We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview recently has now been released to the live service.
Details of the inclusions are given in the release notice on the Soprano blog.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
Soprano now gives more detail in search results for Resources, and also in the Recent Activity list. More of the title is displayed with longer titles wrapping over two lines, and edition statements are displayed. Labels are given for the elements after title and authors, for clarity. There is also a concise availability statement giving the site and shelfmark for one site, with preference for the current site, where there is at least one available copy.
You can now see the orders for a work on a new Orders tab. You can click on an order in the list to display the full record in Orders.
Alternatively you can click the View In Purchasing button, which carries out a search in Orders on the bib ID of the work.
The following fields have been added to the Create Order form:
You can now order copies for multiple sites and split the cost between funds if required. When you select a fund the amount available to spend is displayed.
A Copy This Order button has been added to the Order form to enable you to quickly create a new order from an existing one. The supplier, price and copy information will be copied into the Create Order form unless the original order is cancelled, in which case the supplier will not be copied.
The four buttons for filtering orders by order state (All, Active, Proposed and Part Complete) have been replaced by a list that includes several new options, including Cancelled to list cancelled orders. Three options linked to supplier reports are outlined below.
The order status reports sent by suppliers now appear in Soprano. The Reports tab on an order record displays a list of the reports with the latest at the top.
The latest report also displays on the Orders list and is indicated in the state of the order on both the form and the list.
You can quickly bring up a list of orders reported as cancelled or not accepted by the supplier by selecting either the View orders cancelled by supplier task on the Home page or Cancelled by Supplier from the Filter by Order State list. The orders can then be cancelled individually or using the Cancel All button.
Filtering by the order state Requires Reviewing displays a list of orders with specific reports attached. These are reports that may require you to take action, such as Order line accepted, substitute product will be supplied or Order line held: note price change.
The filters Cancelled by Supplier and Requires Reviewing check for EDI reports only on the assumption that you will take any action required (e.g. cancellation) at the point of adding a manual report. Another filter, With Reports, shows orders with reports added manually as well as via EDI. The filters take into account the last thousand reports added. Reports added manually show on the Reports tab of the order and in the State column.
Order notes are displayed on a new Notes tab on the order form.
There is now a button to enable you to move directly from an order or open order to the invoice(s) it is linked to. The button shows the number of invoices concerned.
A message now displays when an item is successfully receipted on the Order form. This advises you what to do with the item if necessary. In this example the item has automatically been put in transit to its home site because Auto Transit is enabled:
If you receipt an item in error you can now undo the receipt provided the item is at Received status. An Undo Receipt button displays against the item on the Order and on the Item screen.
A Cancel button now appears against the outstanding items on a Part complete order.
The Shelfmark column in the Items list on an order is now populated.
A more meaningful message now displays if paying an invoice or confirming a proposed order fails.
When and by whom an order or open order was last edited now displays in the record header.
The following fields have been added to the Create Open Order form:
When you select a fund the amount available to spend is displayed.
The button for accessing this form has moved from the Open Orders tab on a serial work to the work header.
A Delete button now displays on the list of invoices and the Invoice form for an EDI invoice at Potential status. This changes the status of the invoice to Deleted to enable it to be removed from the database by the edi_inv_delete.pl script.
Soprano now distinguishes between the Closed and Not Active fund statuses and it is possible to filter funds by status.
The Create Fund button is also new. This gives you a form for creating a base fund.
The commitment and expenditure warnings can now be amended. Select the pencil control to bring up the edit form.
The Members tab on an aggregate fund has been enhanced to show the full hierarchy of funds rather than just listing the top-level members.
Sometimes you need to change the work being ordered; for example when the supplier reports that a new edition is available.
Next to the work title in the header of an order a pencil control now allows you to open a form where you can select an alternative work. The form comprises a search box and a list of results with the option to select a result as the new work; there is also an option to create a new work. By default the results of a search by the title of the original work on the order are shown.
Under the Holdings tab for a serial work there are two new columns: Expected Date and Claims. The Claim button in the Claims column creates a Potential claim. An alert to view all claims (Potential, Active and Sent) for issues in subscriptions for the current site is given at the top of the Holdings list, with a link to view them.
You can click the Claim button on a Potential claim to make it Active so that it will be sent to the supplier.
On the Home page under Purchasing a new option Review potential claims displays for enabled operators. It gives you a list of all potential claims concerning Open Order Subscriptions for the current site. A potential claim may be generated automatically with reference to the prediction pattern where the issue is late or has been skipped (the next issue has been received), or it may be generated ‘manually’ as described above. You can ‘Accept’ a claim to make it active so that it will be sent to the supplier, or you can reject it. The serial work description is linked to the work page allowing you to review the holdings to help make a decision.
Cancelled order items. Items now display on a cancelled order instead of the message ‘There are no items on this order yet’.
Invoice Pay button. The Pay button now displays on an invoice that just has a charge on it provided the charge amount matches the amount payable.
View proposed orders. The task View new quotes has been renamed View proposed orders.
Acquisitions breadcrumb trail. When you’re at a detailed level in acquisitions, the breadcrumb now includes the area you’re in (such as Orders, or Funds) as a separate part of the breadcrumb trail, and you can click to go back to that level.
More information is displayed in the list of a borrower’s current loans (under the Borrower > On Loan tab). The item barcode is now in with the Item Description, and there are two new columns: Loan Type and Renewals. The Renewals column shows the count of renewals and the quota; this can be toggled between unseen and seen renewals by checking or unchecking the Renew As Seen box at the top of the list. When the item is reserved this is alerted with a count of the reservations in a label under the Due Date. The column heading of the check box column at the end of the rows is now All / None and you can click each of those words to check or uncheck all of the boxes.
It is now possible to link together items into a set which can be issued and returned together. This feature requires Local Data Services (LDS) version 2.8.
Creating an item set
Create a Work and an associated Item to represent the set. On the Item Detail page a new button is provided: Convert To Set.
When you press the button Soprano confirms that the item has been converted to a set and it prompts you to add items to the set by entering their barcode numbers under a new tab, Contents. A blue label Item set in the header indicates that this item represents a set, whenever you view this item.
Note: Once an item has been converted to be a set parent it cannot be changed back again.
Items added to the set display in a list below the input field.
You can select a child item in the list to view its item detail page. Membership of the set is indicated in the item detail page header by a blue label In item set, together with the set name (the title of the work for the set), which is a link to the set parent item. A button allows you to remove the item from the set.
Issue and return an item set
Currently to issue an item set you issue each item in the set. A notice is given with a Confirm button: Item is part of a set – issuing this item will issue the parent too.
Similarly, to return an item set you return each item in the set. A notice is given with a Confirm button: Item is part of a set – returning this item will return the parent too.
Further development is planned to streamline the item set issue and return workflows.
Return ILL item from loan. You can now return an ILL item from loan to a borrower. A notice displays in the transaction outcome row that the item is an inter-library loan, alerting you to return it to its home site from where it can be returned to the supplier, rather than shelving it.
Reserve: entering the borrower number. On the reserve page with the item already present (typically having come from pressing the Reserve button on the Work), the focus is now in the Borrower Barcode input box so all you need to do is scan the borrower’s card. When you enter the borrower number the reservation is no longer immediately placed. This allows the warning of a charge to be displayed and for you to select the Collection Site before pressing the Reserve button to submit the reservation.
Dummy loans no longer displayed in Item History. When an item that is not on loan is ‘returned’ at a self-service point or in Alto, this transaction has been shown as a loan in Soprano Item History with the borrower shown as ‘DEFAULT’. Such transactions no longer display as loans.
Item barcode issues. You can now create a new item without a barcode, for example for an ebook or a non-loanable item. When you add a barcode to an item, Soprano now disallows it if the barcode already exists.
Classification disappearing from item shelfmark – fixed. Editing the item header information no longer results in the classification in the shelfmark disappearing.
Edit a borrower’s email address. We’ve fixed the bug where this deleted the email address.
Create borrower when change borrower photo not allowed. Global permission to change borrower photos is configurable in the Admin Console for each Soprano tenancy. When not allowed, some fields in the Create Borrower form could not be edited – this is now fixed.
Limited Access Sites and Reservations. To support libraries that loan between limited access sites and other sites, Process Reservations now allows you to transit reserved items between a limited access site and another site, or between two limited access sites.
Column heading labels in issue, renew, return. In the outcome rows in Issue, Renew and Return, the column headings ‘Fee’ and ‘Messages’ have been changed to ‘Charges’ and ‘Notices’ to use established terminology and to avoid ambiguity.
Offline transaction update problem fixed. Transactions recorded offline were failing to update when connectivity was restored if the user had moved to a different page, typically by signing in again when connectivity was available, with Soprano sending the transactions when on the Home page. Such updates now succeed.
Performance. Borrower search now requires at least one alpha numeric character, to avoid a slow response response when only non-alpha-numeric characters were entered.
Item Query alert icon. A specific icon indicating that the item has a query is now displayed in the item description area of the item header. This is in addition to the existing alert and information about the query given between the item description area and the action buttons.
Item Home Site label. The label for the site of an item as displayed in the Item header has been changed from ‘Current Site’ to ‘Home Site’, reflecting common terminology.
Borrower near expiry alert in Issue. An icon alerting that the borrower is near their expiry date is now displayed in the borrower card in the Issue Items page.
Upload MARC record fix. This fixes the bug where Soprano went offline when uploading a MARC record replacement.
In the black ID bar at the top of Soprano you can already click on your name and the cog icon to open your operator profile page where, if enabled, you can change your password. That profile page now includes the complete list of Soprano permissions indicating which of them are active for your operator profile at the current site. These permissions are expressed in Soprano terms; most of them are configured via the LMS SetConfig application.
Refunds as negative amounts. Refunds in Tills are now shown in X Reports and Z Reports correctly as negative amounts, and with the correct total.
Connected till remembered by browser. We’ve fixed the bug so that your connected till is remembered in Firefox and IE (as well as in other browsers) when you close the browser then open it and sign in.
Some of the new Purchasing features, and the Item sets feature in Circulation require LDS version 2.8. To request an upgrade to your LDS, please open a Support case.
You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Tuesday 27th June 2017.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, in the Soprano Forum, or contact your Account Manager. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.
We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview recently has now been released to the live service.
Details of the inclusions are given in the release notice on the Soprano blog.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
Many kinds of exception can occur in Issue, Renew and Return. The home site of a returned item may be elsewhere, or the item may be reserved for collection at the current site or at some other site. There may be a hire charge associated with an item being issued. A borrower wishing to renew a loan may be blocked due to excessive fines, or have reached their unseen renewal limit.
This release of Soprano handles a wide range of circulation exceptions, taking account of the operator’s enablements and environment variables to determine behaviour, and giving appropriate notices and options.
Soprano treats an exception as either Ignorable, Notifiable, Confirmable or Terminal. These categories determine the information and other content given in the transaction outcome row.
An exception is ignored when it:
Notifiable exceptions do not warrant an interruption to the transaction but there is value in displaying an alert in the outcome row. This is often the case in Return Items, where there is usually no need to hold up the return transaction. An example in Return Items is when the item’s home site is elsewhere. In Return and Renew when a fine is incurred the amount is displayed. In Issue or Renew when the borrower’s account expires before the loan due date, the alert text varies depending on whether the due date has been reduced to the expiry date according to the TAL_AUTOCHOP environment variable setting.
Confirmable exceptions interrupt the transaction and require confirmation to be completed. They allow the operator to decide whether or not to go ahead, perhaps in some cases after consulting the borrower. They are usually exceptions where the operator has an override enablement. Examples in Issue and Renew include where the borrower is blocked or has reached a limit, or a charge will be incurred.
In Return there is less reason to interrupt the transaction, but it occurs when the item has a message, which may be about checking that everything is present and correct.
An exception is terminal when it cannot be overridden by any operator. Some cases in Issue and Renew are where no due date can be found because there is no loan rule or because the rule disallows issue or renewal, perhaps because the item is reserved or because of the item type and/or borrower type. In these cases the operator may be able to try again with a manual due date. Other examples include where the item is reserved awaiting collection by another borrower; the item is already on loan; and, the borrower’s account is expired or deleted.
In this example the notice that the ‘Item is reserved – due date may be restricted’ is superfluous and we’ll stop it from displaying in a future release.
Supervisor override
When an exception could be overridden but the operator lacks the required enablement, or their override level is insufficient to override a borrower or item message, then Soprano offers the option for a supervisor with the required enablement or level to sign in and complete the transaction. The session of the original operator is temporarily suspended. Several transactions can be overridden in this way at once by selecting the required outcome rows. When completed (i.e. after pressing the Override button), the supervisor is automatically signed out and the original operator’s session is resumed. The transactions are logged in the database as created by the supervisor.
The following video (nine minutes) gives an introduction to the handling of exceptions in Soprano:
The On Loan tab is now placed first and is the default open tab when you visit a borrower page. It has switched places with the Profile tab.
Under the On Loan tab there is no longer the option to Return the item. You probably have the item in hand, so you can go to the Return Items page via the button in either the Home page or the Resources page, and scan the item to return it.
You can now sort a borrower’s loan history. Click the column headings to sort, descending or ascending, by Title, Author, Borrowed date or Returned date. The default order is Returned date descending.
When you create a borrower record you now have the option to carry forward some data from this record to the next. This would, for example, expedite the enrolment of a family.
Clicking Reuse Borrower Details brings up a new borrower form with the following fields populated from the previous record:
Re-used borrower details in a new borrower form, showing the fields that have been populated from the previous record.
The create borrower form now includes fields for adding Analysis and Interest labels. They behave the same as the existing fields in the Borrower > Information > Membership edit form – click in the field to get a menu of labels to select from. You can add multiple labels into each field, and remove individual labels.
The Borrower Type now displays instead of Status in the borrower search results list.
When a borrower’s account is due to expire within one month, Soprano will now display an amber alert on the borrower picture and against the expiry date under the Information tab.
Clicking the Reset button will update the borrower’s expiry date in accordance with your configuration settings.
Borrowers can now be set to Deleted status in the borrower header edit form. Select the pencil control to open the edit form. Two radio buttons are displayed at the bottom of the form, allowing you to switch the status between Active and Deleted.
At Deleted status it is no longer possible to issue anything further to the borrower, or renew anything they have on loan. It is possible to return items that may be on loan to them – the borrower information is displayed in grey and their deleted status is indicated.
Soprano now has a dedicated page to renew loans. You can access it via a new Renew Items button on the Home page and the Resources page.
You can quickly renew loans by scanning the item barcodes. You can specify whether a renewal is seen or unseen (the default is Seen) and you have the option to set a manual due date.
Renewal from the borrower On Loan page also now includes the Seen/Unseen setting and the option to set a manual due date. Instead of the Renew button against each item you now find a tick box, and there is a Renew Selected button instead of Renew All. Loans are selected for renewal by default unless they were issued today and are not due back today.
The Renew Selected button takes you to the new Renew Items page with the outcome(s) displayed.
When satisfying a reservation or transiting an item for a reservation the system now offers the option to print a slip to go in the item.
When an item is scanned in the task Mark item as seen Soprano will now report the following conditions and offer options to resolve them:
The drop-down list of item statuses that can be assigned in the Update item status task and in Add Item has been amended to exclude values that are reserved for use by the system, such as Order Sent and Received. Furthermore, when Soprano finds that the current status of the item is such that the requested change is not valid, it gives a notice indicating that the change has not been performed – for example, when the current status is 10 meaning ‘Query’.
The Home page has two new options:
The Stock Rotation Pick List shows the items that are due for stock rotation and that are on the shelf at the login site. Select Pick items for stock rotation in area to choose which area of the library (defined in Manage areas) you want to look in for items due for stock rotation, or select Pick items for stock rotation to see the list for the whole site.
The list is the equivalent of the pick list produced by the script item_rotate.pl except that it excludes items which are in transit.
At the shelf, as you find each specific copy (the barcodes need to match) you can use the tick to remove the item from the list or the X to move it to the bottom of the list if you have not found it.
Having collected items from the shelves, the next step is to Process picked items (in Tasks). Here you scan each item and Soprano directs you to put it into transit to its new home site.
If required, an item can be issued to someone after it has been put into transit. Soprano automatically takes it out of rotation transit and issues it to the borrower. When it is returned, Soprano will either automatically set it in transit and indicate that it should be sent to the relevant site for rotation (when Auto-transit is set on), or offer a Transit button (when Auto-transit is set off).
When the item arrives at its destination site you need to scan the item in Resources to display the Item details page and then click the Complete Transit button.
The item descriptions in the Reservations Pick List now have more title information and they include edition statements, enabling you to more easily identify the requested item at the shelf.
Terminology: Soprano Offline now uses the terms Issue and Return rather than Check-out and Check-in.
A new offline option has been provided for renew. When selected you are prompted to enter the borrower and item barcode to record the renewal and then click the Renew button.
The system confirms that the renewal has been recorded.
The offline queue information has been updated to show an estimate of the amount of space remaining on the device. This displays whenever the queue is accessed.
The exceptions handling work in this release has built on a structural change that we introduced in LDS 2.0. That means that, with this Soprano release, LDS 1.x is no longer supported. This realises a change that we initially gave notice about in a blog post last July.
As always, the new Soprano features work best with the latest version of LDS, currently LDS 2.6. Further improvements, chiefly more informative handling of some of the exceptions, will come with LDS 2.7 which will be available after this Soprano release is live.
You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Wednesday 22nd March 2017.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, in the Soprano Forum, or contact your Account Manager. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.
We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview recently has now been released to the live service. Details of the inclusions are described in the preview release notice.
Update. This release switches off Query functionality when your LDS version is between 2.4.0 and 2.5.0 to avoid a serious issue that was discovered and could potentially occur in other libraries. This also affects the Transit feature since it is logically connected with Query functionality.
Both Query and Transit are restored when you have LDS 2.6, which is available now when you open a Support case to request it.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
The Tasks page has been re-labelled Home, its contents have been re-organised and it is now the first tab and the default page when you sign in.
The Borrowers and Resources search boxes and action buttons are included at the top of the Home page, enabling you to search or initiate other key actions directly from this page. These are subject to the same enablements as on the Borrowers and Resources pages.
The tasks continue to be relevant to your location and subject to your enablements (more on this under ‘Circulation and Stock Management fixes’, below). The Purchasing and Inter Library Loans groups of tasks remain the same; the other tasks are now divided into two, more clearly defined groups: Reservations, and Stock Management.
Facets for Location, Format and Collection are now available to refine search results. They are given as drop-down menus below the search box, showing the top five terms. Your current location is given as the first option in the Location facet menu (when it has at least one result) followed by four more in frequency order, enabling you to quickly limit results to the current location to help users find a local resource.
Your facet selections are shown above the search box, since they set the context of your search. They are retained on a new search, enabling you to explore within a limited set such as items in your branch library. You can remove selections in random order by clicking the x next to a selection either on the line of selections or in the relevant facet menu.
Soprano now offers an alternative spelling of your query where appropriate, in the form: You could try this search instead: {alternative}. It works with single and multiple word terms; for example: ‘cognative psycolgy’ gets the suggestion ‘cognitive psychology’. Suggestions are given both when there are no results and when there are some results where the alternative also has substantial results.
When you open the new Home page the cursor is in the Borrower search box by default, enabling you to immediately enter a query (if you’re enabled) or scan a borrower’s barcode. Similarly, when you open the Borrower page or the Resources page the focus is in the search box.
We’ve made single-word formats and locations searchable as keywords without needing expert qualifiers. For example testament dvd bromsgrove. We’re continuing to work on enabling this also for multi-word terms and names.
The Holdings tab is now the first in the line of tabs for a Work and it is the one that is open by default whenever you access a Work detail page.
Front line user services staff tend to be only interested in items that users can access and use, whilst other items, such as those that are withdrawn, can be a hindrance in the Work Holdings list. On the other hand, having a complete picture can be important for acquisitions and cataloguing work.
To help with this we’ve provided two filter options at the top of the Work Holdings list: Active and All. The default is Active. The buttons include the count for each category so that you can see if there are more in the All category. The Active category is filtered according to the TAL_IN_STOCK environment variable or else TAL_NOT_IN_STOCK, so you have control over which items are included or excluded according to their status. If neither environment variable is specified then Active displays all copies.
When you create a new borrower record the Home Site now defaults to the current location where you are signed in.
We’ve introduced a filter under the Borrower Reservations tab with options Active and All. By default the Active filter is selected, displaying only reservations at Waiting collection, Active and Not Yet Effective status. This will mean the page will load more quickly when there are many historic reservations. To see all reservations including historic ones, select All.
Due date in fine charge fix
In the Current and All Charges for a borrower, where the type of charge is Fine, Soprano now displays the correct due date that was exceeded to incur the fine.
Add borrower photo fix
You can now add or change a borrower picture. Click/tap the picture area in the borrower header to navigate and upload an image from your local file system.
Process reservations year published fix
Two-digit years occurring in the year published field of MARC records no longer trigger an error when scanning an item into Process Reservations.
Create borrower when no search results – fix
The Create Borrower button is now always displayed after a borrower search, including when there are no results, enabling you to immediately add the borrower.
Update item site task default site
The task Update item site on the Home page has a field Set site to, which now defaults to the current site where you are signed in, making it easier to perform the common job of changing the site of some items to the site where you are.
Suppressing Tasks on the Home page
It is now possible to suppress all the Tasks on the Home page. The enablements required for each task to display are given in the following table:
Manage shelves re-named to Manage areas
On the Home page we’ve re-named the Task Manage shelves to Manage areas to use the more accurate term ‘areas’ and to be consistent with its use already in lists.
We’ve improved the quality of the mapping of data from Create Work to the resulting MARC record. In the MARC Leader the Encoding level and the Descriptive cataloguing form now denote ‘Preliminary level’ and ‘ISBD punctuation omitted’. Field Indicator values are now set correctly. Dates, when entered, are now included in contributor fields (700/710/711 $d). Publication details now map to field 264, not 260. Multiple instances of notes fields are all included. Some LDS changes are in the pipeline to deal properly with fields 005, 035 and 040.
The elements of an ILL request have been re-arranged to facilitate the request processing workflow. The header has been re-organised to show the requester first, to reduce the amount of information about the requested item and to include the supplier. Full details of the requested item are given under a Request tab.
Details of the request such as Supplier, Requirements, Delivery, Site and Dates are now re-organised under a tab labelled Fulfilment, whilst supplier reports are now included under a History tab.
Creating an invoice has been added in this release and as a result the way in which invoice lines display has changed.
The Invoices page now has a CREATE INVOICE button next to the search box.
This gives you a form for entering the invoice number, supplier, invoice and payment due dates, amount payable and invoice currency. There are Invoice and Credit Note radio buttons for specifying the type of record you are creating (Invoice is set by default).
When you click CREATE INVOICE, the Invoice page displays the details you have entered and you can add invoice lines and charges as required.
Clicking Add invoice line displays fields for entering the order number, unit price and quantity, and buttons for adding tax, charges and discount, together with Cancel and Save buttons.
When you type in the order number, information on the number of copies ordered and received and the unit price pops up.
Clicking on this transfers the information to the Unit Price and Quantity fields.
Invoice-level charges are added via the Add Charge or Discount button.
When the value of the invoice matches the amount payable the PAY button displays.
Please note: invoice lines for part orders (i.e. where the number of items invoiced is less than the number of items on the order) and split rate VAT cannot currently be handled.
You can now bring up the record for a specific fund by selecting it from the list available on the Funds page.
An Available column has been added to the Funds list to show at a glance the amount available to spend (i.e. Fund Value minus Committed and Spent).
The list of open orders now includes a Funds column. To accommodate this, the Supplier column has been changed to display supplier codes rather than names. You can select a fund to go to the fund record.
Serial issues on the Holdings tab of a work can now be filtered by Location (i.e. delivery site) and/or Year only. The extraneous Volume and Issue filters have been removed.
Search in Orders, Open Orders and Invoices is no longer case-sensitive. This means, for example, that entering order number zz16000001 will match order ZZ16000001 if it exists.
Purchasing and its subordinate options now only display if you have the requisite permission. This operator, for example, does not have permission to view funds so the Funds option does not appear.
The RECEIVE button on the Item page now works correctly. This displays when you enter the barcode of an item that is on order and you are logged in at the item’s home site.
When you select a borrower’s Information tab the page should load more quickly.
We continually seek to improve the security of our web applications. In this release we’ve fixed issues relating to JavaScript injection and implemented httpOnly and Secure for cookies where possible, which mitigates the cross-site scripting risk.
You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Wednesday 14th December 2016.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, in the Soprano Forum, or contact your Account Manager. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.
We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview recently has now been released 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 Soprano blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
The borrower display in the Process Reservations form now includes the borrower type. This allows you to identify cases such as distance learners where you may wish to post the item to the borrower rather than put it on the reservation shelf or transit it to another branch.
A borrower’s reservations list should now load more quickly. This will be more noticeable with longer lists.
When an ILL requested item has been received and a barcode has been entered in the item record, that barcode number is now displayed in the ILL Request form, letting you know that that part of the process has been done.
Some RFID tags that date from before the rigorous standardisation that now exists can be problematic to read. Software that reads them needs to apply special treatment. This has now been implemented in the Soprano Wrapper (which enables Soprano to communicate with devices such as tills and RFID tag readers via the computer device being used to access Soprano).
The Fund Summary page includes progress bars illustrating the proportions of the fund that have been committed and spent. Problems with the display of the bars in some browsers has been fixed.
You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 22nd September 2016.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, in the Soprano Forum, or contact your Account Manager. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.
We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview recently has now been released 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 Soprano blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
In the header of an item that is an inter-library loan some information is now given about that state, following the same pattern as for other states such as in transit. This includes a blue label ‘Interloan’ together with the request number, the requester’s name and the name of the supplier. Those three attributes are hyperlinked, allowing the operator to navigate respectively to the request, the requester, and the supplier.
Local Data Services (LDS) version required: the current latest version.
The option to view the MARC record for a work was released recently. Now, when viewing the MARC record, you have the options to download it as a file to your local machine, and to upload a replacement record.
The downloaded file is a MARC 21 record in the Format for Information Exchange (ISO 2709). It is named {BibID}.mrc, for example 123456.mrc.
The Upload option opens the file navigation window on your machine so that you can find and select the file to upload. It must be a single MARC 21 record in the Format for Information Exchange (ISO 2709) and the control number (in field 001) must match the BibID of the record that you want to replace. The file is checked for these requirements and an error message is displayed when the file does not conform.
This means that you could use a third party tool, such as MarcEdit, to edit a MARC record. Currently, if you want to ensure the record is valid in detailed ways, for example Leader and 008 lengths and values, you would need to use an external validation tool.
LDS version required: the current latest version.
The Fund header no longer has the Committed and Spent dials, and the information under the Summary tab has been supplemented and re-organised to give appropriate information clearly.
The summary now shows:
The Commitment and Expenditure warning amounts are displayed on a Base fund at the foot of the summary, as previously.
LDS version required: 2.3 or higher (i.e. for access to Funds).
We’ve made some changes that should mean that:
LDS version required: As required for the specific features.
In a recent blog post we clarified the relationship between Soprano feature areas and LDS versions, as well as the Alto/LMS version required for a given LDS version. The blog post also explains that soon Soprano issue, renew and return will no longer work with LDS versions 1.x, so you should ensure that you are running a minimum of LMS 5.7 and LDS 2.0 before September 2016.
To help remind you to upgrade, this release displays a notice when you sign in if your LDS version is lower than 2.0 and your operator enablements include Utilities – limiting the notice to the more enabled staff. The notice tells you that your current version of LDS is unsupported and to contact us to arrange an upgrade. To continue working you can select any tab (Borrowers, Resources, etc.).
Additionally, you can find out about your current version of LDS when you are signed in to Soprano by setting the URL in the browser address bar to
https://soprano.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{tenant name}/support/version
If the version is lower than 2.0 then you will see the notice mentioned above.
If it is supported but not the latest then you will see a notice recommending that you upgrade.
If it is up to date than you will see a notice confirming that.
LDS version required: Any.
LDS version required: As required for the specific features.
You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 11th August 2016.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment here on the blog, in the Soprano Forum, or contact your Account Manager. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.
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