More Say in Sierra’s Future Features with MEEP! (5/13/24)

We wanted to share some exciting changes about how Sierra’s future features will be chosen by users in conjunction with Innovative, the company behind Sierra! In the past, decisions about which features to include in new releases were made solely by Innovative. But now, they’ve entered into an agreement (the Member Exclusive Enhancement Process or MEEP) with the Innovative Users Group that gives library staff more say in what features get prioritized. In this new process, ~20 ideas from the Ideas Exchange will be selected by user run working groups. Innovative will then estimate the amount of software work needed for each idea. After that, all IUG site contacts will vote on which of these ideas they’d like to see prioritized. The ideas with the most votes will be worked on by Innovative and delivered within 12 months. The first Sierra working group met in February and here are the first round of MEEP winners that will be included in Sierra 6.3 (to be released near the end of 2024). Below is a quick list of ideas staff may be interested in voting on, but there are plenty more! Remove duplicate items on paging lists Add “back” option during record creation Open and edit the patron record from the item record Always allow patrons to freeze holds Add a filter to search unsuppressed records only Staff are highly encouraged to explore the Ideas Exchange, create an account to submit new ideas, and vote on the ideas that they believe will provide the most value for themselves and patrons. Find more information about the MEEP agreement on the IUG website.