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:

• Stock Purchase Request form (Prism Pro)
• Integrated search service item data available via the Prism Linked Data API

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.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 8th June 2015 at 12:00 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Prism developments and review the Prism Roadmap, as well as giving you an opportunity to raise any specific questions that you may have.

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and information on the Prism website, here on the Prism blog and on the Prism Forum.

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

• Stock Purchase Request form (Prism Pro)
• Integrated search service item data available via the Prism Linked Data API

Stock Purchase Request form (Prism Pro)

This new Prism Pro feature provides a form where users can recommend items for purchase by the library. All the Prism text is configurable, as usual. The user is invited to sign in, if not already signed in, before the form is displayed. When the form is submitted the bibliographic information is used to search your Prism catalogue to see whether you already have the item. If you have, then brief details of the most relevant match are displayed with options to check availability or view more results or, alternatively the user can submit their stock purchase request. If no match is found then the details entered by the user are re-displayed with a button to confirm and submit the request.

An order and Work (including a MARC record) are created and the order number is displayed to the user as a reference number to use for enquiries. In Alto, the Order status is potential and the Type is ‘Reader request’. The requester’s barcode number is given in Source and in the Note with some text indicating that it is a stock purchase request. No items are generated.

For further information and to enable the Stock Purchase Request form please contact your Account Manager. This feature requires Local data Services (LDS) version 1.10, which, in turn, requires that you are on Alto version 5.6.1. or higher. Documentation on creating a link in the Prism header to the Stock Purchase Request form, when enabled, is given in the Prism Forum.

Integrated search service item data available via the Prism Linked Data API

It has been possible for some time to get search results from integrated search services such as Summon, EDS and others via the Prism Linked Data API for re-use in other applications. In this release we’ve extended the Item Data feature of the Linked Data API to allow the details of an individual item in an integrated search service (typically one that occurred in search results) to be retrieved in a variety of formats. To construct the URL to do this, please refer to the Prism Linked Data API documentation, in the Item Data API section.

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 Wednesday 20th May 2015.

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 your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

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 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.

If you were unable to attend the Prism Development Update webinar on Monday 30th March or would like to review what we covered then you can catch up on latest developments by watching the recording of the webinar below or by downloading the video.

Highlights include:

• Prism Roadmap run-through
• Previous release features
  • Schema.org
  • Reservation workflow improvements
  • ILL fixes
• Current release features
  • Summon integration
  • Hotlinks for Resource Management
  • Fix for Resource Management with special characters in MARC 001
  • Borrower Joining expiry date fix
  • Account expiry alerts
  • Admin Console
    • Strong password policy
    • Account lockout
    • More secure password storage

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Prism is now available for preview, and the latest release of the Admin Console is now live.

This release includes:

• Summon search service integrated in Prism
• Show expiry date in My Account
• Account expiry date for online joiners fix
• E-resource links in records uploaded via Resource Management
• Resource Management control number characters fix
• Account lockout after 5 incorrect log in attempts to the Admin Console
• Mandatory password strength when changing Admin Console password
• Improved security in storage of passwords for the Admin Console

Summon search service integrated in Prism

Libraries that use the Summon resource discovery service can now offer their users the option to search Summon from within Prism. This is the second resource discovery service integration in Prism, following the integration of EBSCO DS.

The Summon search integration allows users to find and link to your subscribed journal articles and other e-resources. Facets allow search results to be refined, including scholarly article, peer reviewed, format, discipline, subject, publication date and more. The Admin Console Prism Facets area includes the Summon facet options, allowing you to show or hide them and to alter their display order. You can also use expert search qualifiers for more precision, such as title, author, subject and format.

You can view a demo of this integration on our demonstration tenancy.

To have Summon added as a search target in Prism you need a Connect for Summon licence. For more information please contact your Account Manager.

Show expiry date in My Account

When users view their account they will see the date their account expires, and they will be warned when it is due to expire within 60 days and when it has expired. The ‘Change PIN’ tab has been re-labeled as ‘Settings’ and it displays the account expiry date as well as the Change PIN form. When the account is due to expire within 60 days, or when it has expired, an alert is displayed directly below the account summary with an appropriate message including the expiry date.

In all cases there is also a ‘Learn more’ link to a new ‘Account Expiry’ page explaining why accounts expire, what it means, and what to do about it. You can customise this text by uploading a file account-expiry.html, containing the page content fragment, to your tenancy’s Theme in the Admin Console, and you can provide translations by uploading additional theme files with the appropriate language code in the filename, for example account-expiry.cy-gb.html.

Account expiry date for online joiners fix

The online joining form in Prism will now set the new borrower’s expiry date according to the rules configured in your LMS, pulling this form in line with Soprano and Alto.

 
E-resource links in records uploaded via Resource Management

Prism can display links to e-resources from two different data elements: one is hotlinks, which are obtained dynamically via the LDS, and the other is electronic location and access, stored in the Prism data and derived from MARC field 856. Some libraries suppress the display of the electronic location and access links because they tend to duplicate the hotlinks. However, records uploaded to Prism via Resource Management and those returned from other sources via API, such as EDS and Summon, do not have hotlinks.

With this release, when there is no hotlink, Prism generates a hotlink-style display from electronic location and access data derived from MARC field 856. This means that the optimal approach now is to suppress the display of electronic location and access links because all required links will display as hotlinks. For help in suppressing the display of electronic location and access links, please open a Support case.

Resource Management control number characters fix

Some records that have been uploaded to Prism via Resource Management are from  suppliers whose control numbers include characters such as space, slash and plus. When selecting such records from Prism search results, the response has been ‘not found’.

Prism now replaces characters from MARC field 001 other than A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and underscore with an underscore, which fixes the problem.

To make this fix apply retrospectively you will need to re-load affected records – after this release has gone live. Suppress or delete Resource Management collections where the problem exists, and re-upload the records to a new collection.

Account lockout after 5 incorrect log in attempts to the Admin Console

To improve the safety and security of your Admin Console account, we have now instituted a password lockout policy, making an account unavailable for a short amount of time if an incorrect password is provided repeatedly.

After 5 incorrect attempts, an “are you human” verification is enacted, requiring you to tick a checkbox, and sometimes solve a CAPTCHA, to continue logging in. If you fail this verification 5 times, or verify successfully, but still use the wrong password, your account will be locked for a period of 10 minutes. This safeguard is to protect against people trying to guess, or brute-force, your account.

If you are having trouble accessing your account, or require the password changing because you have mislaid it, please open a support request and we’ll reset it manually for you.

As an added safeguard, we also strongly suggest enabling 2 factor authentication for your account, which can be set up from the ‘Account Settings’ panel. There are several freely available authentication applications available for all major mobile phone platforms, including Authy and Google Authenticator.

Mandatory password strength when changing Admin Console password

As a further safeguard for your account, we are now enforcing a mandatory “strong password” policy for all Admin Console accounts. This will take effect whenever you elect to change your password. Passwords should contain a mix of upper-case and lower-case characters, numbers, and preferably symbols (e.g. !”£$%^&*(){}[]:;@’~#.?/¬`). Additionally, runs of characters (e.g. qwertyuiop) will be flagged as being insecure, as will common dictionary words and known-weak passwords (e.g. password123 etc.).

To help you choose a strong password, we have added a password strength meter to the Change Password screen:

Password Strength

To successfully change your password, your new one will need to be at least ‘Good’, as indicated on the strength meter.

Improved security in storage of passwords for the Admin Console

As part of our continual internal code reviews, we’ve made the way we store passwords more secure. This change is transparent and happens behind-the-scenes the next time you login to the Admin Console. The new password storage scheme protects against “brute forcing” in the unlikely event that the scrambled version of your password was ever obtained. We’ve ensured the system is future-proof by choosing a system that allows us to increase the strength of the scheme as computers become more powerful.

 
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 Monday 13th April 2015.

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 your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

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 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.

We’re pleased to announce that the latest release of the Admin Console is now live.

This release includes:

• Prism:
  • Redesigned editor for Prism themes
• Notifications
  • Ability to schedule a “one-off” rule
  • Validation of mandatory fields when adding a rule
  • Adding name of rule to deletion modal dialogue
  • Rule parameters multiple value selection now uses a control with ability to move values into and out of a ‘selected’ box
  • Improvement to notifications editor to stop the page jumping around in certain browsers

Prism – Theme Editor

We’ve re-organised the Prism Theme editor in this release, and at the same time added some features to make it easier to manage and experiment with themes.

The most noticable difference is the adoption of a ‘tabbed’ interface, allowing us to move the ‘Upload File’ and ‘Upload Zip’ forms from the bottom of the page, making them quicker to access. Alongside these existing options, we also have three new features: ‘Edit File’, ‘Create File’ and ‘Migrate Theme’.

We’ve also added a link to the latest revision of the Prism Style Guide into the alert at the top of the page. You can now also dismiss this alert for the remainder of your session by clicking the “x” in the top right corner.

Edit File

To make it quicker and easier to try out new styling in your theme, we’ve added the ability to edit your files in situ. The editor we’ve chosen works on modern browsers (IE8 and up, recent Firefox and Chrome versions), and offers a wealth of features tailored to working with CSS, HTML and JavaScript files. These include:

• Autocomplete: as you type CSS property names, JavaScript method names or HTML tags, the editor suggests possible values.
• Smart indentation: the editor knows about the best way to indent CSS, Javascript, HTML and XML, and will do this automatically when you press enter to go to the next line.
• Warnings/errors: CSS rules that could be problematic, or syntax errors in other files, are highlighted with either a warning flag, or an exclamation mark depending on the severity.
• Find/replace: when using the editor, pressing CTRL-F or CTRL-H opens a find and/or replace dialogue respectively.
• Theme support: if you’d rather work with a darker background to reduce eye strain, simply select one of the dark themes. This setting is saved in a cookie and should persist the next time you use the editor.

Once you’ve finished editing a file and clicked on the ‘Save’ button, simply reset your tenant cache to see the changes reflected in your theme.

Create File

In tandem with the ability to edit files, Create File allows you to add a text based file (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, .ini/config file and plain text) to your theme without the need to upload a blank file. You can create subdirectories by using forward slashes in the file name, e.g. path/to/new/file.html.

To ensure you can’t accidentally overwrite an existing file, the Admin Console checks to see whether a file of the same name already exists, and warns you if so.

Migrate Theme

Every Prism customer has two tenancies by default, their ‘Live’ and their ‘Sandbox’. We always suggest working on any changes in your Sandbox first, before copying them to your Live tenancy. Previously this was accomplished by downloading a theme backup from the Sandbox and uploading it to the Live tenancy.

‘Migrate theme’ makes this process much quicker, allowing you to migrate the entire theme, or just your tenancy specific stylesheet file(s).

The usual process will now be to visit your Sandbox tenancy, migrate the theme from your Live tenancy, make changes, and then migrate from Sandbox to Live – all without having to download and edit files locally on your computer.

Notifications

One-off Rules

We’ve now added the ability to create a special ‘one-off’ rule, that will send a notification on a specified date, rather than running on a regular basis. When adding the rule you now have the option to set the schedule to ‘Once’ or ‘Recurring’. When ‘Once’ is selected you can specify a date and time.

Mandatory Field Validation

When adding a rule, you’ll now be prompted with a warning message to fill in certain required fields, rather than defaults being provided which could previously be accepted inadvertently.

Deletion Modal Dialogue

If you have a long list of inactive rules and are in the process of cleaning them up, confirming you’re deleting the intended rule is important. To that end we’ve now added the name of the rule you are about to delete to the modal dialogue that pops up asking for confirmation.

Selecting multiple values for rule parameters

We’ve had some feedback that selecting multiple parameter values when creating a rule can be a bit cumbersone, especially if you have a long list of values. We’ve now adopted a similar selection widget to that used in the Prism Facets section of the Admin Console to make this a bit easier.

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 your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

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

• Reservation charge warning and confirmation
• Schema.org microdata in Prism pages
• Gender field change in the Prism Pro Joining form

Reservation charge warning and confirmation

The Reserve button on the item detail page now shows the charge for placing a reservation, where applicable. This is derived from the same rules as when the reservation is actually placed. When you’re not signed in the charge is displayed only if the library applies the same charge in all circumstances. If you click the button and sign in then the page is re-displayed as now, but with the charge displayed on the button as appropriate.

When signed in, clicking the button when there is a charge takes you to a new page where you are reminded of the charge and your chosen collection site and invited to either confirm or cancel. ‘Cancel’ takes you back to the item detail page without placing the reservation. ‘Confirm’ places the reservation and gives you a confirmed page with details of your reservation and a button to return to the item page. When there is no charge, clicking the Reserve button places the reservation directly and gives you the confirmed page.

The various labels on the Reserve button in the different conditions are new texts in Prism. Old bespoke texts will no longer display, such as ‘Reserve this item (charges may apply)’. Bespoke variants of the new texts can be added as required: please open a Support case, as for any other Prism text change.

Schema.org microdata in Prism pages

Pages in Prism now include schema.org microdata embedded in the html. This has no direct effect on the use and appearance of Prism, but it integrates your content more meaningfully into the wider web for the benefit of users and libraries.

Microdata provides a structure and vocabulary to describe types of information, making the contents of web pages more meaningful to computers. This could include information about books and other library resources, people, services, and so on. It is understood by the major search engines and allows them to  provide more relevant results to users both in terms of ranking in response to queries and the information displayed. It is also used by web-based social media. The purpose for libraries is to increase the visibility of their resources and services on the web, and thus increase the use and perceived value of libraries.

Here are links to more information about structured data and schema.org.
 

Gender field change in the Prism Pro Joining form

The Gender field on the Prism Pro Joining form was not populating the LMS database. It has been removed. Instead, a Gender field can be added to the form as part of the implementation, using the library’s Analysis code data for gender if created and required by the library.

Making the most of your preview

Please check the preview version as early as possible to familiarise with the new reservation 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.

We are aware of impacts on styling with this release, mainly concerning the Check Availability,  Reserve and Save buttons in the Results and Item Detail pages. If you are an Assist Managed customer or if you commissioned your Prism theme from us then we will fix any styling issues arising from this release before it goes live, and contact you individually to let you know when it has been done. Otherwise, here are some guidelines to help you fix any such issues.

Please refer to the Prism Design Guidelines (PDF)  for more extensive guidance on best practices.

To fix issues with the buttons it is advisable to defer to the base Prism styling as much as possible as we’ve ensured a set of defaults that should render well on all browsers, including mobile devices, and provide ample area to click.

Otherwise, removing fixed widths on buttons, as well as custom padding, and any fixed-width images will be a required first step – this ensures that button text can be changed and not break rendering. Most background images that we’ve seen used in Prism themes can be successfully implemented with pure CSS.

If you’ve hidden buttons on the search results page (e.g. to stop the “Save” button appearing) you’ll need to use the more specific CSS selector, which should fix 99% of issues:

#searchaction ul.itemActions li.listAction { display: none; }

Release to the live service

The release of Prism to the live service will be on Monday 5th January 2015.

If you need to resolve any styling issues we  strongly recommend that you endeavour to do that before Christmas.

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 your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

If you were unable to attend the Prism Development Update webinar on Monday 27th October or would like to review what we covered then you can catch up on latest developments by watching the recording of the webinar below or by downloading the video.

Highlights include:

• Prism Roadmap run-through
• Recent releases recap, including:
  • Institutional repository integration
  • Reservation queue position in My Account > Reservations
  • Publication etc data model improvements
  • Consortial catalogues
• Developments in progress
  • Work-level grouping of results (‘FRBRisation’)
  • Data model enhancements for people, organisations and subjects