After some scary moments Friday evening, the second load of our new build passed its tests and is now up and running.
Whew!
For a partial list of new features, see the article below called “Early Christmas Gift”.
–Al Carlson
Users who jumped in early Monday morning and opened up the new iBorrow build that was loaded on Friday evening were heard to mutter to themselves, “This new build sure looks a lot like the old build.”
That’s because it was the old build. Our weekend testing revealed a deal breaker, so we had SirsiDynix restore the old build Sunday evening.
We’d hoped that our testing would be just a formality, and that we’d sign off on the new version by Saturday noon and go back to Christmas shopping. But we ran into a problem Friday night that the SirsiDynix engineers were not able to diagnose and fix. Not that they didn’t try. We caught Holly at the SirsiDynix Christmas party Friday evening, and she had Keith Poole in on the problems before the first round of canapés was gone. We all continued testing the next day, but by Saturday afternoon, it was clear that this was not a trivial coding issue. Peter Fripp restored the build we’ve been using late on Sunday afternoon.
The problem we ran into was a variation on one we’ve seen before: declining requests. About a third of the time, we would get a rude and cryptic error message, when we tried to decline a request. We hoped to find the pattern behind the problem. Maybe something like, “When the requesting library is their own Lender Of Last Resort and they are set to unmediated, declining will fail.” Nahh! Nothing that easy. I had three requests from the same library lined up in Fill Loan in the iBorrow Training database. The first declined fine. The second failed. The third worked. Go figure.
So, Holly, Keith, Peter, and Aaron will put the new build up on the rack (Think mechanic, not inquisition) this morning, tear it apart, and see if they can find the cause of this nasty bug. You will keep using the build you know and have grown to love. And we’ll let you know when we’re ready to try again.
–Al Carlson
We’ve had the current build of the IBorrow Staff Client in place for quite a while. It’s not the most exciting piece of software on the planet, but it’s been stable. And after its early history, that’s counted for a lot. But, behind the scenes and under the radar—and possibly over the rainbow and through the looking glass—Holly Harvey’s software engineering team has been hard at work to improve it. Barring the always possible last minute show stoppers, we should see the new version this weekend.
As we’ve done with the past two releases, Matt and I will test it on Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. If it breaks or goes catatonic on us, we’ll call Holly and ask her to take it off the server and put the current version back on. If it survives our rigorous beer-and-pizza-driven testing, we’ll leave it in place, and you’ll see it Monday morning.
If you need help from your IT Department to load new iBorrow builds on your PC, please let them know that one is—probably–due on Monday. Most of you will see it when you click on the SirsiDynix icon Monday morning and watch the download.
So, what are these new features? I’m glad you asked. There are over 40 of them, so I’ll hit only the highlights.
1. When you are pushing requests out to other participants in Mediate Borrowing, the request will actually go to your target location and not hang around in your work space, tempting you to try it again and then generating an error message. We like a practical joke as much as anyone, but this one has gone on long enough.
2. They’ve added some “hover text” to the Portals, so that “mousing over” choices such as “Volumes Needed” will bring up an explanation of what that means.
3. Many of the error messages currently end with, “If the problem persists, ask a Librarian.” That’s a nice tribute to our profession’s skills, but not very useful to the patron using his browser at home. Or even to the patron in the library, because few library schools offer courses in NCIP error message diagnosis. So, the “ask a Librarian” line will leave iBorrow and go stay with Virtual Reference where it belongs. Other misleading messages in the Portals have also been fixed.
4. When you are searching in the staff Portal and pick a group of target libraries, you won’t have to pick them again every time you search. Your choices will persist through that session.
5. When you use Search Requests in the URSA Staff Client, it will be MUCH faster than it has been, even if you do a complex search, such as “How many requests are there with a requesting agency of Pinellas Park, a lending agency of Lee County, and a status of Pending at Lender?” And the columns you set up to show the results of those searches will now persist, so you don’t have to drag them into place every time you log in.
6. A couple of the tabs or ‘buttons’ on the Home screen in the Staff Client have been relabeled. Instead of having Mediate Loan mean “either borrowing or lending, depending on how I use it in the rest of the sentence”, Mediate Loan will mean you are borrowing from someone else, and Incoming Loan will mean you are lending to someone else. If you want confusing labels, you’ll have to shop elsewhere.
There will also be some visual differences that are tough to describe, so I’ll just say “Watch for them!” I expect to hear at least one “Oooo!” or “Ahhh!” next Monday.
If you have questions or concerns on any of this, please contact me.
–Al Carlson