Tag: workflow

Implementing a Revised Workflow: Physical Materials in Technical Services

I’ve already written about and given a few talks on workflow including some of the ideas and methods that directly came out of my work, but I still haven’t written about the actual changes we made and how they were implemented. While we may be getting less of it compared to years ago, the library still processes and catalogues thousands of physical items a year. I’m not sure how systematically the workflow had ever really been reviewed, so I wanted to make sure to take a holistic approach including everyone in the department as well as some work happening outside of it. Continue reading “Implementing a Revised Workflow: Physical Materials in Technical Services”

Technical Services: Rationale and Benefits of a Workflow Review

I have been doing a bunch of work in reviewing workflows and implementing new or changes to existing workflows, especially in Technical Services. In the process, I have been asked not only about the process I went through, but the rationale and value in doing such an exercise, especially for organizations where most Technical Services work has been outsourced. So just thought I’d jot down some thoughts. Continue reading “Technical Services: Rationale and Benefits of a Workflow Review”

Reviewing and Improving Workflow and Productivity: Methods and Tools

Most of our libraries and organizations have been around for numerous years, sometimes hundreds. Often that means many processes are created, changed as needed, and left in place long past their due date. Unfortunately, that means we are frequently working inefficiently, following old processes or cobbled together workflows.

The first part of the presentation will suggest methods for understanding and reviewing workflow. In the second half, we will take a look at various simple and lightweight tools and ways to use them to make work more efficient, especially in processing text, files, and data in batches.

Originally titled Tools, Tips, and Tricks to Making Work More Efficient. This webinar was presented for Florida Library Webinars on March 8, 2017. https://floridalibrarywebinars.org/events/16003/ Continue reading “Reviewing and Improving Workflow and Productivity: Methods and Tools”

Code4libBC Presentation: Getting Things Done: Discovering Efficiencies in Workflow

This lightning talk was presented at Code4lib BC 2016.

For a copy of the slides, please see the presentation on SpeakerDeck (also below) or the version on GitHub.
Continue reading “Code4libBC Presentation: Getting Things Done: Discovering Efficiencies in Workflow”

Guide Rework Part 2: Guide to Accessible Formats

Last week, I posted about updating our “What Format Do You Need” guide and taking a different approach in helping our users decide what format they need. Looking at the guides, I realized that my draft could be a possible replacement for the quick guide, but cannot replace the more detailed version (below). The detailed version has so much more information and obviously breaks down the information differently. Continue reading “Guide Rework Part 2: Guide to Accessible Formats”

Guide Reflow: Deciding on Your Accessible Format

We have two existing guides that help coordinators and students decide on their preferred format, but they seem to reflect all the formats we could produce rather than the more practical reality of what we normally produce. Continue reading “Guide Reflow: Deciding on Your Accessible Format”

Getting Thrown into the Deep End

So I started at CILS 3 weeks ago, and oh boy does it feel longer. My first week was a lot of getting settled in sort of thing (which means orientation and a lot of paperwork), and being given the simplest of stuff. After the first week, I was thrown into the deep end. Continue reading “Getting Thrown into the Deep End”

Issue Tracker (Redmine) Implementation Update

In a previous post, I talked about how we chose our issue tracker and then our implementation. Unfortunately, at the time, we had some trouble getting staff to use it so the team had strategized on how we might improve uptake. Continue reading “Issue Tracker (Redmine) Implementation Update”

Implemeting an Issue Tracker (Redmine)

For more than half a year now, I’ve been trying to get an issue tracker fully implemented for our IT team within the library. I admit that I’m still working on it. Getting the system up and running was easy enough, but trying to work it into people’s workflow isn’t so easy.

Choosing the Issue Tracker

There are a lot of issue trackers out there, but we are a small team and I wanted the issue tracker running easily and quickly. It’s not something I wanted to spend a lot of time getting up and running, because we had a lot of other projects happening.

Other requirements included:

  • support multiple projects
  • non-members being able to report issues
  • support email issue management (either built-in or plugin)
  • low to no cost

preferable

  • support CAS or LDAP login (either built-in or plugin)
  • documentation area and/or wiki
  • code repository integration
  • open source

I asked around a little bit, and these were the recommendations I got:

  • Asana: 2
  • FogBugz: 1 Against: 1
  • Footprints: – Against: 1
  • Github: 2
  • JIRA: – Against: 2
  • Pivotal Tracker: – Against: 1
  • Redmine: 5
  • Request Tracker: 1 Against: 1
  • SupportPress (for WordPress): 1
  • Trac: 3 Against: 1

Trac and Redmine seemed to be the two forerunners. My problem with Trac was that it didn’t have clear project organization, and no one could confirm that the email issue management plugin worked.

Installation & Setup

Our system administrator took a couple of (not full) days to get it installed and going, and following the instructions were apparently fairly easy. Then it took me maybe half a day to set up all the projects and users with the settings I wanted. The e-mail creation also worked well out of the box. We just had to make sure we had the right settings for what we wanted.

Staff Issue Creation & Management

In order to make it so that staff can file issues without ever having to see Redmine, I created a form in our Intranet (webform module in Drupal). The form had most of the standard fields:

  • Name: automatically filled in with username
  • E-mail: also automatically filled in
  • Related to: options which were essentially the project names
  • Need: options equivalent to tracker e.g. Support, Bug Fix, etc.
  • Priority: options equivalent to priority
  • Summary: email subject line, which then turns into issue name
  • Description: issue details

Once it’s submitted, a copy is sent to our team’s email. Through a cron job (every 5 minutes or so), the email is picked up, and filed.

If the user already exists in the system, Redmine will use the email from the user account to match it to the user, they will automatically become the ‘reporter’ of the issue, and get a copy.

If the user does not exist in the system, Redmine will say that ‘Anonymous’ reported it. This will always happen the first time someone reports an issue as I did not add everyone on staff to the system. So, the first time this happens, I then add the user to the system, and add them as a watcher to the issue.

The one issue I ran into was that I forgot you have to set both the email plugin and each project to accept issues from anonymous users. Simple carelessness really.

Getting Staff to Change their Workflow

I think the hardest part with implementing any issue tracker is getting staff to use it. Within the team, it hasn’t been too difficult. We have a small team and the developers in particular have no problems using it. The only problem I sometimes have is making sure they close issues when they’re done with them.

But even within the team, sometimes it can be difficult to get people to report issues using Redmine. While our manager wanted us to start using it just for the website, it has worked well enough, so we’re strategizing how to get the rest of the staff using it now.

We’ve concluded that it kind of needs to be an all or nothing. So we’ve decided that all non-urgent issues should be done through the intranet form regardless of the project, and that should people email us, we’re going to be emailing them back to submit it through the form.

For any urgent issues and for immediate support, they can still call us. After all, trying to walk someone through editing something on our website or intranet is much easier by phone anyway.

Before we start enforcing it, we’ll be introducing this workflow to staff through various committee meetings in part to gather feedback.

So… we’ll see how it goes.