 1:55pm
Respectfully submitted,
Michael Stapleton
KCTCS Library Systems Office