To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 13th February 2012 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

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.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

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 Autumn 2011 overview
• Summary of the last Prism release
• Recap of developments in 2011 – a review of key features released this year
• Roadmap next steps: demos of work in progress

[podcast format=”video”]http://talis-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/prism_webinar_121211.mp4[/podcast]

We’re pleased to announce that the recent preview release of Prism 3 has now been deployed to the live service.  For full details on what has changed please visit the preview release notice here: //blogs.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/prism/2011/11/22/prism-release-preview-%E2%80%93-22-november-2011/.

If you have questions on this, or any other issue, please feel free to email philjohn@capita.co.uk, your account manager, or leave a comment on the blog.

I’m pleased to announce that a new version of Prism is now available for you to preview.  This is a maintenance release addressing a number of issues:

• Disappearing lists
• Blocked borrowers get an error page when they try to sign in. In this release they will get a specific page with configurable text to say that they are blocked from signing in and to ask library staff. The longer term plan for blocked borrowers (i.e. those who have exceeded a limit on fines or overdues)  is to allow them to sign in but to disallow renewal and reservation, with an alert to this in their account.
• Exporting lists as CSV sometimes has wrong data in the ISBN/ISSN column
• Mobile Prism doesn’t switch to landscape on Android HD
• Page navigation from the foot of the page to the next page displays the bottom instead of top of the next page
• The standard number (ISBN/ISSN) of an additional physical form (e.g. electronic version) recorded in MARC field 776 will now be indexed.

The purpose of the preview is to allow you to explore and become familiar with the new features before they are released to your users, and to ensure that everything is working correctly. As usual we strongly recommend that you check the preview of your catalogue carefully to make sure your styling displays as expected, including your Mobile Prism.

If you have any issues or concerns please raise a  Support case. You can also comment on the release by adding a comment on this blog post or emailing me or contacting your Account Manager.

We will release this version to the live service next week. – Update: This is now scheduled for Monday 28th November.

To access the preview, insert ‘/demo/’ after the prism.talis.com part of your URL and before the name of your tenancy, e.g. http://prism.talis.com/demo/examplecat/. This enables you to search your live data and access your live Local Data Services (e.g. for availability, renewals and reservations) using the new version of Prism. You can also use it with your sandbox tenancy.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 12th December 2011 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries  click here to register.

Academic libraries  click here to register.

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.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

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 Autumn 2011 overview
• Summary of the last Prism release
• Status update on the MarcGrab and LDS rollout
• Explanation and demos of current main developments:
• Augmented Discovery
• Community Collaboration features

[podcast format=”video”]http://talis-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/prism_webinar_241011.mp4[/podcast]

Congratulations to the University of Sunderland and Rotherham Libraries who have just gone live with the new Prism 3 Mobile Interface.

You can take a look at their Prism Interface on your mobile device now, by following the links below:

Rotherham Libraries

University of Sunderland

Rachel Westwood, Internal Account Manager at Capita, also talked about the University of Sunderland and Rotherham Libraries going live in the ‘Introducing the Prism Mobile Interface’ webinar this week. If you missed the webinar you can watch a recording of it here:

[podcast format=”video”]http://talis-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/prism_mobile_interface.mp4[/podcast]

We are delighted that the mobile interface is being so well received by Prism 3 customers who have welcomed this important development. Glyn Sinar from Lancashire Library and Information Service described it as “a really positive and useful development.” He also added “This is an area which will really push our libraries forward in the eyes of the public”.

To get this feature enabled on your catalogue, please raise a support case.

To keep up to date with the latest Prism Developments you can register for the free webinar on Monday 24th October 2011 at 12:30 for Public Libraries and 14:00 for Academic Libraries.

Public libraries click here to register.

Academic libraries click here to register.

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.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Prism news and developments on the Prism website and blog.

I’m pleased to announce the release of the latest version of Prism to the live service last night. This version has been available for preview since 5th September and was described in detail in the preview release notice. The main inclusions are:

• Prism Mobile Interface, making your Prism catalogue into a mobile ‘web app’, optimised for viewing on all modern smart phones
• Improvements to CSS for themes, optimising performance
• Support for additional LDS authentication methods
• Tiny images on account pages, for more items displayed per screen

The Mobile Interface requires a modification to the tenancy configuration and we recommend you test this on your sandbox tenancy before putting it live. If you raise a service request we will add the configuration to your tenancy as soon as possible.

The improvements to CSS for themes will be switched on together with the Mobile Interface. It is being managed this way because there may be some issues with the display arising from the interaction with your local customised styling. Introducing it on the sandbox tenancy first, together with the Mobile Interface, will allow any such issues to be addressed before putting it live.

You can read much more about the Mobile Interface and the CSS improvements in the posts on Mobile interface configuration and Prism 3 calling: introducing our mobile device interface

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on this release please get in touch; you can comment here or on the forums or Prism Ideas or contact your account manager or the Prism team directly.

At the beginning of the month we released the latest exciting development for Prism 3, our mobile device interface. We have made this available to you, our valued customers, as part of your Prism 3 subscription at no extra cost.

This development comes at a crucial time as mobile technology advances at a breathtaking rate and a recent study by Ofcom¹ found that 91% of the population now own a mobile device.

The interface works with all the main mobile device browsers including iPhone, Android, Opera Mobile/Mini, Windows Phone 7 Mango and the latest Blackberry versions. This is important considering that “Every four weeks about 2.5% of feature phone owners have shifted to smartphones since April 2010 in the UK” suggesting that “the ‘tipping point’ when smartphones make up half of all users lies about a year away, in June 2012.” ²
 

There are lots of features that will benefit your users including:

Adaptive design
Prism 3 will detect the device being used and automatically render in the mobile interface which automatically adapts to the size of the screen available.
Users don’t have to download it; it’s not a native app, and no separate URL is required meaning seamless use alongside the desktop version for your users. We have deliberately transformed the existing interface and built on existing information rather than create an unfamiliar environment.

Home screen icons
On devices where home screen icons can be created, (i.e. for apps that are downloaded) home icons can be created on the Prism Mobile Interface. Users can create as many home screen icons for Prism as required allowing users to organise their searches. For example, a different icon could be created for subjects, locations, media types, new stock – anything that the library provides – a great time-saving feature.

Touch- swipe paging and tap to reveal
Where the device permits it, the Mobile Interface has been designed to allow touch-swipe paging and tap to reveal. This means that users can operate their devices in the way that they are accustomed to and don’t have to resort to using clumsy navigational functions. For example, by ‘tapping’ on a book jacket image, more holdings information is revealed.

Focus on key tasks                                                                                                            People are generally far less tolerant of clutter on mobile devices and so the Prism Mobile Interface has been designed to only display key information and tasks. This ultimately means an improved experience for the user as they find the answers they need quicker and easier.

Faster searching
Caching pre-loaded searches and the use of the latest features of HTML5 mean that the interface is much quicker and responsive for the user. Additionally, search results are pre-loaded in the background so it feels instantaneous when you click or swipe through different pages of results.

To get this feature enabled on your catalogue, please raise a support case and to see the preview webinar that was held by our senior Prism 3 developer Matt Machell on 22nd August, click here.

¹UK Sees Highest Growth in Smartphone Users (Ofcom, 2010):  http://blog.rightmobilephone.co.uk/uk-sees-highest-growth-in-smartphone-users/

²Arthur, C. ‘Smartphones head to tipping point’, Guardian (11 July 2011): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/11/ios-android-blackberry-smartphone-data