Introduction
The Talis Ideas Portal allows customers to submit ideas about how to improve Talis Aspire Reading Lists or Talis Aspire Digitised Content. The purpose of the forum is to enable us to understand the direct needs, desires and motivations of the end-user. This enables us to discover areas of importance for our users and our aim for the process is for it to be transparent and fair.
We will aim to respond to all ideas on the new site within two weeks; in our response we will inform you if the idea is already in our current roadmap, if we are adding to our plans or if we are putting it in our backlog of ideas to tackle as time and resources allow.
The Ideas Portal was launched in July 2023. All of the ideas in the previous Ideas site have been downloaded and have helped formulate our development roadmap.
Users need to create an account with the site, once they've done so they can put forward suggestions for features they would like to see, and also vote for suggestions from other users.
Getting Started
Click on 'Login / Sign up' in the top right of the homepage. You'll need to enter your email address and First Name / Surname. This will send a verification email to your chosen address; once you've clicked the link in that message you'll be able to log in fully and raise / vote on ideas.
Raising Ideas
Once logged in, click on the '+ Add a new idea' button in the top left of the screen. You'll then see a form where you can describe your idea and add more detail as to why the feature you're requesting will be beneficial to users. Please include as much information as you can, this will help us understand the use case for the suggestion that you're making. You'll then need to select an area of the system that your idea relates to. When you're finished, click 'Add Idea'.
Voting on Ideas
Ideas are presented to visitors from the homepage, you can use the 'Sort by' filter to view them by 'Trending', 'Recent' and 'Popular'. To view more about an idea simply click on its title, or click on the 'Vote' button to add your support.
You may also search for ideas at the top of the screen, or use the filters on the left-hand side to drill down to ideas that relate to a specific part of the system.
FAQs
Q: What is the difference between an idea and a support request?
An idea is a suggestion for a possible enhancement you would like to see within Talis Aspire, to allow you to meet a business or user need the system does not currently address. A support request is an issue, or question, that a customer is having.
When a support request cannot be resolved with existing functionality, we may advise you to raise it as an suggestion on Ideas.
Q: Who can register for Talis Aspire Ideas?
Any member of the customer institution can register to raise ideas, including library staff, academics and students.
Q: Are we limited to the amount of users who may register?
No. As many users as desire can register for Talis Ideas Portal. Note that when evaluating the votes on an idea, this is considered.
Q: Is the system not unfair if one institution has more registered users voting than another?
We want to encourage a diverse range of ideas and opinions, so have made the decision not to limit the amount of users at a particular institution who can vote. One impact of this is that whilst one institution may only have one or two registered users voting, another institution may have a dozen or more and thus influence the prioritisation of ideas in their favour. To avoid this, we closely monitor who, from which institution, is voting on a particular idea and take this into account when reviewing ideas for development.
Where we see a particular idea garnering a disproportionately high number of votes from a particular institution, we may engage directly with that institution to better understand why (in comparison with the wider customer group) that particular idea is of such interest.
Q: How can I raise the likelihood an idea will be implemented?
- Provide a concise title which is clear to other customers browsing what the idea is about.
- In the idea description, describing the functionality of the idea is only half the story. The other half is detailing why - what benefit (to the user, the library, the institution) would that idea bring. Will it save time? Will it increase the likelihood of academic engagement?
- Engage the community about your idea. There is nothing stopping a customer posting to LIS-TALIS-ASPIRE, or dropping a colleague at another institution an email.
- Vote!
Q: Do the ideas with the most votes get implemented?
No, not necessarily. The idea may not be feasible even though it is a good suggestion, or it may be dependent on other developments before it is possible to implement. Alternatively, it may require us to spend significant time whilst we engage with third-parties, or may require extensive technical research for us to understand if / how to approach it.