Skip to Main Content

SpringyNews - Milestones

December 2020

Recent Updates - November & December

The LibCal team has been hard at work developing a ton of new features and fixes for LibCal!

Spaces/Seat Bookings

  • Do you want to require students, staff, or patrons to authenticate before landing on the Spaces/Seats reservation page? Now you can with LibAuth! We added a new optional setting so that you can authenticate before users can see and a select a booking time, not after. Head to Admin > Spaces & Equipment > LibAuth to check it out!

  • Period-based booking is available at the seat level! If you offer a block of seat/armchair/computer reservations at, say, 8:15, 10:05, and 12:05, you can now apply your daily, customizable Spaces & Equipment Hours templates to them.

  • We've added a handy power filter / icon indication that so folks can easily find a seat / space that will let them charge their device(s).

  • By popular request, we have added a new setting that frees up the remaining time of a space/seat booking when a patron / student checks out early. Go to Admin > Spaces & Equipment > edit Location > "Update the booking end time for patrons..." checkbox to enable this.

  • The ability to create recurring seat bookings on the admin-side booking grid view is now available!

  • We have added API support for creating seat bookings to the /space/reserve endpoint, which also returns location, category, seat, space, and item names in all Spaces & Equipment booking endpoints.

Account Settings

  • A new “Preferences” tab has been added for you to set a default location and tab when clicking on the Spaces or Equipment options in the main menu. Head to Admin > Accounts > Edit Account > Preferences, or click on your email address in the top right of the orange command bar and head to the “Preferences” tab to set your defaults!

Zoom OAuth

  • In case you missed it, our Zoom app has been published to the Zoom Marketplace and is available for you to use in Appointments & Events. If you’re an admin in a site with an existing Zoom account, you’ll no longer need to use the JWT-based authentication option to integrate your own screen sharing credentials. Navigate to Admin > Integrations > Online Appointments & Events to configure the Zoom integration using OAuth.

Looking for more LibCal features and fixes? Check out the LibCal release notes on the Springshare Lounge!

This fall, the LibGuides team had one big update for you - the option to copy assets when copying a guide!

  • We have heard from quite a number of you that creating copies of all assets when you copy a guide has created some asset clutter. Now, by default, when you copy a guide, all assets in that guide are mapped to the original guide. Though you'll have the option to copy them if you'd like. 

This change will quickly allow you to create content from blueprint guides without cluttering up your asset library!

Lastly, don’t miss additional LibGuides release goodness in the release notes over on the Springshare Lounge!

Since the LibAnswers team has been hard at work developing and launching Pickup Manager - an enormous feat - these past several months, there are not a lot of LibAnswers-specific features to share. However! We have good news for those using Zoom for screensharing.

Zoom OAuth Integration

  • Our screen sharing integrations have a new addition: our Zoom OAuth integration has been approved!
  • If you’re an admin in a site with an existing Zoom account, you’ll no longer need to use the JWT-based authentication option to integrate your own screen sharing credentials. We have lots more help on how to set up this exciting new option available on our Ask site. 

Also, check out the LibAnswers release notes on the Springshare Lounge for more complete information on past and future updates.

LibStaffer team has released a few quality-of-life improvements for users who rely on calendar syncing for shifts!

Calendar Sync Improvements

  • If you're using Outlook/Exchange OAuth syncing, you can now opt-in to receive an email notification for sync errors / issues.
  • Admins monitoring and helping users with calendar syncing can now see the current integration / sync status for all accounts in Admin > Accounts.
  • There's now a 'Token Max Inactive Time” field in the Admin > Integrations page for the Exchange OAuth sync integration so it matches your setting in Azure Active Directory. LibStaffer will automatically attempt to refresh a user's token based on this value so they are not disconnected from Outlook/Exchange after a period of inactivity.

Check out the LibStaffer release notes on the Springshare Lounge!

The LibInsight team has a few awesome things to share this fall!

Dashboards:

  • By popular request, we recently added a rich text dashboard row! With its bevy of real-time charts, dashboards are a natural fit for interactive reporting. But without a rich text row, it can be difficult to introduce the viewer to what's included in the dashboard or provide a story. Now you can!
  • Need to tweak a dashboard for different audiences? Now you can save time with the option to copy an existing dashboard from your site.


E-Resources and SUSHI Provider Improvements

  • In October, we were excited to introduce the new E-Resources Management page, to facilitate quick import and management of COUNTER 4/5 platform and SUSHI provider information.
  • This page includes the option to import platforms and SUSHI providers using our CSV templates. 
  • Journals Title-Level Analysis! The Journals Usage report has a new Title Analysis section that displays the Top 20 Journals, by Total Item Requests, Unique Item Requests, or by total  Denials. Below the graph, you’ll see the Top 10 Titles with Decreasing Usage, and the Top 10 Titles with Increasing Denials. 

Check out more from this release in the LibInsight release notes on the Springshare Lounge!

We have two new improvements to LibWizard:

  • The ability to transfer a deleted user’s forms to another user.
  • We’ve added the rft.au (Referent Author’s full name) OpenURL parameter to field mapping when configuring pre-filled forms / surveys / quizzes / tutorials.

Other Improvements and Fixes

  • Fixed a display issue for individual feedback on multi-select checkbox fields.
  • Fixed a field rule causing File Upload “has file” to work improperly. 
  • Fixed an issue causing embedded LibWizard forms to sometimes have the wrong height.

Read the rest of the LibWizard release notes over on the Springshare Lounge!

In September, we shared some important browser updates, specifically related to Internet Explorer 11 and Chrome. In case you missed them, here's an overview!

Internet Explorer 11 is no longer supported in Springshare tools

  • Microsoft announced it will stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) within its own applications starting in November. To that end, Springshare stopped supported IE11 for all Springshare Tools (LibGuides, LibCal, LibAnswers, LibInsight, LibCRM, LibWizard, and LibStaffer) as of November 20, 2020.
  • This does *not* mean every webpage of your whole Springshare tool stopped working when using IE11. It *does* mean that you and your users may experience additional issues of non-compatibility when using IE11 after the November 16 code release.
  • In November, these changes primarily affected IE11 users accessing LibGuides and LIbAnswers, but since we are no longer testing Springshare tools with IE11 compliance in mind, you should encourage any IE11 users to switch to another browser.

For a list of non-compatibility issues as of the November release, see our September 9, 2020 blog post.

A Chrome 86 security update affecting sites with embedded HTTP (insecure) forms

  • The October Chrome 86 update offered more secure protections for users submitting data on HTTP insecure forms.
  • Now, If you embed an HTTP (insecure) form in your HTTPS (secure) webpages, your patrons using Chrome 86 will see a full-page warning about submitting content to an insecure form.

Read our blog post for a complete description of how the October Chrome release may affect third-party forms your site, along with more information about HTTP vs. HTTPS content.

Upcoming Updates

We're in the midst of planning for the year, but there are a few Springy features already on the 2021 roadmap! Subscribe to our blog and join us on the Springshare Lounge to learn about updates when we announce them!

The LibCal team has a few exciting things lined up for the near (December) future, as well as some predictions for early 2021.

Online Appointments & Events

  • The ability to auto-generate passwords for meetings created using Zoom integration. This will help folks booking one-on-one appointments and hosting online programs and events.

Email Improvements

  • Category & Appointment_URL tags will soon be available for all email templates.
  • Booking form email tag will be added to Seats/Spaces cancellation emails.

Appointments

  • Pre-pandemic, the LibCal team had started the groundwork on streamlining and globalizing booking forms, email templates, settings, and more. They plan to return to this effort in 2021!

Seats & Spaces

  • Keep an eye out for improvements to the public booking process, interactive mapping, and expanded stats reporting, such as the ability to report on the most popular seats/spaces booked, and more seat-specific data.
  • There are improvements on the way related to checking a space / seat in or out, including a new option to exempt admin bookings from canceling late check-ins when this option is enabled for a location. 
  • We’ll be adding a link on the QR Code/Check In page to book the space/seat if a patron/student doesn’t have a reservation and wants to book for now or a future date/time.
  • The ability to move, bulk move, & bulk delete Seats. This will mean QR codes will not have to be re-printed when moving a Seat between Container Spaces.

 

There are some exciting things coming down the pipeline for early 2021!

Queues & Tickets

  • We're introducing a new suite of reports and metrics to help measure "Quality of Service."
    • This includes qualitative ticket metrics to display information on each ticket's time to first reply, time to close, and the total number of interactions (patron replies or internal ticket actions) involved with each ticket.
    • We're also adding a centralized reporting area to report out on these quality of service metrics, which will show a high-level overview across all tickets in your system
  • Along with the above feature, we're also adding a new (optional!) automated follow-up user satisfaction survey. This survey is automatically sent to patrons 24 hours after their ticket has been marked "closed," and prompts them to rate the quality of the service they've received, using a customizable rating scale.
    • Once they've provided a rating, they'll also have an option to provide additional comments about their interaction. This data is included in the new quality of service reports.
  • We're making several adjustments to the ticket answer page, to help bring patron information more to the forefront. Patron information and question form details will be presented in a dedicated box in the rightmost column, so it's easier to see at a glance who you're helping!

LibChat

  • We're introducing a full, searchable chat emoji picker in the LibChat dashboard!

The LibInsight team is continuing on with their backend work, but they have an e-resources reporting improvement on the way!

E-Resource Management

  • We're making COUNTER 5 title reporting easier by adding the ability to analyze Top 100 Database / Journal / Books / Others titles from a specific platform.