SpringyNews - Are You Connecting?

This summer included exciting updates for LibGuides, LibGuides CMS, and LibApps!

LibGuides

• We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes to help our guide stats run more efficiently for all of our customers. To that end, daily views statistics are now limited to the past 12 months. Stats older than 12 months are available on a monthly aggregated basis.
• Instead of displaying the last login date in both the LibApps and LibGuides Accounts screens, we’re centralizing this information to the LibApps > Admin > Manage Accounts screen. Since users must authenticate through the LibApps or a LibAuth configuration, this will truly represent when a user last logged into LibApps. (Note: You must be a LibApps admin to see this data.)

LibGuides CMS / LibAuth

• Log in using LibAuth automatically: In June, we updated the LibAuth authentication logic so that if there is a single LibAuth configuration set for your site, LibGuides group, or guides, instead of seeing the traditional LibApps login page, you will see the configured authentication single sign-on screen.

LibApps

• New pronouns field for LibApps profiles make it easy for folks to know which pronouns you use. 
• LTI 1.3 support for Canvas LMS! For full details on what's different and better about the LTI 1.3 framework, check out June's release post.

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

The LibAnswers team has been hard at work bringing popularly requested features to life!

• LibAuth for LibAnswers is here! You can now limit who can submit questions via the question form, who can start a chat, or even require your patrons and users to log in using their library credentials before viewing some, or all, of your public side content!
• For folks who’ve been looking for the ability to export and process the contents of their tickets in 3rd party systems, we have great news – we’re introducing a full ticket export option! This export generates a JSON file of the full ticket history, including all back and forth messages, as well as associated ticket metadata like dates/times and tags. 

LibChat

• This summer, we completed the work required to move all LibChat users to a libanswers.com domain when accessing the LibChat dashboard - which will reduce, if not eliminate, issues presented by third-party cookies in chat. 
  • Good to know: If your site has previously added our chat server url (cascade.libchat.com) to an approved domain list at your institution, you'll want to also ask your IT department to add our new server address. Learn more about this update (and if there's anything you need to do) in June's release post.
• The email and domain block list will now apply to the LibChat widgets to prevent blocked users from initiating a chat.

24/7 Chat Cooperative

• With the June release, we expanded the cooperative chat feedback so that it's two-way. So now when LibAnswers and Co-Op admins leave feedback, Co-Op operators can reply!
• And now it's also easy to see who is online and monitoring Global Cooperatives!

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

Check out these new LibStaffer quality of life improvements, released over the summer!

Schedules

• The shift assignment process (automatic or manual) now takes an account’s consecutive hours limit into consideration, if one is set.
• In the shift assignment modal, we now show the three previous and next shifts for each staff member, relative to the current date/time of the shift being edited in the modal.
• We’ve added the ability to include the Time Off Overlay in both single and multi-schedule view widgets. 
• There's also a new option when choosing how far in advance your staff need to request swaps and/or splits. Now, in addition to the previous options, you can require folks to make these requests at least 15 minutes before the shift begins. 

Check out the LibStaffer release notes on the Springshare Lounge!

The LibInsight team had a couple of things to share in August!

• We’ve replaced our selector lists with searchable versions! It’s now much easier to find that option you’re looking for in a list.
• We’re continuing our mission of moving all pages to Bootstrap 4 and several more pages were addressed in this release.
  • Also, the Actions column on the Dataset and Manage Dataset page just got a little narrower in order to provide more on screen space for other fields. Actions are now listed in a dropdown menu.

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

Have You Met LibConnect Yet?

In case you missed it, LibCRM, our Customer Relationship Management tool, got tons of awesome new features and a new name to boot! Meet LibConnect, which combines powerful CRM functionality with an integrated email marketing platform so that you can better connect and engage with your patrons to offer targeted services, resources, and more.

Learn more about this exciting new development over on the SpringyNews LibConnect page!

Keep an eye out for these features from the LibAnswers team!

• We're adding something we're really excited about - a new Patrons page where LibAnswers admins can see/edit patron records and interaction statistics! 
  • Not only will the patron records be available there to edit, but we have also added stats on number of tickets, chats, SMS, and Social interactions each user has had. Along with that is the "Most Recent Interaction" data point which lets admins know when the last contact with a user has occurred.
  • This is also just a launching point for additional functionality related to patron records!
• We heard from a lot of folks that they would like to send the email survey for the Quality of Service feature to users within the ticket reply instead of having to wait until the ticket is officially closed out. So with this in mind, we're adding a standalone page for the email survey - and it even has its own email token that users can insert into their email templates and link people directly to the survey! 
• We're adding the ability to preview image attachments sent in chat without having to download them!
• We have some long-time-coming accessibility fixes to LibChat!
  • The online/offline icons on the new chat dashboard will soon have icons to denote online and offline statuses instead of relying on color alone.
  • The chat widget login form will denote fields as required when they are required in the widget settings. This will also correctly read out to screenreaders.

Here's what's ahead on the roadmap for LibStaffer:

• We're adding a new time clock email alert to admin users, for when a staff member has not clocked in after a specified time after their shift start time.
• The Time Off and Scheduled Shift reports will soon have summary tables of total cumulative time off and total worked hours per schedule, respectively.
• The shift assignment process (automatic or manual) will soon take an account’s consecutive days limit into consideration, if one is set.
• We're also adding new organizational hierarchy columns that will be visible on the Manage Accounts page, so you can quickly see your staff's locations, departments, and positions.

The LibGuides/LibApps team has a few things coming down the pipeline this fall, including:

• Custom Favicons - Yes, you read that right! We're finally adding support to add a custom favicon to your LibGuides site.
• LTI 1.3 support for Blackboard is on its way.