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Updates to the Prism Single Sign-On Metadata

As part of our ongoing programme of maintenance for Prism, we have updated our metadata required to secure the Single Sign-On feature as part of the Prism release on 29th July 2021.

Customers using SAML based authentication systems, such as Shibboleth, CAS or Open Athens, will need to apply our updated metadata to their systems.

Please download the updated metadata from the link below and ensure the encryption and signing certificates are updated on your Identity Provider before our existing metadata expires on 20th August 2020.

The new metadata is available online, direct from your existing Prism tenancy, as below:

https://prism.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/<your-tenancy-name>/saml/module.php/saml/sp/metadata.php/default-sp

In the above, just replace <your-tenancy-name> with your tenancy.

For example, the metadata for the /birmingham/ tenancy would be:
https://prism.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/birmingham/saml/module.php/saml/sp/metadata.php/default-sp

Please ensure you have downloaded the metadata and updated your systems before our existing metadata expires on 20th August 2020.

Comments and contact

Please get in touch if you have any comments, questions or suggestions. You can comment here on the Prism blog , or contact our support team directly. Please visit the Prism Ideas Forum to suggest and discuss additional features.

Prism Release 25th May 2018

We’re pleased to announce that the version of Prism that has been in preview recently has now been released to the live service.

This release includes:

  • Prism “Forgotten PIN?” Process

Details are described in the release notice.

Prism Release Preview 25th May 2018

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Prism is now available for preview.

This release includes:

  • Prism "Forgotten PIN" process

 

Prism "Forgotten PIN" process

We identified a minor opportunity for error within the 30 minute timeout for the secure PIN reset process. This process is invoked by borrowers using the “Forgotten PIN?” process from the Prism My Account area.

The change ensures that if there are any issues with the validity of the secure token, the end user is prompted to restart the “Forgotten PIN?” process.

Prism Release Preview 1st May 2018

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Prism is now available for preview.

This release includes:

  • Payment gateway support directly from within Prism
  • Increased visibility in search engines

 

Payment gateway support directly from within Prism

We’ve reviewed how Keystone ePayment works for your end users and have implemented the Keystone connections for ePayment Service Providers directly in Prism. This release supports:

  • WorldPay
  • WPM
  • Capita Payments (SecPay and Pay360)
  • Civica ICON
  • SagePay.

Under Charges in the user’s account the button currently labelled as Pay Now will show the amount to pay. It takes the user directly to the payment provider’s payment page.

This development improves the end user experience by removing multiple clicks and confirmations which were duplicated. It also ensures that any theme changes are applied immediately, rather than incurring a delay while your Keystone ePayment solution is updated.

This applies if you have the Prism Pro ePayment feature. To implement this change we need to switch over your tenancy to the new feature. Please open a Support case to request your upgrade.

 

Increased visibility in search engines

Prism now provides richer information to search engines, which should increase the visibility of your library’s resources in the web. We’ve upgraded the schema.org data that is included in Prism pages, and provided a sitemap of recent additions to your tenancy.

Making the most of your preview

Please check the preview version as early as possible to familiarise with the new functionality and to ensure that your tenancy still behaves as expected in terms of both functionality, including extensions, and styling.

To preview this release, please precede your tenancy URL with ‘demo.’, like this: demo.capitadiscovery.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. If you have your own host name, you’ll need to use demo.capitadiscovery.co.uk instead.

 

Release to the live service

The release of Prism to the live service will be on Tuesday 8th May 2018.

 

Comments and contact

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the Prism blog, on the Prism forum and Prism Ideas or contact our support or sales admin teams directly.

Prism Release 30th March 2017

We’re pleased to announce that the version of Prism that has been in preview recently has now been deployed to the live service.

Details are described in the preview release notice.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, on the Prism forum and Prism Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

Prism and mandatory HTTPS

Following the release of Prism on 21st November, we received customer feedback that there were issues with some components. We reverted the HTTPS only change on the evening of 22nd November.

The issues reported by our customers were:

  • Catalogue records not being pushed into Prism;
  • Talis Aspire integration no longer working in the browser;
  • Pages reporting mixed content (both HTTP and HTTPS resources).

Since then we have invesitagted each of these reported issues, with the following remedial action being required.

Catalogue records not being updated

We have amended our configuration such that the post of catalogue content functions correctly after we reapply the HTTPS changes.

There is no action required on customer systems.

Talis Aspire

We have spoken with Talis who confirmed that HTTPS is fully supported and available for all their customers when using the *.rl.talis.com URL to access their product. Talis confirmed that they do not support HTTPS where the customer has used their own hostname.

The action required by our customers is to amend the configuration of your Juice plugin to reference your Talis Aspire tenancy using the rl.talis.com domain. This change is made within your Juice plugin configuration within your Prism theme through the Admin Console. Once this is done, the Juice plugin will function correctly using HTTPS.

Mixed mode content

Mixed mode content warnings appear in your web browser when you are on an HTTPS web site which refers to HTTP resources. When this occurrs within JavaScript, such as a Juice plugin, the JavaScript will follow security best practice and may refuse to access the insecure resource.

The end user will see a warning that they are accessing a mixed mode site.

This occurrs when there are HTTP accessed resources within your Prism theme. All resources should be accessed with protocol independent URLS, by omitting the “http:” from the URL. Doing this will ensure that the web browser uses the protocol that is listed within the address bar, HTTPS.

For example:

<img src="//capitadiscovery.co.uk/birmingham/assets/-/image.jpg"/>

Note, the “http:” has been removed, but the double “/” remains.

The action required by our customers is to preview this release by preceding your tenancy URL with ‘demo.’, like this: demo.capitadiscovery.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. If you have your own host name, you’ll need to use demo.capitadiscovery.co.uk instead. You should check that you have been redirected to HTTPS, and your Prism content behaves correctly with no warnings. If there are warnings, these should be fixed in your theme through the Admin Console.

Next steps

Please be aware that Prism currently supports HTTPS for all live pages, and after a borrower has authenticated, they typically remain using HTTPS for the duration of their session. This means that if you have any of the above issues, they are currenly present in your LIVE Prism after a borrower has authenticated.

We will be disabling HTTP use for Prism from Monday 9th January. You should ensure that your Prism content works as expected using the ‘demo.’ URL for your tenancy, and make any required changes before this point.

Should you require any assistance, please raise a support case through the usual channels.

Prism Release 29th June 2016

We’re pleased to announce that the version of Prism that has been in preview recently has now been deployed to the live service.

This release includes:

  • Bolinda BorrowBox integration fixes
  • ILL collection location fix
  • Integration of Agilisys Single Sign On

Details of the inclusions are described in the preview release notice.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, on the Prism forum and Prism Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

Prism Release 21st December 2015

Following the preview of the Prism release announced on 14th December, we are now pleased to announce this has now been deployed to the live service.

Details of the inclusions are described in the preview release announcement.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, on the Prism forum and Prism Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

Prism release 27th November 2015

Following the preview of the Prism release announced on 18th November, we are now pleased to announce this has now been deployed to the live service.

For full details of the release content, please see the preview release announcement.