AGIIS Insider—Q1 Enhancements Update

AGIIS Insider

Q1 Enhancements Update

By Chris Crutchfield, Member Services Program Director

With the first quarter in the books, I thought this would be a great time to communicate the work completed to improve the Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) Directory and give a preview of some enhancements that are on the horizon. Each year, AGIIS is allotted a number of development units to make improvements to the directory. Through our first quarter, we have utilized one-fifth of these units on the following enhancements:

  • March 25 – Product Directory Modification (Addition of Indicator Digit) – This enhancement was recommended by AGIIS subscribers that participated in AgGateway’s Crop Protection Product Guidelines Working Group (WG16). The enhancement allows product owners to utilize an indicator digit instead of the legacy Package Level Indicator Code in the formation of GTIN assignment.
  • March 25 – Address Line 1 System Edit Addition – This enhancement was also recommended by the AGIIS subscriber community to address confusion when entities in AGIIS contain non-address information in “Address Line 1” of a physical or mailing address. The enhancement prevents entities from being added to the directory through the web interface, bulk process, or web services that contain non-address information in Address Line 1 (which should only feature physical or mailing address). The web interface now presents an error if non-address information is provided in Address Line 1. The bulk process was enhanced with a new error code – S308 – to indicate that non-address information is contained in Address Line 1 and prevents the entity from being added to the directory.

The next step is to clean up existing entities in AGIIS that contain non-address information in Address Line 1. With feedback from the subscriber community, this clean-up exercise will commence in the November timeframe. Subscribers that have impacted entities in their subset will be provided a report to review impacted entities and submit changes. Once this report is provided, subscribers will be given a 90-day period to submit updates.

More information and a complete set of release notes describing the enhancements mentioned above can be found on the AgGateway website by clicking HERE. 

So, what is on the horizon? Development is just beginning to improve the procedure and navigation for updating a user password in AGIIS. Today, there is no clear direction to change a user password, and this has created some confusion for AGIIS users. This enhancement will put a “Change Password” button at the bottom of a user profile page and remove the existing, “Password” and “Confirm Password” fields. These fields are currently masked for security purposes and provide no value once the “Change Password” button is implemented. The new “Change Password” button will present users a screen to enter new credentials and when submitted, will hash the password in the database and send the user a confirmation email notifying them of the change.

At the request of another AGIIS subscriber, we are exploring the idea of a Web Services or API dashboard that will display API usage and system health.

As you may have noticed, most AGIIS enhancements are the direct result of user feedback, where ideas and improvements are brought forward from users that will make their jobs easier and more efficient. If you have an idea or suggestion to improve AGIIS, let us know! Simply fill out the AGIIS Enhancement Request Form and send it to Member.Services@AgGateway.org. I look forward to including your enhancement in my next update!