Notes: conference call 7/10/09
Vendor subgroup minutes:
Attendees:
Andy Ingham
David Kennedy
Jonathan Lavigne
Dean Woodbeck
notes - Kennedy
Agenda:
- vendor questionnaire and responses
- inviting select vendors to phone calls. I haven't invited anyone yet, but would like to discuss what we would hope to accomplish in these phone calls. Here are some of my thoughts I just jotted down on this (based some on previous calls), and hopefully we can discuss more in the phone call today:
-- In their (vendor) opinion, why has there been a slow uptake with InCommon?
-- Find out what role if any they think our group or InCommon should play?
-- Find out if there is any need for standardization across federation members' identity providers that would simplify the process for vendors' configurations
-- As identity provider institutions, we would see some real benefit in vendors implementing WAYFless URLs and direct linking to resources. Any ideas on how we should go about making this recommended practice among other vendors
-- Anything we are missing, especially as they may have learned dealing with other federations?
----
Outcomes / Action Items [AI]:
[AI] - Kennedy will try to coordinate possible dates within our group for a vendor to join one of our phone calls
[AI] - We will try to coordinate via email what we hope to achieve in a vendor meeting, and develop an agenda for the meeting
----
Updates/Announcements:
Kennedy following Foster's lead, doing some testing with vendor sites.
Ingham still set to shibbolize production ezproxy on July 15th. Intends to do similar testing after that, beginning with EBSCO.
Vendor questionnaire:
All are impressed with the response we have gotten, particularly for the time of year.
Should use this as an opportunity in some way to follow up with these vendors. Possibly to determine which vendors to invite to the calls.
Vendor phone calls:
One vendor per call. Will get more honest feedback and information sharing.
May want to ask more vendor specific questions, both about their implementations and also about the usage of their SP. Lavigne reported that at least for one publisher, not all of the institutions within the UK federation were actually using the Shibboleth SP that was made available to them.
Phone call would be both an opportunity for us to tell the vendors what we expect from them, in the way of standardization. Also, gives vendors the ability to say what has or hasn't worked based on their experience. So the call could be a two-way information sharing.
Noted that the time of year is bad, so we should pay attention to scheduling.
Reporting back to larger group next week:
We would like to continue as a subgroup
Will report back the responses we have been getting from vendors.