This release contains core developments required as a foundation for planned functionality over the next few releases, and it fixes some issues affecting links under the ‘Find more by…’ area of the Item details page. This release does not introduce any new functionality.

Customers with Prism 3 are now able to preview the new release, as usual, with a fully functioning view of their own catalogue and data but using this new version of the software.

Release to the live service is scheduled for Tuesday 5th May.

The Feedback feature in Prism is highly valuable both to us and to the library. Users can and do tell us what they like and what they would like to see in Prism, as well as reporting problems. Their perspective is always refreshing and instructive and continually reminds us that we should be wary about thinking we know what they want.

So when we found a fault a few days ago in the latest release that was preventing the sending of user feedback emails in many cases, we gave it priority and the fix was released this morning. Software as a Service means that all customers get the benefit of the release immediately.

Now that it’s working properly again, we’re looking forward to the continuation of the reality feed.

Today we have released the changes described in an earlier post, where we improve the handling of errors.

The live customers have been able to preview the new release, as usual, with a fully functioning view of their own catalogue and data but using this new version of the software. Both the preview and the live release become available to all Prism 3 customers for no effort on their part, a benefit of the Software as a Service model of Prism 3.

In addition, as usual, this release includes enhancements that consolidate the robustness, reliability, scalability, and flexibility of the Prism service for the benefit of all current and future customers.

We’d love to hear what you think of Prism 3, either in comments to this blog post or in the Prism forum.

We are preparing a new release of Prism 3. It is currently in testing, then it will be made available to customers for preview, before being put live.

This release will improve the handling of errors. Sometimes a user may see a message saying that an error has occurred. This can be due to configuration problems in the local system or between Prism and the local system, relating to user transactions such as renewal, reservation or cancellation and changing PIN. We are working to resolve these issues. This forthcoming release will do two things to help:

• It will automatically notify us with details each time such an error occurs. This will help us to diagnose and fix the causes of the errors.
• It will present the user with more a more helpful page, including the option to send a feedback message. This will generate an email to the same addresses as the existing feedback option in the top menu. The text on the error page is configurable. The default page content, which will display between your local header and footer, is shown in the image below (click it to see a large version).

New error page body

When the release is ready it will be made available as a preview, as usual, before release to the live service.

Today we’re pleased to announce the release of some new features as part of the continuous development of Prism 3.

As usual, live customers have been able to preview these new features – this gave them a fully functioning view of their own catalogue and data but using this new version of the software.  Since Prism 3 is Software as a Service, the new features are now available to all Prism 3 customers without having to do anything.

You can see the features that do not require a user login in our demonstrator.

Spelling Suggestions
Spelling suggestions are a familiar and valuable part of the search experience on the Web. This first step in spelling suggestion functionality in Prism gives English language suggestions when there are no results for the user’s query. It gives suggestions for single and multi-word queries. As a starter, try ‘digitl photograpy’. The suggestions in this version come from a dictionary, so it may suggest a word that retrieves no results.

Change PIN
As a library user, you can sign in to your account and select an option to change PIN, near the top of the page. On the change PIN form page, you can confirm your current PIN and enter your new PIN twice to confirm it. Your input is checked and error messages are given as appropriate. Your new PIN is effective the next time you sign in.

Advanced Search Clear Form Button
On the Advanced Search page (also known as Search Options), there is a new button labelled ‘Clear Form’. This clears all the fields on the form.

In addition, as  normal, this release includes enhancements that consolidate the robustness, reliability, scalability, and flexibility of the Prism service for the benefit of all current and future customers.

We’d love to hear what you think of Prism 3, either in comments to this blog post or in the Prism forum.