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.

If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Thursday 16th October 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:

• Soprano roadmap run-through
• Overview demonstration of Soprano current features
• Recent developments
• Forthcoming developments

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.

If you were unable to attend the Soprano Development Update webinar on Monday 24th February 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:

• Overview of current Soprano features
• Soprano Offline
• Stock Management development in progress

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}.

To enable customers to keep up to date with the development of Soprano, we are starting a regular Soprano Development Update Webinar. This free webinar is open to all customers.

The first Soprano Development Update Webinar is scheduled for Monday 24^th February 2014.

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.