The Plan: Upgrade to Sierra 2.2

  • Thursday, May 5, 2016 starting at 5:00pm
  • Sierra & library catalog will be unavailable for approximately 2 hours

Issues Resolved after Upgrade

  • Users cannot selected specific subfields in Create Lists (CAT-1198)
  • In the catalog, limiting by year in Advanced Search only searches after start date and before end date (CAT-1207)
  • Wrong date/time stamp on patron checkin receipts (CAT-2017)
  • Unable to FTP to foreign vendor (ADS-215)

NEW! Sierra Web

Innovative is incrementally offering Sierra functions from a browser-based application as an alternative to the installed application.

Important things to know about this beta release of Sierra Web:

  1. There is a limit of 5 concurrent logins in this first release of Sierra Web. At this point that limit is managed but the system. An attempted 6th login will be blocked.
  2. A specific suite of modes will be available via Sierra Web (outlined below). If a user has permission for those modes when they login they will be able to use them. A user who logs in will be restricted per their set permissions.

Functions available in Sierra Web:

  • Search/Holds Mode
  • Count Use Mode(s)
  • Renew No Patron Mode
  • Checkin No Patron Mode
  • Check Out (Circulation Desk)
  • Clear Expired Holds and Holdshelf
  • Count Use – Portable Reader
  • Course Reserves
  • Delete Records
  • Fines Paid
  • Held Items Delivery
  • High-Demand Holds
  • Manage Items In-Transit
  • Merge Duplicate Patron Records
  • Notices
  • Offline File Processing
  • Overdues Report
  • Transfer Paged Items
  • View Outstanding Holds

Enhancements after Upgrade

API

New and Improved Patron API Endpoints:

  • Request to renew a checkout
  • Validate patron PIN against valid PIN business rules
  • Update patron’s PIN
  • Get patron record by barcode
  • Get number of renewals for a patron
  • Get notes and queue length for holds

New Bibs API Endpoint:

  • Reading MARC fields from attached holdings records
  • Generate a MARC data file of bibs

Cataloging

  • When using the Verify Headings function on the 7xx field and expanding the author entry, the entry displays as “null”. This is occurring in Compact Browse.
  • In Data Exchange, 00-00-00 shows instead of an actual date when the records were deleted.
  • Searching indexed fields in the SDA with an ampersand produces no results, even though that is what is represented in the catalog.

Circulation

  • The border surrounding the “hold note” element when placing holds in SDA is missing. Actual functionality with the “hold note” element does not appear to be affected and this appears to be a display issue only.

Create Lists

  • The Foreign Currency function does not display any information when entering a review file to search. The function works as normal when a record range is specified instead.
  • The architecture of Sierra has been leveraged to permit users to execute advanced JSON searches to create lists. These searches allow more sophisticated groupings and facilitate sharing your searches with other libraries. As simple as a cut and paste to the Sierra Listserv. Specifically there are two new methods of building a Create Lists query:
    • an “Enhanced” query builder that displays query conditions in a more intuitive manner and supports associating multiple terms with a target, as well as a new “IN” operator
    • a “JSON” query builder that represents the query in JSON. These JSON-formatted queries can be saved to, and loaded from, the user’s local filesystem.

Desktop App

  •  Quoted keyword search strings that include Boolean operators failing to return results in SDA.

Statistics

  • Refactored to better access the Sierra architecture providing end users with an optimized experience running statistics in Sierra.

Please report any issues following the upgrade to Hub.