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

• New Home page derived from Tasks
• Faceted search results
• Spelling suggestions
• Other search improvements
• Work Holdings display changes
• Default home site in Create Borrower
• Borrower Reservations list filter
• Circulation and Stock Management fixes
• Create Work MARC record mappings
• Inter-Library Loans display changes
• Invoices
• Displaying a fund
• Funds list
• Open Orders list
• Serial holdings filters
• Acquisitions fixes
• Performance improvements
• Various security fixes

New Home page derived from Tasks

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.

Faceted search results

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.

Spelling suggestions

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.

Other search improvements

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.

Work Holdings display changes

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.

Default home site in Create Borrower

When you create a new borrower record the Home Site now defaults to the current location where you are signed in.

Borrower Reservations list filter

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.

Circulation and Stock Management fixes

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.

Create Work MARC record mappings

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.

Inter-Library Loans display changes

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.

Invoices

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.

Displaying a fund

You can now bring up the record for a specific fund by selecting it from the list available on the Funds page.

Funds list

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).

Open Orders list

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 holdings filters

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.

Acquisitions fixes

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.

Performance improvements

When you select a borrower’s Information tab the page should load more quickly.

Various security fixes

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.

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 your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Wednesday 14th December 2016.

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 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:

• Borrower Type displayed in Process Reservations
• Performance improvements
• ILL item barcode displayed in ILL form
• Reading older Danish Model RFID tags in the Soprano Wrapper
• Fund summary progress indication bars
• Miscellaneous fixes

Borrower Type displayed in Process Reservations

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.

Performance improvements

A borrower’s reservations list should now load more quickly.  This will be more noticeable with longer lists.

ILL item barcode displayed in ILL form

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.

Reading older Danish Model RFID tags in the Soprano Wrapper

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).

Fund summary progress indication bars

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.

Miscellaneous fixes

• In Borrower search, some issues with the correct retrieval and sorting of borrowers are now fixed.
• In Create Work the work import feature is now working again rather than giving an error. From Resources, choose Create Work to get the Create Work form; put a new ISBN into the Identifier field and press Get Work.
  
• In the Orders list a bug where some orders would lack bibliographic data from the Work has been fixed.

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 your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 22nd September 2016.

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 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:

• Alert that an item is an inter-library loan
• MARC record download and upload
• Fund Summary  information re-organised
• Performance improvements
• Local Data Services (LDS) version notice
• Miscellaneous fixes

Alert that an item is an inter-library loan

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.

MARC record download and upload

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.

Fund Summary information re-organised

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:

• Fund value: the amount, annotated with the Allocated and Carried forward amounts. On an aggregate fund the annotation also states the number of funds (including the current one) from which the Fund Value is summed
• Committed: the amount committed for items that have not yet been paid for, annotated with the number of items.
• Spent: the amount, annotated with the number of items and the amount as a percentage of the Fund value
• Total committed: the amount, annotated with the number of items and the amount as a percentage of the Fund value
• Uncommitted: the amount not committed from the Fund value
• Notes: displayed on the right-hand side of the page

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).

Performance improvements

We’ve made some changes that should mean that:

• The Work Holdings tab page  loads more quickly
• The Borrower Current charges and All Charges tabs pages load more quickly
• The Invoices list and any filtered view of it should load more quickly.

LDS version required: As required for the specific features.

Local Data Services (LDS) version notice

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.

Miscellaneous fixes

• When there are no results for a filtered Orders list, rather than getting an error you now see in the results area a notice: ‘There are no orders matching your query’.
• Reservation fees and miscellaneous charges are now listed with the correct type name on till receipts, rather than appearing as fines.
  
• When submitting a newly created borrower the PIN is now saved.

LDS version required: As required for the specific features.

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 your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 11th August 2016.

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.

Soprano has developed a lot over this past year, with many new features and functional areas being added to the application. We’ve been very successful in adding these new features in without impacting the existing Alto application (the one on your desktop). We have done this through releasing new content in the Local Data Services (LDS) in a manner which does not break existing applications.

Each new Soprano feature is typically dependent upon features released in preceding LDS versions, so many of the new Soprano features can simple be enabled where LDS is already up-to-date. The following table shows the LMS/LDS version dependency and the related Soprano features.

Capita have pledged to support the current and previous versions of our applications, and have done this to help encourage all our customers to receive all the latest software fixes, patches and new features, and also ensure application development is efficient through deprecation of old code that is no longer required.

One new feature within Soprano that is being developed at the moment is the ability to see and override exceptional circumstances while issuing, renewing or returning library stock. At present, all customer’s versions (known as tenancies) are configured with a default set of overrides, and if the operator has permission to apply these overrides, they are automatically applied. This is changing, so that the operator is asked to approve any override, giving visibility of the overrides being applied and assisting the librarian’s choice of whether applying the override is the right thing to do.

The complexity of this change means it is time to remove support for LDS 1.x – that’s any version of LDS 1 – from the issue, renew and return features of Soprano.

If you are using Soprano and have LMS version 5.7 or LMS version 5.8, you will be unaffected by this change and do not need to take any action. Soprano will continue to support LDS versions appropriate for the supported LMS releases.

If you are running LMS version 5.6.1 or older, you will need to upgrade to at least LMS 5.7 in order to retain the functionality in Soprano to issue, renew and return library stock.

If you are unsure which version of the LMS you are running, this can be seen at the top of the Alto application, as shown here:

We intend to release the version of Soprano which no longer supports LDS 1.x near the beginning of September 2016. Please ensure that you are running a minimum of LMS 5.7 and LDS 2.0 before September 2016. If you have any questions, please raise a support case through the support portal or contact your account manager.

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

This release includes:

• Item Query
• Search for borrower by institution ID
• Inter-library loans lists most recent first
• Reservations Pick List sort order
• Funds fixes
• Performance improvements

Item Query

This feature becomes available with LDS version 2.4 and higher. LDS version 2.4 is now available – please open a Support case to request your upgrade.

You can now open, view, edit and close queries on items, subject to appropriate enablements.

To open a new query on an item a new button OPEN QUERY is provided in the Item header. It opens a form enabling you to select the query type and optionally enter a note.

When the query is saved the item status is automatically changed to Query.  The query is displayed as the item state in the item header, with the option (pencil control) to edit it. If you have the environment variable (in Alto SetConfig) TAL_QUERY_FINESTOP=YES then any potential fine is fixed by storing it with the query details.

In the work holdings list the STATUS and AVAILABILITY columns indicate the presence of the query.

When an Item with a query is not on loan you can close the query with a CLOSE QUERY button.

In Return Items when you return an item with a query the transaction outcome displays an action button CLOSE QUERY, indicating the presence of the query and taking you to the Item Detail page where you can view more detail about the query and close it. The message in the return item transaction outcome tells you of any fine due, including a fine that has been stored with the query.

Search for borrower by institution ID

You can now retrieve a borrower’s details by searching with their institution ID. This is in addition to the existing ways of searching  for a borrower, by name, barcode, postcode, date of birth and email address.

Inter-library loans lists most recent first

In the Inter-library loans module, accessed via Tasks, lists of ILLs (all, or filtered) are now sorted with the most recent first.

Reservations Pick List sort order

We’ve overhauled the sorting of items by shelfmark in the Reservations Pick List and this fixes an issue with the sorting of a shelfmark with a class number that has no decimal places relative to those with the same number with decimal places.

Funds fixes

Some issues with funds are fixed in this release:

• Action buttons (Add Money, Transfer Money, View Orders, View Open Orders) now display when the Transfers tab is selected on a fund
  
• When transferring money between funds the Allocation amounts now always show two decimal places.

• When you press the button to Add Money to a fund, the fund you were viewing is now automatically selected from the drop down list of funds.

Performance improvements

We’ve made some performance improvements in loading the Orders page under Purchasing, and in the Tills area.

Local Data Services (LDS)

To benefit from the features in this and the previous release you will need the latest version of the Local Data Services (LDS), which is now 2.4. That, in turn, requires that you have Alto 5.8. If you need to upgrade, please open a Support case. Please note that Soprano will cease support for LDS 1.x soon.

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 your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano will be released to the live service on Thursday 21st July 2016.

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 next release of Soprano is now available for preview.

This release includes:

• Transit in Return Items
• Add a miscellaneous charge to a borrower
• Borrower Charges details
• View Borrower Notifications
• Borrower exception alerts separated
• Borrower Reservations queue position
• Managing reservation shelves
• Item Messages
• RFID scanning for Issue and Return
• Issue In Stock Items only
• Link to newly created borrower
• Inter-library loans
• Link to Open Orders from Fund
• Listing base funds and base suppliers only
• Receipt items at branch
• Edit Supplier
• Circulation fixes
• Acquisitions fixes

Transit in Return Items

This applies, in Return Items, to items whose home site is elsewhere and those that are due for stock rotation to a site other than the current site. It does not apply to reserved items – for them, the Process Reservations button is given, regardless of the collection site of the first reservation in the queue; transiting, if required, is managed within the Process Reservations page.

A new check-box option, Auto-transit, in the Admin Console > {tenancy} > Interface, is set on by default. It controls the automatic setting of an item to in-transit when it is returned. When you return an item whose home site is elsewhere, the item is automatically put in transit in the database, a message send to home site {name of home site} is given and a button RE-HOME AT THIS SITE is given, allowing you to counter the automatic action if required. It takes you to the Item detail page where you can press the CANCEL TRANSIT button which removes the transit and changes the item’s home site to the current site.

When you return an item that is due for stock rotation to a site other than your current site, the item is automatically put in transit for stock rotation in the database, a message send to {name of home site} for stock rotation is given and the button RE-HOME AT THIS SITE is given.

When the Auto-transit option in the Admin Console is set off, the behaviour is neutral – the operator must choose whether to re-home or transit an item that belongs elsewhere. The CHANGE HOME SITE button is given, indicating that your current site is not the item’s home site. You can go to the item by either pressing the button or clicking on the item description, and then you can either transit the item with the TRANSIT button, or edit the home site.

Add a miscellaneous charge to a borrower

Soprano now allows miscellaneous charges to be added to borrower accounts. To add a charge, on the borrower detail page select the Current Charges tab. A new button appears at the top of the list of charges: Add Charge.

When you select the Add Charge button, a pop-up displays prompting you to enter the amount of the charge and a note explaining what the charge is for.

Both the Charge Amount and the Charge Note fields are mandatory. Once you click the Add Charge button the form closes and the charge appears in the list of current charges and a confirmation message is displayed in the borrower header.

Borrower Charges details

More detail about a borrower’s current charges has been provided to help the operator explain a fine to a user. The action that triggered the fine is now given more precisely (Returned or Renewed) below the date the fine was accrued. The time has been added to the date. Under the type of charge, where it is a Fine, the due date and time is now provided in addition to the number of days overdue.

View borrower notifications

A new tab for a borrower, Notifications, allows you to see the list of notifications for that borrower. You can filter the list by Status (All, Active, Sent, Failed) and by Type (All, Routine, Marketing, Ad hoc).

Selecting a notification from the list displays the detailed view of that notification, in place of the list under the tab. A breadcrumb trail or the browser Back button allows you to return to the list. The detailed view includes a Content Preview, and a button enables you to open the full document.

Borrower exception alerts separated

Alerts to exceptions on a borrower are now displayed separately in the borrower header rather than in a stack on the borrower image. The illustration shows, from left to right: borrower account expires soon; owes £3.50; has one forced message; has two other messages; has 2 reservations ready to be collected; and has one overdue loan. The alert to expiring soon is new.

Borrower reservations queue position

The queue position is now shown in a borrower’s reservations list. It also indicates when the item is waiting collection.

Managing reservation shelves

Soprano now presents a reservation shelf as a reservation shelf rather than as a borrower (it remains a borrower in the database).

In Tasks, a new option allows you to open the reservation shelf for the site where you are signed in.

By default it is filtered to items that are due to be removed: those where the expiry date or last useful date is in the past, or whose status is Cancelled or Uncollected. In the Filter option at the top of the page you can opt to view all items on the reservation shelf.

The Expires column shows the soonest of either the date the item is due to expire from the reservation shelf or the last useful date of the reservation.

The Remove button on each item allows you to update the data to reflect the physical action of removing the item from the reservation shelf. It returns the item from loan to the reservation shelf and, if the  reservation status is Waiting collection, changes that to Uncollected. You can remove any item from the reservation shelf, not only those where removal is due. On pressing Remove, the item is removed from the list and a success message is displayed at the top of the page giving the title, author and item barcode, which has a link to the Item page.

The Item page for an item on a reservation shelf has an alert to that fact, and an alert linking to the reservation on the reserving borrower’s page.

Item Messages

Standard item messages can now be viewed, added and deleted from the Item detail Notes tab in the same way that borrower messages can.

Ad-hoc messages can be added, edited (using the pencil control) or deleted (using the bin control).

RFID scanning for Issue and Return

Soprano communicates with RFID scanners via the Soprano Wrapper for Windows, which you can download together with the release notes from the Customer Support Portal.

In this release we’ve added:

• Support for 2CQR RFID scanners
• Interacting with the security header on tags that use AFI/AES security (including 3M and 2CQR) to unlock and lock them in Issue and Return respectively
• Handling of multi-tag item sets: detecting that an RFID tag represents an item that is part of a set.

If an incomplete set is present Soprano continues with the transaction, displaying information about how many items were found and alerting to the missing items.

Issue In stock items only

The Issue button now appears on the Item page only when the Item Status is In Stock.

Link to newly created borrower

When a new borrower is created the success message pop-up now includes a link to the borrower’s detail page, making it easy to go to the new record to perform updates and transactions.

Inter-library loans

The Tasks page can now include Inter Library Loans options. To activate it, please refer to the Local data Services (LDS) section below, and contact your Account Manager.

The two options, Manage ILL Requests and Manage Prism ILL Requests both take you to the list of your Inter-Library Loans, the second option filtered to unverified i.e. Pending status requests, enabling you to focus on requests submitted via Prism.

You can search by Request number, filter to only verified requests or only unverified requests, and you can filter to requests with specific statuses – select one or more statuses from the drop-down menu in the Filter By Status box. The Requester and Work for each request are linked to the Borrower and Work pages respectively. The Request Number opens the new ILL Request detail page, which currently allows you to view the details, navigate to the Work or Requester, or cancel the request.

The Supplier in the ILL list links to the new ILL Supplier detail page, which currently allows you to view the details and to list your ILLs filtered to that supplier.

A new tab, ILLs, lists the ILL requests for a Borrower and a Work, with links to the ILL Request detail, the Work or Requester, and the Supplier. The list can show all ILL requests or be filtered to active requests.

Link to Open Orders from Fund

In addition to a View Orders button, The Fund Detail page now includes a View Open Orders button, giving you a list of Open Orders filtered by the fund.

Listing Base Funds and Base Suppliers only

When you filter by Supplier in Orders and Subscriptions, and when you filter by Fund in Orders, the list gives base suppliers or base funds only. Similarly, only base funds or base suppliers are listed in the relevant drop-down menus in Create Order.

Receipt items at branch

To enable receipting new stock at the home library, a Receipt button now displays on the Item detail page when Item Status is either Order Sent, Order Pending or Part Complete, the Item has a barcode and the Operator is signed in to the Item Home Site.

Edit Supplier

With appropriate enablements, you can now edit the details in the supplier header and addresses.

Circulation fixes

• The borrower charges alert is now displayed when a hire item with a hire charge is issued
• Performance in loading parts of the borrower page and tabs has been improved
• The focus in Process Reservations is now in the input box, which means that you no longer have to select the input box each time before you can enter the next barcode.

Acquisitions fixes

• The View Orders button on Funds and Suppliers now gives all related orders rather than only active orders
• In Create Supplier a number of fields are no longer mandatory. You can now quickly create a supplier with just a Code and Order Type, and complete it later. The form also now includes Contact Name and Account Code
• Supplier postal address, Email, Phone and Order method fields now display data correctly.

Local Data Services (LDS)

To benefit from most of the features in this release notice, including all the new ones, you will need the latest version of the Local Data Services (LDS): version 2.3. That, in turn, requires that you have Alto 5.8. If you need to upgrade, please open a Support case.

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 Wednesday 6th July 2016.

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.