We are pleased to announce that Alto 5.5 is now available on general release to all customers.

You will find the Release Notices and supporting documentation for this release on our web site at http://librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/customer_area/alto/.

Please ensure that you download and read the documentation prior to downloading the installation wraps.

Key features within Alto 5.5 are:

• New ‘borrower notifications’ for messages such as overdue items or reservations awaiting collection and more
• Faster user login to satisfy audit requirements
• Ability to send ad hoc notifications by email
• Bulk payment of invoice lines for part received orders

In order to gain access to the installation wraps, please raise a support case with the support team via http://www.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/services/support/index.shtml indicating when you will be performing your LMS upgrade, as this will allow us to schedule your LDS upgrade.

Alto 5.5 requires LDS in order to provide access to the new Notifications functionality. In order to benefit from the new Notifications system through Alto, please ensure your desktop environment has access to ports 8083 and 25 on your Main LMS server.

The new borrower notifications can be implemented over a period of time. The old notification Perl scripts will continue to work, and will be supported by Capita until support for Alto 5.5 ends. You can set up a new rule and test it with a small set of borrowers before allowing it to run for all borrowers and switching off the old Perl script that it replaces.