Frequently Asked Questions
Evergreen is freely available to all who want to use, modify, and/or distribute the software. However, many organizations, including non-profits, act as vendors for various Evergreen services .
1) Should I use a vendor with Evergreen?
Though there is no requirement to use a vendor when using Evergreen, it may be convenient to do so. Using a vendor allows a library to borrow the expertise of a vendor. With Evergreen you are free to develop in-house expertise in all aspects of the software, but you can also outsource it and develop in-house expertise at your own pace and preferences.
Most Evergreen libraries use vendors in some way or another and are successful. There are also successful organizations that are entirely self-sufficient with Evergreen. Common vendor services include:
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hosting
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support
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training
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consulting
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customization
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software development
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data migration
Different libraries mix and match these services, performing some in-house and hiring one or more vendors for others.
2) How do I “vet” a vendor?
Questioning the vendor directly
You are strongly encouraged to request references of prior work with Evergreen and proof of contribution to the Evergreen project as part of your assessment process when selecting a company to help you with Evergreen. Additional questions may vary by the types of services you’re looking for:
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hosting
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What service-level agreements do you offer for uptime? What reparations do you offer for downtime?
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What is your backup policy? Your disaster plan? What are the potential points of failure?
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What redundancies do you have? Do you have more than one data center? What redundancies do they have? Power sources? Internet connections?
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What are you responsible for and what is out of the scope of a hosting contract?
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support
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What service-level agreements do you offer for response time? How do you escalate support tickets?
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What support tiers do you offer? How many people may we designate to interact with your support system?
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What are the normal support hours? Do you offer after-hours support?
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What does support cover exactly, and what is out of scope of a support contract?
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training
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What are your policies for recording and redistributing sessions and training materials?
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software development
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How do you interact with the wider Evergreen development community? What can we expect concerning our changes ever making it into an official Evergreen release?
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What are your policies for acceptance testing and bug reporting?
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data migration
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What experience do you have with the software we’re coming from? Could you perform our data extraction?
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Do you offer test loads? Do we have input in the data mapping?
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What are your policies for resolving data-related issues post-migration?
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3) How do I use this vendor list?
This vendor list has those who have self-identified as companies or consultants that work with Evergreen. The Evergreen community has required vendors to pass a limited set of requirements to be listed on this page, We strongly recommend that you always ask the vendors for references in the Evergreen community, or try to gather them yourself by asking around in the Evergreen community.
4) I’m a vendor, how do I get listed?
Send a request to the Evergreen General List with the following information:
- Name of company/organization
- Contact person
- Contact email
- Web site address
- Brief description of services
- Show support for the Evergreen community by adding a visible link on their company website to the Evergreen community site at http://evergreen-ils.org
- Companies and organizations will be added to the Paid Support Services page after demonstrating through the above process that they currently offer Evergreen services. Companies and organizations that do not offer Evergreen services will not be listed.
From time to time, the members of the Evergreen community may check support providers to see if they currently offer Evergreen services. If a company no longer does, their entry may be removed. All removals will be posted publicly to the Evergreen mailing list.
A support provider may request that their entry be removed at any time.