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

• Improved display of charges with no Work
• View all charges for a borrower
• View payments and waivers made against a charge
• Explanation of a fine for overdue loan
• Reservation indicated on Return Item
• Charge alert removed as soon as charge is cleared
• Streamlined Issue Item workflow
• Barcode validation improvements
• Make Payment dialogue fixes
• Improvements in observing Operator permissions
• Display fixes for Works uploaded via Resource Management

Improved display of charges with no Work
A work is associated with a charge when the charge type is Fine, Hire fee or Reservation; then, a cover image or placeholder image is displayed, together with summary Work information. The other types of charge, ILL Request, Postage and Miscellaneous, are not associated with a Work. In this release, in the Description column of the borrower charges list there is a generic image denoting a charge (showing the currency symbol), and the text of the note on the charge, if there is one, otherwise the long form of name of the charge type.

In order for the names of those three types of charge, ILL Request, Postage and Miscellaneous, to be displayed distinctly, it is necessary for your Local Data Services (LDS) version to be 1.9 or higher, otherwise they all display as Miscellaneous.

Additionally we’ve fixed a problem where charge details are not displayed in certain circumstances. This has the same dependency on LDS 1.9.

View all charges for a borrower
A new tab under Borrower gives a list of All Charges, showing the most recent first. This is in addition to the Current Charges, giving a complete view of all paid and unpaid charges on the borrower’s account.

In order to view the list of All Charges it is necessary to upgrade your LDS to version 1.9 or higher.

View payments and waivers made against a charge
When one or more payments or waivers have been made against a charge then a dropdown symbol appears beside the  amount in the Paid/Waived column. This opens a tabular view of each of the payments and waivers, showing for each one the date, amount and resolution. This is given in both the Current Charges tab and the new All Charges tab.

In order to view the payments and waivers against a charge it is necessary to upgrade your LDS to version 1.9 or higher.

Explanation of a fine for overdue loan
In the current charges list, where there is a charge for a fine for an overdue loan, the number of days overdue is now shown beneath the charge type, and the the type of event that triggered the charge is shown beneath the accrual date.

In order to view the explanation of an overdue fine it is necessary to upgrade your LDS to version 1.9 or higher.

Reservation indicated on Return Item
On the Return Items page, when the returned item is reserved a button ‘Process Reservation’ is given, which takes you to the Reservation Processing page which allows you to perform the appropriate action (Transit or Satisfy) for any of the reservations on the item.  

Charge alert removed as soon as charge is cleared
This fixes a problem where the charge alert symbol on a borrower continued to display immediately after all outstanding charges were paid or waived.

Streamlined Issue Item workflow
On the Issue Item page, when you scan the borrower or item barcode or type it and press <Enter> with the other field already populated, the issue transaction request is submitted. This eliminates an extra click/tap on the Issue Item button or <Enter> key press. It should streamline the issuing of multiple items to the same borrower.

Barcode validation improvements
There are several improvements to the handling of barcodes in this release, which should reduce the incidence of not finding the borrower or item by barcode. If you continue to have such problems, please raise a Support case.

Make Payment dialogue fixes
In the Make Payment dialogue an appropriate error message is now displayed when the Amount Paid box has an invalid character, and the Amount Paid box always gives the correct outstanding amount by default.

Improvements in observing Operator permissions
Some features are now correctly disabled when the relevant permissions are not enabled, such as the Renew All button when the operator is not permitted to renew. This is of particular interest where there is a requirement to set up read-only operators.

Display fixes for Works uploaded via Resource Management
This release fixes issues with the display of Works where the MARC record was uploaded to Prism via Resource Management in the Admin Console. This includes the display of cover images and the publication date, and the removal of links and tabs that are not relevant to these Works such as Improve, Reserve, Add Item, Reservations and Holdings.

To preview this release
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 you live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service 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 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 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

• Streamlined Issue and Return
• Simplified search for borrowers by postcode, email address & date of birth
• Add and edit a borrower note
• Message removal interaction clarified
• Resource Management records searchable
• Postcode lookup address finder
• Charge type names improvement
• Invisible change to the method of bibliographic searching
• Harder to delete a transaction in the Offline queue
• Consistent action to edit
• Unreserving items when one is in transit for the reservation: bug fix
• Waiver treated as payment bug fix
• Create Borrower birth date bug fix
• Cataloguing: indicators on generated MARC field 100

Streamlined Issue and Return
The dialogue pop-ups in Issue Item and Return Item confirming the transaction or giving an exception have been removed. Instead, each transaction is shown in the page, below the form, with a message indicating the outcome and ordered with the most recent at the top. The transactions accumulate in the page until you navigate away. In Issue Item, after a transaction, the focus is in the Item barcode field ready for the next item to be input, so you can issue multiple items to a borrower with scan <Enter> for each one. It’s the same action in Return Item to return multiple items.

Simplified search for borrowers by postcode, email address & date of birth
You can now search for borrowers using postcode, email address and date of birth without using search qualifier prefixes. Postcodes must include the space between the two parts. A search by postcode by itself may be slow; it is likely to be quicker with another term such as name, e.g. ‘b37 7yb smith’. For Date of birth, use the form as displayed in Soprano (dd/mm/yyyy) or variations on that, e.g. d/m/yy.

Add and edit a borrower note
Click/tap the pencil icon to add or edit the borrower note, under the Borrower > Notes tab, and click/tap the tick to save it. The ability to add and edit borrower messages is planned for subsequent development.

Message removal interaction clarified
The control to remove a message has been changed from an X to a bin, to clarify that it removes the message from the borrower rather than just dismiss it from view.

Resource Management records searchable
Records that you have uploaded to Prism via Resource Management in the Admin Console are now included in search results.

Postcode lookup address finder
This requires integration with a postcode lookup address finder service: LLPG, QAS or Address-point. In the Soprano Create Borrower form you can enter a postcode and click/tap to have the address fields populated automatically. Multiple address first lines are given in a drop-down list for you to select the required one.

If you already have postcode lookup integrated in Alto, please raise a Support case to request it to be enabled in Soprano. If you do not already have a postcode lookup service, please contact Sales or your Account Manager.

Charge type names improvement
The names of charge types are displayed in the list under the Borrower Charges tab and in the Make Payment dialogue to pay an individual charge. These have been revised, with a short form displayed in the list and a longer form displayed in the Make Payment dialogue.

Furthermore, the ‘placed’ type, as it was previously called, covered miscellaneous,, notification and ILL request charges; now those three are separately identified. The new type names are defaults – local variations can be made on request.The new default type names in their short and long forms are: Fine / Fine for overdue loan; Hire fee / Fee to hire an item; Reservation / Reservation fee; Miscellaneous / Miscellaneous charge; Postage / Postal notification charge; ILL Request / Inter-library loan request fee.

If you would like to the ability to record borrower payments to be enabled in your Soprano tenancy, please open a Support request.

Invisible change to the method of bibliographic searching
The way Soprano searches bibliographic data has been radically altered to take advantage of future developments to search in Prism. There should be no noticeable change in search behaviour for Soprano users.

Harder to delete a transaction in the Offline queue
This addresses a problem where it was too easy to delete transactions in the Soprano Offline queue. The user is now invited to  ‘Confirm Delete’ or to ‘Retry’.

Consistent action to edit
The pencil control is the indication that edit is possible – click/tap it to edit. This has now been included in the Item page where, currently, the Status of the item can be edited.

Unreserving items when one is in transit for the reservation: bug fix
An LMS environment variable, TAL_INTRAN_UNRES, allows you to specify that when an item is put in transit to satisfy a reservation, other reserved items for the same reservation whose home sites are not the collection site can be unreserved. A bug in the Local Data Service that deals with this has been fixed but not yet released, and deployment to all customers will take time. Meanwhile, Soprano effectively will ignore the environment variable so that no items will be unreserved when one is put in transit to satisfy the reservation. It will change again, to respect the environment variable, when the LDS update has been deployed.

Waiver treated as payment
Waivers being treated as payments is fixed in this release.

Create Borrower birth date bug fix
A problem where some dates of birth were changing in Create Borrower, in the Chrome and IE browsers, has been fixed.

Cataloguing: indicators on generated MARC field 100
Correct indicator values are now set on field 100 in the MARC record that is generated from Create Work in Soprano.

To preview this release
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 you live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Tuesday 10th March 2015.

Comments and contact
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 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:

• Default site when you sign in
• Displaying course and Date of Birth
• Guarantors
• Add contacts to existing borrowers
• Handling Items without barcodes
• Other improvements

Default site when you sign in
Soprano now uses a cookie that stores the site at which you last signed in and uses it as the default site when you next sign in. As such, it’s specific to the device and browser that you’re using. It means that normally for most staff there will be no need to select the site because the default will be correct.

Displaying Course and Date of Birth
Soprano now displays the primary course of the borrower when there is one, in the top area of the borrower page. Date of Birth already displays in that area, but now it can be switched off – if you would like to do this, please open a Support case.

Guarantors
A guarantor of a borrower can be added, viewed, edited and removed. In the Membership section of Borrower Information there is a new field ‘Guarantor’. When populated it displays the name of the borrower who is the guarantor of the current borrower. In edit mode on the Membership form, the Guarantor field shows the guarantor’s barcode number. You can change or remove the barcode number, or add one when the field is initially empty.
In the Create Borrower form there is a new field ‘Guarantor barcode’, which populates the borrower record when it is created.

Add contacts to existing borrowers
A button ‘Add New Contact’ is now given below the Contacts section of Borrower

Information. This opens a form as a new row on the Contacts list, with a Method drop-down menu (Email, Address, Phone) and other fields appropriate to the selected method.

Handling Items without barcodes
In the Holdings list of items for a work, a row for an item with no barcode can now be selected and the Item page is displayed. The URL for such an Item page has the ItemID instead of the barcode number. This ensures that all items can be managed in Soprano.

Other improvements

• Fixed a responsive design issue in the Create Borrower page to ensure appropriate wrapping in portrait mode on narrower devices
• Ensure consistent use of the term ‘Return’ rather than ‘Discharge’
• Fixed Borrower note display (under Notes) so that it appears even when there are no messages to display
• Fixed the duplicate display of the message box in ‘Find items unaccounted for’ when there are no items to be listed.

To preview this release
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 you live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Monday 19th January 2015.

Comments and contact
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 blog, on the Soprano forum and Soprano Ideas or contact your Account Manager or the Soprano team directly.

We’re pleased to announce that a new release of Soprano is now available for preview. This release includes:

• More enablement control using LMS permission settings
• Stock Management enhancements and fixes
• Other improvements
• Cataloguing – first steps

Enablement controls

The availability of Reservations features can be controlled by LMS permissions settings (in SetConfig). When the LMS Permissions Rules have Circulation > Reservation set to ‘No’, the following elements do not display in Soprano: the Reserve button, the Reservation tabs on Work and Item, and the Tasks involving reservations.

Similarly, for Borrower information, when the LMS Permissions Rules have Circulation >  Borrower set to ‘No’, the Borrower column under the Work Holdings tab is not displayed, and the Borrower ID column under Work and Item Reservations is not displayed. This is in addition to being unable to search for borrowers and being placed in Items after log in.

Stock Management enhancements and fixes

Active Tasks are now displayed at the top of the Tasks page. A progress indicator is displayed in tasks where appropriate, such as the Reservations Pick List.

A new task, ‘Pick reservations in area’ allows you to subdivide the job of picking reservations by different areas of the library (i.e. branch), allocating them to different people if required. This is useful when there is a large number of reservations that can be satisfied from the library. Areas are defined using the existing ‘Manage shelves’ option, and then you select an area when you go into ‘Pick reservations in area’.
The Reservation Pick List no longer returns an error when no content qualifies for the list; it now returns the following message: ‘There are no reservations, or no available items to satisfy current reservations, within the requested area.’

Offline

Offline mode now estimates the remaining device storage capacity and warns the operator if it is insufficient for a transaction to be queued.

We’ve fixed an issue where a borrower created offline is not sync’ing when online connectivity is restored.

We’ve added texts where they were missing from some display elements in Offline.

Other improvements

Soprano now has a breadcrumb trail in the Items area. You can select any previous step in the trail to go back. This enables direct navigation from an Item to a Work.

We’ve fixed issues with scanning barcodes using an on-board camera on a portable device. Soprano auto-detects the camera and shows a camera icon on the button on the input field, to take the picture of the barcode. Please note that in Admin Console > Soprano > Interface there is an on/off check box setting for ‘Show Camera-based Barcode Reader’.

We’ve also fixed some issues with date picker and icon displays in Internet Explorer 8.

Cataloguing – first steps

This release also includes the beginnings of a cataloguing module. It’s switched off by default. When switch on in a tenancy, it has the following features.

On the Items main page there is a Create Work button, which gives you a form with labeled fields (non-MARC) allowing you to enter some basic bibliographic information. This is aimed at supporting situations where you need brief bibliographic data quickly. The first field, ‘Identifier’, accepts an ISBN, EAN, UPC or other identifier and has an option to  ‘Get Work’, which searches Base and automatically imports and presents you with a matching record selected according to search preferences that you have for the Cataloguing Service. Other features when creating a new record include selecting from lists of format and content types, and autocomplete on creator, contributor and and publisher fields.

On the page for a Work there is an Add Item button, which opens a simple form allowing quick entry of basic item details, with selection menus for Site, Status, Type, Sequence and Size. Having created an item you remain in the form with the values just entered, except barcode, allowing for quick creation of multiple copies.

Also included is an ‘Improve Work’ feature, which allows some particular fields to be added or upgraded using data from records in Base (again following your search preferences), where the operator can view and decide on each change.

To preview this release
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 you live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Monday 18th August 2014.

Comments and contact
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment on this blog post, 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 the release to the live service of  Soprano with offline capability. This is the version that has been in preview recently. Details are described in the preview release notice.