SpringyNews - New Age Of Instruction

There is always a ton of work being done on LibCal. Imagine a fenced off area behind which you see smoke and sparks and the tops of ladders moving left and then right. You hear banging and clanging and hear ropes moving through pulleys. It's a busy scene. The tech team delivers once again with some great features in this code release.

• By popular request, we have started to add more granular user permissions to LibCal! There is now an account level permission to restrict Regular users to only be able to run the Appointments booking explorer for themselves and no other users.  Head to Admin > Accounts > Edit Account > Permissions Tab to change this setting.
• Also by popular demand, since we recently added cancelation information to the Spaces booking explorer, we’ve added it to the Appointments booking explorer as well! Head to Appointments > Booking Explorer to view who canceled an appointment and when.
• Select an event template when creating an event from a space booking. Go to Spaces > Availability and click on a booked space in the grid. In the section that displays the booking details, click the ‘Create Event’ button. If any event templates are set up in your LibCal site, an option will appear to select a template or create an event from scratch.

Please join us for

Planning Spaces and Equipment in Your LibCal Site Workshop

Tuesday, August 27, 2019 from 2:00pm to 3:00pm U.S. ET

For LibInsight, our developers have worked on a bunch of COUNTER-related updates for you in this recent code release. 

• We removed the link to the now-defunct COUNTER Release 4 validator.
• We made several improvements to scheduled SUSHI fetches. Specifically, we delete a schedule when a provider, dataset, or platform using the schedule is deleted. We also added some validation for the “Recurring Until” dates.
• When you copy a platform from one dataset to another, you’ll now copy any invoices and licenses that you’ve added to the platform. This includes invoice file attachments and line item details, as well as license file attachments.
• We added some error information to the emails you get when a SUSHI fetch fails. This will help us in troubleshooting.
• We have added the &platform parameter when retrieving SUSHI files. Some vendors require this to differentiate among the platforms that they provide.

To read about all the additional fixes and features, check out the LibInsight section of our blog post. 

Please join us for

Getting Started with LibInsight

Tuesday, September 3, 2019 from 2:00pm to 3:00pm U.S. ET

There's a lot of work being done on the back end of LibStaffer to get a brand new feature off the ground in a future code release. It's going to be very cool and you can read about it in the Upcoming Updates section, below.

For now, we do have a couple of little fixes that are sure to delight.

• We’ve corrected an issue where manually typing in dates into the date search on the Dashboard for ‘My Upcoming Shifts’ and ‘Open Shifts’ would not return any results.
• We’ve corrected an issue with Autoscheduler relating to scheduling a maximum of 2 shifts per day with non-back-to-back shifts.

Please join us for

Training Tidbits: LibStaffer Scheduling in Action 

Wednesday, September 11, 2019 from 12:30pm - 12:50pm U.S. ET

There is big news on the LibWizard front! 

We've done a lot of work with LibAuth Integration. 

• If you subscribe to the full version of LibWizard, you can put any form, survey, quiz, or tutorial behind a login, allowing only users at your institution to access it. Once patrons are successfully authenticated, their names and email addresses can also be automatically populated into fields in your form, etc.

• To use this new feature for all resources in your LibWizard site, first make sure you have a LibAuth configuration for your institution’s authentication system set up in LibApps. Once that’s set, go to LibWizard > Admin > System Settings > Advanced > Enable LibAuth Integration, click to slide the toggle to Enabled, then choose the configuration you want to use. Click Save. Now you’re ready to use it on forms, surveys, quizzes, and/or tutorials!

• Then, while editing a form, survey, quiz, or tutorial, go to its Options tab > Basic Info > Enable LibAuth Authentication and choose the authentication configuration you want to use from the dropdown. Optionally, choose a permissions group to further restrict this resource, if the protocol supports groups. If you’d like to map users’ name and email to fields in the form, etc., select the fields to map them to in the “Map user info to fields” section just below the LibAuth option.

This code release also introduced the ability to let you create a Certificate of Completion for Quizzes and Tutorials. To read all about it, check out the LibWizard section of the blog. 

The tech team has shared that a lot has happened on the back end to improve the structure of the LibCRM system. The back end updates mainly relate to overhauling the back end API, which will help us improve and create fantastic new features and functions in the future. Here's what we have for you now.

• Project templates - No more do you have to create projects from scratch. Instead use the powerful new Project Templates option, which allows you to create and copy templates! Head to Projects > New Project > and check the “Is This a Template?” checkbox to create a new template.
• Once the template is created, you can then head to Projects > Template Projects to see the full list and edit or delete them. Click the name of the template to add related tasks. When this template is used to create a new project, all of those tasks are copied into the new project – a huge time saver!

• Data Imports now better handle errors and duplicate records.
• In this release we focused on Custom Fields Filters in Projects. We made improvements to the date type field and fixed where the system was not removing selected conditions and/or values when a new search is performed.

Life is more fun when you have exciting new LibCal features to look forward to. So what's on deck here at Springshare? 

• Attach files to events: Soon we will be adding a way to attach files to events. For instance, you could add event worksheets, flyers, forms, a syllabus, course outline, etc.
• Alma hours integration: We will be setting up a way for customers that use Alma to sync their opening hours from Alma into LibCal’s Hours module. This will make it so customers would no longer have to maintain their opening hours in both Alma and LibCal. Fantastic!

You all are really putting some time into your LibGuides Blog Posts and you are swiftly rolling them out. We've seen blog posts on everything from Copyright to Schedules to Superhero Madness. If you're not using your blogging feature just yet, or if you're a full-on publishing machine, we want you to know we are excited for you to get super prolific. 

• We're soon going to start indexing blog post content so that these results are shown in your multi-site search tabs or bento boxes.
• You'll also be able to search blog posts right from any given blog page.

You keep writing and we'll keep you organized.

Hola! Bonjour. Ciao. Hello. Guess what's on the horizon for LibStaffer? 

The LibStaffer team has been steadily working behind the big dark velvet curtain to bring you an awesome new feature that involves a lot of back end work. Multi-language selection is coming!

• The feature converts all of the system generated text in LibStaffer (including the public calendar view and public calendar widget) to the language selected.
• We will initially support a few languages, then take requests for additional languages that we'll add in future releases.

As always, your help with creating the translations is always welcome and appreciated! Want to volunteer? Let us know. 

Check out the new LibWizard features that are headed your way. 

• Soon you will have custom email notification templates. Using tokens, you will be able to fully customize email templates to contain whatever you like. 
• You can use these templates for forms, surveys, quizzes and tutorials. Once any of those is completed, you can set it up so the system will send out a custom email notification.
• The new ranking field type is still on the way. You will be able to ask patrons to rank from most frequently to least frequently the databases they use when doing their research. Or, you could ask your patrons to rank their favorite types of library events.

The LibCRM team is still actively working on bringing you EMail Campaign Management and Marketing functionality. 

• You'll be able to create an email within the LibCRM system.
• Then you can add multiple recipients to it.
• Choose to send it right away or set it up for a scheduled mass email blast.

We're hard at work on Co-Op functionality!

• All of our current efforts are aimed at bringing you the showstoppingly best 24/7 and local Co-Op features out there. We're going to deliver a product that's seamless for end users, and incredibly easy to use for chat operators.
• Whether you have a Co-Op with 2 participating sites or 200, LibAnswers will deliver the best chat experience with rich information integrated at point of need, seamless transfers within/between sites, easy staff scheduling, and stats that are second-to-none.

Stay tuned for our sneak peeks coming this fall!