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.

We’re pleased to announce that a release of Soprano with offline capability is now available for preview.

In offline mode you can issue items to borrowers, return items and add new borrowers. It is automatically activated in your browser simply by logging in to Soprano (whilst online). In the footer below the copyright notice a message informs you about the update status of the offline copy e.g. ‘Offline copy up to date’.

When there is no connectivity you are now able log in and when you lose connectivity whilst in Soprano it will automatically switch to offline mode. You can issue items to borrowers, return items, and add new borrowers. Links to these offline features are given on the Borrower tab page, which you can get to from anywhere with one click or tap.

To issue an item, you scan or type the barcodes of the borrower and item.

To return an item you scan or type the item barcode.

There is an indicator in the right hand end of the black bar at the top of every page, which informs you whether you are online or offline. When online, a green tick is displayed. When there is no connectivity the indicator is a red cross. This indicator will change, within a few seconds, when connectivity is lost or restored.

When using Soprano in offline mode, each transaction is queued and a count of queued transactions is shown next to the offline indicator. You can click/tap on ‘queued’ to see the list of transactions in the queue.

When connectivity is restored, Soprano automatically attempts to process any queued transactions to update the LMS database. A count of any problem transactions remaining in the queue will be shown. You can click/tap to view the problem transactions, each with a message about the problem and options to Retry or Delete. ‘Delete’ deletes the transaction from your queue, ‘Retry’ instructs Soprano to give the transaction another go immediately. You can close the box and keep the problem transaction for later if necessary.

Transactions are stored on the device (e.g. laptop, tablet or smartphone) until they have either been processed or deleted.

This is an opportunity to see how the new features fit your local context and to check existing functionality. Please remember that it is using your live data.

To preview this release

To preview the offline feature you may need an upgrade to your Local Data Services (LDS) – if this is required, we will be in contact with you over the next few days to schedule your upgrade. Meanwhile, the online functionality will continue to work with your current version of LDS.

Please insert ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’:  https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}.

We’re pleased to announce that more new Soprano features have been released to the live service. The features are described in the Soprano Release Preview notices for 15th November.

We are pleased to announce the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.

This release contains the functionality required to make use of the new “Two Factor Authentication” security feature.

Two-Factor Authentication

This optional feature increases the security features available to you for controlling access to Soprano by adding a verification step to the login process, much like some banks use on their web sites.

Two-Factor Authentication is an implementation of the OATH-TOTP standard, which is supported by many hardware tokens, and also a number of software solutions, such as the free Google Authenticator application available on all mobile platforms.

When Two-Factor Authentication is required for an operator, the logon process changes to prompt them for a one time numerical code after they have provided their username and password. This verification code is generated by your choice of OATH-TOTP token generator, and changes every 30 seconds. This ensures that anyone not in possession of the correct token generator will not be able to access Soprano.

In order to activate this feature, your administrator should use the Admin Console released earlier this week to configure the individual OATH-TOTP tokens for each operator. Please ensure that you perform a reset of the Soprano cache in the demo environment in order to allow Soprano to pick up your Two-Factor Authentication changes. In order to perform a reset of the cache, simply add “resetcache” to the end of your Soprano URL, such as https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}/resetcache.

To preview this release
To preview this release, please insert ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after ‘soprano’, so that the URL is like this:  https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}.

This is an opportunity to see how the new features fit your local context and to check that everything else is working correctly. Please remember that it is using your live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Monday 25^th November 2013.

Comments and contact
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment on this blog post, contact your Account Manager or contact me. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.

We’re pleased to announce that more new Soprano features have been released to the live service. The features are described in the Soprano Release Preview notices for 13th September and 3rd October.

We’re pleased to announce that a new release of Soprano is available for you to preview. This release delivers improvements in the Item Holdings display and automatically generates barcode check digits.

Shelfmarks in Item Holdings

Shelfmarks are now displayed in Item Holdings. We have also separated Site and Status into separate columns. This provides important information supporting the work of roaming librarians. 

Auto-generate barcode check digits

Following the same rules as in Alto, Soprano can now add the correct check digit to a scanned or typed barcode.

To preview this release
To preview this release, please insert ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after ‘soprano’, so that the URL is like this:  https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}.

This is an opportunity to see how the new features fit your local context and to check that everything else is working correctly. Please remember that it is using your live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Monday 7th October 2013.

Comments and contact
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment on this blog post, contact your Account Manager or contact me. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.

We’re pleased to announce that a new release of Soprano is available for you to preview. This release delivers two new features: observe operator enablements to limit access to features, and display borrower institution ID.

Observe operator enablements to limit access to features
Soprano will now behave in accordance with the relevant Enablement Profile as configured in Alto SetConfig: Parameter Management > Permissions > Rules. The Operator ID and Current site that are used to log in to Soprano will determine which Enablement Profile applies, via the mappings to operator and site profiles in SetConfig: Parameter Management > Names and then the Permissions > Enablements Link.

Where functions are disabled, the relevant objects in Soprano, for example the Create Borrower button, or the Issue Item button, are not displayed.

This feature requires an upgrade to your Local Data Services (LDS). To schedule your LDS upgrade please open a Support case; for customers participating in the Alto 5.5 beta, this is not necessary as you already have the correct version.

Display borrower institution ID
This allows the borrower’s Institution ID Number to be displayed below their Library Number. It is an optional feature that is switched ‘off’ by default. If you would like to make use of this feature please open a Support case.

To preview this release
To preview this release, please insert ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after ‘soprano’, so that the URL is like this:  https://soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}.

This is an opportunity to see how the new features fit your local context and to check that everything else is working correctly. Please remember that it is using your live data.

Release to the live service
This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 19th September 2013.

Comments and contact
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can comment on this blog post, contact your Account Manager or contact me. To suggest and discuss additional features there is the Soprano Ideas Forum.