Early Adopter

Early Adopter

The Early Adopter program at ByWater Solutions is an opportunity to improve testing of the newest Koha release. This provides valuable user feedback and bug detection before its rolled out to all ByWater partners. As an Early Adopter of the Koha release, you'll help to ensure the software meets day to day workflow needs. Early Adopters are champions who generate excitement and drive future adoption of Koha! 

Advantages of Being an Early Adopter

  1. The latest stable Koha version sooner, along with all the new features!
  2. A private Slack channel to talk to other early adopters and BWS staff. 
  3. Priority support for your upgrade-related tickets. We want to fix any problems fast!
  4. Recognition and thank you's for leading the adoption of the new release for ByWater Partners. 
Notes
A participating partner must be live on Koha for at least one full year before participating in the program

ByWater Solutions Expectations 

  1. Report and document issues you think are related to the current upgrade in the Help Center ticketing system.
  2. Call us/Zoom with us to report problems if putting it into text doesn't cover the entire issue.
  3. Chat with each other in the Early Adopters Slack channel.
  4. Chat with us during our business hours in Slack.

Communication 

The#koha-early-adopters Slack channel is for discussion, not emergencies. Emergencies should still be reported via phone and the Help Center.
Info
Office Hours: BWS Support team will staff the channel Monday - Friday during business hours, approx 9am Eastern to 6pm Eastern.  

Support 

Early Adopter partners will continue to submit Help Center tickets like you always have. Please include the current release number in the subject. Describe in detail how to replicate the problem, including screenshots, screencasts, and links to patrons/records.

What happens after you submit a ticket? 

  1. Our support team will review the ticket and provide an initial response. They'll gather additional information, links, and/or screenshots to document the issue. (Hint: giving us this info upfront allows us to work faster!)
  2. Support then refers the ticket to our Educators, Data Specialists or Developers to help investigate and diagnose the problem.
  3. ByWater Solutions provides timely updates to the ticket with the work performed thus far.

Fixes and Patches

A support ticket related to the early adoption of the release can have many outcomes: settings changes, data fixes, configuration adjustments, code changes. If the culprit is a code issue, where developers need to rewrite code that is not working correctly, they will do that work, and associate it with a Bugzilla Issue. 
Warning
If an early adopter identifies an issue that stops the day to day workflow in Koha,  our team will fix it for you ASAP. We'll do everything possible to keep you from waiting for fixes in this situation.
The development team will collect all of these fixes and create a "build" or "mark" as needed, which will be deployed as soon as is practical.

ByWater Giveback 

As a thank you for being a part of our Early Adopter program, ByWater Solutions will enter participating libraries in a raffle to attend the koha-US Annual Conference.
  1. Each participating library will be entered in a raffle to receive a scholarship to attend the koha-US Annual Conference. ByWater Solutions will cover the cost for attendance, travel, and accommodations of the selected staff member from the selected library. 

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