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

This release includes:

• “Did you mean” spelling correction
• Single Sign On using Athens and Shibboleth authentication methods
• EBSCO discovery integration improvements
• Integrated Inter-library loan request improvements
• Analysis terms in the Online Joining form.

Spelling Suggestions 

Bringing intelligent suggestions for failed searches has been a feature we’ve been planning since the move to our new Capita infrastructure. In this release, Prism gives spelling suggestions with search results based on terms in your catalogue. When it determines that an alternative query might improve the search results you’ll see a message at the top of the results. The message can vary according to the outcome of your original search:

• ‘Did you mean:’ This occurs when there are results for your original search but results are also available for the correct spelling. For example, if you search for geneology you may see ‘Did you mean: Genealogy’. You can click on the suggested term to search for it.

• ‘Showing results for:’ This occurs when your original search doesn’t find anything but it seems likely you meant a slightly different spelling. For example, if you search for airodynamics you may see ‘Sorry, didn’t find anything for airodynamics. Showing results for Aerodynamics’.

• ‘Showing results for: … Did you mean …:’ In this case, as well as showing you results for a slightly different spelling, Prism also offers another alternative. For example, if you search for kittenz you may see ‘Sorry, didn’t find anything for kittenz. Showing results for Kittens. Did you mean: Kitten?’.

The spelling suggestions feature is switched on by default. If you would like it to be switched off in any of your tenancies (e.g. main, sandbox) please open a Support case. We are planning to allow you to do this yourself with a setting in the Admin Console.

Single Sign On using Athens and Shibboleth authentication methods

Many academic institutions use Shibboleth or Athens authentication for single sign on (SSO) to a range of services. As a library in such an institution, you can now enable your users to sign in to Prism using the institutional authentication service.

In addition to not needing specific Prism credentials, your users also benefit from only having to sign in once to either Prism or one of the other SSO services such as the student portal, and then be able to access any of the other SSO-enabled services including Prism without further challenge.

A user in Prism who has authenticated via SSO will be able to access their Contact options and Communications if you have enabled these in the Admin Console even when you haven’t enabled PINs. If the user signs in with their borrower barcode and a PIN is not required then they will not have access to those features.

When you have SSO enabled, the My Account link in Prism by default takes the user directly to the institutional sign in page. Optionally it can go to your Prism Sign In page, which we can amend to include a link giving the user the option to sign in with Single Sign On using their institutional username and password. You may wish to do this to allow visitors who have been granted temporary access to sign in to Prism.

For more information about Single Sign On integration please contact your Account Manager or email libraries-sales@capita.co.uk.

EBSCO discovery integration improvements

We’ve made a number of improvements to the integration that allows users to search EBSCO discovery services data from within Prism. Search is now more closely integrated with the EBSCO API for more effective retrieval of results, including the use of qualifiers familiar in Prism such as ‘issn:’ and ‘isbn:’. EBSCO is also searched automatically before a user can submit a request via Prism’s integrated inter-library loan request form.

In the display of results and item details, where metadata from EBSCO is suppressed due to access restrictions, users can sign in to Prism as part of the workflow in order to see full details. Item detail pages now have extensive information including full citation information, abstracts and links to the full text.

Integrated Inter-library loan request improvements

We’ve improved the processing of the integrated Inter-library loan request form (a Prism Pro feature) so that it searches any augmented discovery data sources that you have integrated in Prism, such as EBSCO, before the request is submitted. It reports on items found in both the local catalogue and other integrated sources and allows the user to check their availability, access full text online, view and browse similar results or proceed with submission of the ILL request.

We’ve also improved the mapping of data from the form into corresponding data elements in Alto, for more effective checking by the library and by potential supplying agencies.

Analysis terms in the Online Joining form

With this release we can enable you to add fields to the Online Joining form (a Prism Pro feature) using your Analysis terms, which you may wish to use to capture data such as applicants’ nationality and ethnicity. This requires that we carry out some implementation work to set up the data for your form. For more information or to request this, please raise a Support case.

Making the most of your preview

This release is now available for you to preview. Please do make the most of this opportunity to gain familiarity with the new features and ensure that your tenancy still behaves as expected.

If you identify any issues with your styling please raise a Support case.

As with every release, please also ensure that your extensions continue to work correctly.

To preview this release, please precede your tenancy URL at the new domain name 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 to the live service will be on Tuesday 7th January 2014.

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.

A updated version of the Prism Design Guidelines (version 4) is now available from the Prism website.

This includes a new section on Take the Tour, giving details about configuring and adapting it.

As part of the migration away from prism.talis.com all links contained within the Prism theme or on external websites linking through to Prism tenancies need to be updated to point to capitadiscovery.co.uk.

We have recently identified that there are several different places where the prism.talis.com address continues to be used:

• Juice extensions
• External web sites such as council or University homepages
• Prism 3 themes in headerlinks or prepared searches
• Monitoring tools

If links are being amended from within the Prism theme then they should use relative URLs – this allows the theme to be copied between the live and sandbox tenancies without the need to update any of the links.  Shown below are examples of both absolute and relative URLs.

Absolute URL (please refrain from using)
<a href=”http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/birmingham/items/158168?query=hobbit&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dhobbit”><img src=”http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/birmingham/items/158168/image-small” alt=”” /></a>

Relative URL
<a href=”items/158168?query=hobbit&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dhobbit”><img src=”items/158168/image-small” alt=”” /></a>

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.

We welcome your comments, questions and ideas on Prism features. You can post comments here on the blog, discuss topics in the Prism forum, raise, discuss and vote on ideas in Prism Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Prism team directly.

If you were unable to attend the Prism Development Update webinar yesterday 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.

Agenda

• Release currently in preview
  • Take the Tour
  • Contact Details & Options
  • Communications
  • Charges: Amount Outstanding
  • Accelerated Reading
  • Join the Library
• Coming Soon
  • Augmented Discovery: EBSCO enhancement
  • ‘Did You Mean’ suggestions
  • Augmented discovery: harvesting from institutional repositories
• Domain name migration: remaining links to the old domain

[podcast format=”video”]https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/clms-website/Prism_webinar_20131125.mp4[/podcast]

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

This release includes:

• Take the Tour
• Options that enable users to update their contact details and view their communications
• Accelerated Reading information
• Integrated form to Join the library

Take the Tour
This provides a guided tour of the features of Prism. A new button enables you to begin the tour, which comprises a sequence of text bubbles overlaying your catalogue and pointing out the features and how to use them. Each bubble has a ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ button allowing the user to move at their own pace. A bar at the top of the page tells you where you are in the tour and allows you to restart or close it.  You can try it in our demonstration tenancy.

To enable Take the Tour in your catalogue, edit or create a file called config.ini in the Theme section of your tenancy settings in the Admin Console. It goes in the base of the theme so you can update it as a single file without re-uploading the entire theme. It is also used for configuring the mobile interface. You can create and edit this file in Notepad or any other text editor; simply make sure it is saved with the .ini extension. For Take the Tour, include the following parameters, where {keyword} is the term to be used to show a search, and {bibID} is the bibID of the first result for that search.

[Tour]
tour_en-gb = /js/tour.en-gb.js
tour_item = {bibID}
tour_search = {keyword}

More advice on configuring and adapting Take the Tour is in preparation.

Contact Details
The previous release introduced the Contact Options tab in the user’s account area, switched on in the Admin Console by the ‘Enable contact preferences and history’ setting in the Overview section (you must also have ‘Enable borrower PINs’ set). This allows users to specify which notification methods they permit the library to use (Email, Voice message, Text message).

Now, under the same tab you can enable the display of an additional section, ‘Contact Details’. This is enabled via the Admin Console Overview section with the ‘Enable contact details editing’ setting. It allows the user to add, change or remove their email address (this is their default email address), their ‘Phone number for voice messages’ and their ‘Phone number for text messages’. These are the phone numbers that are set in Alto as ‘Use for Voice’ or ‘Use for Text’. In order to permit the library to actually use them, the user needs to tick the relevant contact method(s) and click the ‘Set options’ button in the top part of the page. When the user adds a new phone number it appears in Alto under an address name of either ‘Voice’ or ‘Text’ as appropriate. The user’s default postal address is displayed, but it cannot be edited – an option to edit this will be in a future release.

Communications
In the user’s account area a new tab, Communications, displays when enabled via the Admin Console Overview section with the ‘Enable contact preferences and history’ setting (you must also have ‘Enable borrower PINs’ set). Under the Communications tab the user sees a list of the communications that have been sent to them using the new Notifications system (in Alto 5.5 and the Admin Console). For each communication there is a description indicating the content, such as ‘Reservation waiting’ or ‘Items nearly due’, the method used to send the communication, such as ‘Email’, the date it was sent, and a ‘Download’ button allowing them to view and save the communication locally.

Charges: Amount Outstanding
Under the Charges tab in the user’s account area the column formerly headed ‘Amount’ is now headed ‘Amount Outstanding’. The value shown in each row is now the outstanding amount rather than the total amount. When part of a charge has been paid or waived, the user now knows how much they still owe the library.

Accelerated Reading
This option provides accelerated reading indicators, such as book and interest levels, as devised by Renaissance Learning and used in some schools. For more details please ask your Account Manager or email libraries-sales@capita.co.uk.

Join the Library
This Prism Pro feature provides an integrated form enabling people to register to join the library. A ‘Join’ link is added to the header links, taking the user to the form. For more details please ask your Account Manager or email libraries-sales@capita.co.uk.

Other inclusions

• Improved compatibility with screen reader software such as pre-ARIA versions of JAWS
• Fixed a bug where the Inter-library Loan request box displayed when no results from an advanced search and ILL is not enabled
• Fixed a bug where the Community Contributions panel was not displaying on Item Detail pages when Lists but not Tags are enabled

Making the most of your preview
This release is now available for you to preview. Please do make the most of this opportunity to gain familiarity with the new features and ensure that your tenancy still behaves as expected.

If you identify any issues with your styling please raise a Support case.

As with every release, please also ensure that your extensions continue to work correctly.

To preview this release, please precede your tenancy URL at the new domain name 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 to the live service will be on Tuesday 26th November.

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 are pleased to announce that a new version of the Admin Console is now live. This release introduces new functionality to configure elements of your Soprano tenancy, and two minor improvements for rules and templates in Borrower Notifications.

The following features can now be configured for Soprano:

• LDS URL
• Ability to reset the tenant cache within Soprano
• Enable security features such as IP restrictions and Two Factor Authentication
• Specify whether Soprano should allow editing of the Borrower photograph
• Specify the default extension period for expired borrowers
• Configure the specific list of address labels presented as options for borrower addresses
• Choose to display optional fields for Borrower information, such as the department and student registration number
• Choose whether to enable the camera based barcode scanner button
• Set the number of recommendations to be returned
• Set the number of search results to be returned

The improvements within the notifications area of the Admin Console are:

• We have added descriptions for the items within the “Rule purpose” selection box
• It is now possible to create a new template by copying an existing one, thus allowing you to quickly create different templates with similar content.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on the Admin Console 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 25th November 2013 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 a new release of the Admin Console is now live. A new check box ‘Enable contact preferences and history’ has been added to the Overview page in Prism tenancy admin.

You will be able to use this setting when you implement Alto 5.5 and the associated upgrade to the Local Data Services (LDS).  It allows you to switch on the ‘Contact options’ tab in the My Account area of Prism. For further information please refer to the Prism release notice of 11 September 2013.

Please note, the ‘history’ aspect refers to a feature in the forthcoming release of Prism where the user will be able to see the notifications that have been sent to them by the library.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on the Admin Console 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 one of our recent Prism 3 update webinars, then catch up on latest developments by watching the recording below or by downloading the video.

Agenda

• Prism Roadmap run-through
• Latest release
  • Build Search
  • Tags
• Next release
  • Take the Tour of the Library Catalogue
  • Join the Library
  • Notification options, contact details and notifications
• Admin Console
  • Borrower Notifications Rules and Templates

[podcast format=”video”]https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/clms-website/prism_webinar_100713.mp4[/podcast]