Soprano Blog

Soprano release 23rd February 2016

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.

Soprano Release Preview 17th February 2016

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

This release primarily delivers further development of the Acquisitions module, which we are currently testing and refining in collaboration with a few libraries prior to making it generally available.

This release includes:

  • Invoices
  • Open Orders
  • Fund detail
  • Filter buttons work without submitting search
  • List Orders from an Official Order Number on an Order
  • Stock Purchase Suggestions Order Number bug fix
  • Issue Item Manual due date bug fix
  • Return Items Manual due date bug fix
  • Issuing items from the reservation shelf, bug fix
  • Borrower Charge waivers display, bug fix
  • Serial Work header ISSN
  • Various other fixes to functionality and styling

Invoices
We’ve added an Invoices option to the sub-menu under Purchasing. This gives you a list of your invoices in date order latest first.
The list columns are Invoice Number, Date, Payment Due date, Amount Payable, Supplier and Status.
You can filter by Supplier and Status, and search by invoice number.
Invoices list
You can select a row to view an invoice in detail. Within the invoice you can select an order line to go to the order.
Invoice Detail

Open Orders
We’ve added a Subscriptions option to the sub-menu under Purchasing. This gives you a list of your Open Orders sorted by Order Number descending. The list shows Order Number, Effective Date, Work Information, Price Per Annum, Subscriptions (quantity), Supplier and State.
You can filter by State and Supplier, and search by Order Number, Supplier Ref or Official Order Number.
Open Orders list
You can select a row to view an Open Order in detail. Within the open Order you can select the Work to view its page and follow the e-resource link when there is one. The Subscriptions are listed and you can link to a Fund from a Subscription line.
Open Order detail

Fund detail
You can now select a Fund from a list to view it in detail. In addition to summary information about amounts, you can view a list of Orders against a base Fund and view a history of transfers including links to the Funds to or from which amounts were transferred. With an aggregate Fund you can list and link to the member Funds.
Fund detail

Filter buttons work without submitting search
Filter buttons now work as soon as you click/tap them, without having to click/tap the search submit button. This includes the Orders filter by Type (Active Orders / Supplier quotes), the Funds filter by type (All/Base/Aggregate) and the Suppliers filter by active (On/Off) and by type (All/Parent/ Base).

List Orders from an Official Order Number on an Order
On the Order Detail page you can now click/tap on the Official Order Number to retrieve all orders with that number.
Official Order Number link

Stock Purchase Suggestions Order Number bug fix
In the Acquisitions Task Review stock purchase suggestions the Order request number is now displayed in the list rather than the Order ID.

Issue Item Manual due date bug fix
If you set a manual due date and issue an item and then switch off the manual due date and issue a second item to the same borrower, the calculated due date is now applied to the second loan rather than the manual due date.

Return Items Manual due date bug fix  
An operator who is not enabled to set a manual return date can now return items from loan.

Issuing items from the reservation shelf, bug fix
When an item that is reserved and awaiting collection is issued to the reserver and it is the only one for that borrower, the alert on the borrower information in the Issue form is now cleared, so it doesn’t look as though they have another item waiting to be collected.

Borrower Charge waivers display, bug fix
In Borrower > Current Charges and All Charges, if you waive parts of a charge with different reasons and then view the payment details (click/tap the amount under Paid/Waived), the reasons are displayed correctly rather than repeating  the first waiver for all the other waivers.

Serial Work header ISSN
The header for a serial now displays the ISSN, when there is one.

 

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 23rd February 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 release 26th January 2016

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.

Soprano Release Preview 15 January 2016

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

This release primarily delivers further development of the Acquisitions module. We are currently testing and refining the Acquisitions module in collaboration with a few libraries prior to making it generally available.

This release also includes:

  • Performance improvements
  • A fix to an issue when using IE11 where the borrower page becomes unresponsive after adding and removing many messages
  • Ensuring Manual Return Date is only available when the LDS version is one that supports it, i.e. LDS 2.0 or higher
  • Some styling adjustments to the Borrower and Item headers
  • A correction to the borrower icon on the reservation page

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 25th January 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.

Watch the latest Soprano Development Update webinar

If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Wednesday 16th December or would like to review what we covered then you can catch up on latest developments by watching the video of the webinar, below, or downloading it.

Highlights include:

  • Latest release: demo of new features
    • with LDS 1.10
    • with LDS 2.0
  • Local Data Services 2.0
  • Acquisitions
  • Other developments in progress

 

 

Soprano Release 22nd December 2015

We’re pleased to announce that the version of Soprano that has been in preview since 11th December 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.

Soprano Release Preview 11th December 2015

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

* Transit information in the Item header
* Display links to online resources
* Serial holdings display
* Process Reservations transit fix

Plus features requiring a Local Data Services upgrade to LDS 2.0:

* Add and edit borrower messages
* Manual Due Date
* Manual Return Date
* Operator can change password

This release also includes:
* Other fixes and improvements
* Substantial work on acquisitions, which will become available with a further release of LDS to be announced in due course.

To request your upgrade to LDS 2.0, please open a Support case.

 
Transit information in the Item headerTransit info in Item header
When you view the Item page for an Item that is in transit, details about the transit will be displayed (From, To and Reason), and an appropriate action button will be given. The action offered by the button will depend on whether the destination site is the site where you are, and on the reason for transit. If it is in transit to your site for a reservation then you will be offered the option to ‘Satisfy Reservation’ this will do what it says and remove the transit, giving you a confirmation on the Reservations Processing page. If it is in transit to some other site than yours, you will have the option to Cancel the transit.

Display links to online resourceseResource links
Links to online resources are displayed with the bibliographic information in the Work header. Links are displayed following the same rules as in Prism. A link is displayed for each different URL associated with the record. Both hotlinks (as stored in your LMS) and links held in MARC field 856 are included, so links in records uploaded to Prism via Resource Management are included.

Serial holdings displaySerial print holdings
Serial issues are displayed under the work > Holdings tab when they exist. This allows staff to see all received issues in order to advise borrowers. A click/tap on the number of copies opens a list detailing the individual items.

Process Reservations transit fix
This fixes a problem where a Work has multiple reservations and a library branch has two or more copies available, needing to be transited for the reservations. Now when you transit the second and subsequent copies it succeeds rather than getting an error.

Add and edit borrower messagesBorrower messages add
Requires LDS 2.0. Under the Borrower > Notes tab in the Messages column there is a new button ‘Add New Message’. You can select a standard message from the list of your borrower messages or type a non-standard message into the text box. When a non-standard message is attached to a borrower you can edit it via the pencil control. Each message shows the create and edit date and operator.
The ability to remove a message from a borrower has been made dependent on the Deletion Level in the operator’s Enablement Profile (as configured in SetConfig). With LDS 1.n the ability to remove a message has been suppressed because it was too permissive.

Manual Due DateManual Due date off
Requires LDS 2.0. The Issue Items page has a ‘Manual Due Date’ on/off toggle above the Borrower and Item fields. It is off by default. It remains in its state (off or on) until you change it (just click/tap the toggle) or refresh the page. When switched on it displays editable Manual Due date ondate and time fields, defaulting to one month ahead of the current date. When you issue an item with it switched on, the due date on the loan is the date set in the Manual Due Date fields.

 
Manual Return DateManual Return date
Requires LDS 2.0. The Return Items page has a ‘Manual Return Date’ on/off toggle above the Borrower and Item fields. It is off by default. It remains in its state (off or on) until you change it (just click/tap the toggle) or refresh the page. When switched on it displays editable date and time fields, defaulting to the current date and time. When you return an item with it switched on, the date returned on the loan is the date set in the Manual Return Date fields.

Operator can change passwordOperator password change
Requires LDS 2.0. A new Operator Profile page allows the operator to change their password, if they are allowed by the rule in SetConfig > Parameter Management > Rules > Operators > Operators. The Operator Profile page is accessed by a click/tap on the operator’s name in the ID bar – a new cog icon after the name indicates that it links to settings for the operator.

Other fixes and improvements
This release also includes other bug fixes and improvements throughout 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 Monday 21st December 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.

Soprano Development Update Webinar 16th December 2015

To keep up to date with the latest Soprano developments please register for the webinar on Wednesday 16th December 2015 at 11.00 am. This free webinar is open to all customers.

In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Soprano developments and give you an opportunity to raise any specific questions that you may have.

Please click here to register for the webinar.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

In the meantime keep up with the latest Soprano news and information on the Soprano blog and on the Soprano Forum, and propose and discuss ideas in Soprano Ideas.

Watch the latest Soprano Development Update webinar

If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Thursday 24th September or would like to review what we covered then you can catch up on latest developments by watching the recording of the webinar below or by downloading the video.
Highlights include:

  • Latest release – demo of new features
  • Soprano and Local Data Services work in progress
  • Acquisitions development started
  • Reading RFID tags into Soprano

In the section on Acquisitions development we invited information from your acquisitions staff about their work. To give an idea of the kinds on information we’re interested in, a set of questions is given below. Please send comments to terry.willan@capita.co.uk.

Questions to prompt information from acquisitions staff

1. What initiates an acquisition at your library (who, how,etc).
2. Describe your daily activities in acquisitions (who, what, how? What takes most time?)
3. What would you improve about the acquisitions process? Describe your ideal acquisitions system.
4. Who is involved in acquisitions. How do you split responsibilities? How many people are involved?
5. What non-LMS systems are involved (spreadsheets, finance websites etc)
6. Where does acquisitions work take place?
7. Reporting – what do you need to do? Do you check stock performance, or is that somebody else?
8. Receipting – how do you do it. Who is involved?
9. Do you use Open Orders? To what extent? How many serials etc are acquired via Open Orders?
10. Export to finance. Do you have finance integration, what are the pain points?
11. How much of your process uses EDI? Do you print many orders? How do you send these?
12. Do you manage donations, gifts, etc? What do you do? Quantities?
13. How do you communicate with suppliers. For what reasons? How often?
14. Volume of orders – per day/week? How many queries/problems, e.g. part-supply, non-supply, invoice discrepancies, different item supplied, etc?
15. Do you use verification? What are approvals criteria?
16. How many funds do you have active? How are they split?
17. Are your acquisitions and cataloging processes integrated?

Soprano release 30th September 2015

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.