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.
If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Thursday 11th June 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:
//blogs.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/soprano/files/2016/02/Soprano-webinar-2015-06-11.mp4
We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview.
This release includes:
Printing the Reservations Pick List
The print stylesheet for Reservations Pick Lists has been improved. Elements that relate only to online use have been removed, each available copy is listed and a blank ‘Picked’ column is provided to allow you to record activity on paper. You can access it from your browser’s Print option.
Borrower Guarantees 
Complementing the ability to record a Guarantor in the Membership area under the Borrower > Information tab, Soprano now also displays the names of any borrowers who are guaranteed by the borrower being viewed – the Guarantees. You do not enter Guarantees directly – they are displayed when the borrower being viewed has been entered as the Guarantor of other borrowers. Multiple Guarantees are displayed where relevant.
Postcode look up for existing borrowers’ addresses 
The postcode look-up address finder is already available on the form to create a new borrower. Now it also appears when adding or editing addresses for existing borrowers.
Please note that the postcode look-up address finder requires integration with a relevant service: LLPG, QAS or Address-point. If you already have postcode lookup integrated in Alto, you can 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 reasons in All Charges 
The reason for a fine or a hire charge is now given under the All Charges tab, as it already is under the Current Charges tab. This includes the number of days overdue for a fine, and the type of transaction where the charge was realised, such as ‘Public renew’.
Identifier validation in Create Work 
In Create Work you can enter an identifier, such as an ISBN, in the Identifier box, click Get Work, and Soprano will import a matching record from Base. Now, it recognises various types of identifier and if the input does not conform to any of these the field label changes to ‘Other or unknown identifier’. This can be useful to help you ensure correct input or to explain why you get no results.
Improved handling of errors
Soprano now responds with some explanation to various data problems and other error conditions, where previously it would appear to go offline.
Recently viewed works duplication fixed
This fixes a bug where duplicate entries appeared sometimes in the works listed under Recent Activity on the Resources tab.
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 17th June 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.
To keep up to date with the latest Soprano developments please register for the webinar on Thursday 11th June 2015 at 2.00 pm. This free webinar is open to all customers.
In this webinar we’ll discuss the latest Soprano developments and review the roadmap, as well as giving 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 here on the Soprano blog and on the Soprano Forum, and propose and discuss ideas in Soprano Ideas.
If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Wednesday 15th April 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:
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:
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
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.
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