New features

Acquisitions

ACQ Invoice Inline Lineitem Search and Add

The Invoice UI is now composed of two tabs, the main invoice tab and a new Search tab. The search tab consists of a subset of the Acquisitions unified search interface. The goal is to allow users to search for lineitems to invoice. Search results may be added directly to the growing invoice. A number of small usability features are included.

  • Option (default) to limit searches to invoiceable items.

    • These are lineitems that are not cancelled, have at least one invoiceable copy, linked to a PO whose provider matches that of the current invoice, and are not already linked to the current invoice.
  • Search defaults to last-run search (on workstation).
  • New Lineitem Detail filter options
  • Sort searches by lineitem number (default) and title.
  • There is a new Expected Cost field which includes both the total invoiced cost plus the anticipated cost of lineitems as they are added.
  • New Price per Copy field
  • Lineitem count field
  • Show / Hide Invoice details button. Details are displayed by default, but hidden when the user enters the search tab. From there it remains hidden until manually shown (or a new invoice is opened).
  • A new "Save & Clear" button which saves the current invoice then clears the invoice display to create a new invoice.
  • Provider, shipper, and receiver fields are auto-populated from the first-added invoice data (when not already set).
  • Totals are now read-only, since they are derived from existing data (and are informational only).

EDI Invoices

The same setup that is required today for retrieving and reacting to EDI Order Response messages (ORDRSP) will also react to Invoices (INVOIC).

This essentially means you must have a Provider (acq.provider) configured with an EDI Account (acq.edi_account) containing login credentials for a vendor, you must have the edi_webrick service running (EDI translator), and you must have the edi_pusher script run periodically by cron.

An open Evergreen invoice will be created for a each EDI Invoice message. Evergreen invoice entries will be created for each lineitem detected in the EDI message if that lineitem can be linked to a known Evergreen lineitem in your system. An Evergreen invoice item will be created for a whole-invoice tax.

Enriched EDI

Support for Enriched EDI with copy-level data via EDI in ORDER messages.

Encumbrance-only Rollover

A new Library Setting allows the year-end close-out operation to roll over encumbrances while dumping any unspent money.

Fund Report

A new IDL reporter view that provides summary information for funds for reporting. The resulting table looks like a fund with four additional fields: allocated_total, spent_total, encumbrance_total, and combined_balance.

EDI Fetching and Parsing Enhancements / Repairs

This release includes various improvements to how Evergreen processes vendor EDI responses, including order responses and invoices. Changes include architectural improvements as well as new features.

  • Improved order response handling for cancelled items.
  • Deleting fund debits (encumbrances) for cancelled items.
  • Extracting invoice date
  • Invoices include quantity and amount paid (in addition to billed) to reduce manual staff data entry
  • Proper handling of previously-cancelled (e.g. back-ordered) invoiced items.

For EDI parsing, the Ruby libraries, Ruby HTTP gateway, and Business::EDI Perl modules are no longer needed. They have been replaced with a single Perl module which handles EDI parsing.

This reduces the complexity of the fetching and parsing layer. Though the Ruby libraries and Ruby HTTP gateway are still needed for outbound EDI (for now), the Perl Business::EDI modules are no longer needed at all, so they are no longer installed.

EDI order template improvements (no SQL upgrade script!)

Improved template for EDI purchase orders. This theoretically just works better where the old template worked. Corrections made for interactions with ULS, Midwest Tape, Baker & Taylor, and Recorded Books especially. GIR segments in the right place.

And also the template is just more maintainable now.

THERE IS NO UPGRADE SCRIPT INCLUDED. Sites using EDI may not necessarily want to mess with what they already have working.

If you want the changes, and maybe you do, especially if you’re doing enriched ordering and/or ordering from the vendors listed above, you can extract the template changes easily enough yourself from the 950.data.seed-values.sql file. See Upgrade Notes above.

OPAC

TPAC: Simplified CSS Color Customization

CSS colors are now defined as a pair of Template::Toolkit files, Open-ILS/src/templates/opac/css/styles.css.tt2 and Open-ILS/src/templates/opac/parts/css/colors.tt2. Evergreen administrators can customize the color scheme for a given skin by copying colors.tt2 into a template override directory and adjusting the colors as desired.

To enable Apache to pass the CSS file to the Template::Toolkit handler, you must remove .css from the list of file extensions that should not be passed to a handler in eg_vhost.conf as follows:

From. 

<LocationMatch ^/eg/.*(\.js|\.css|\.html|\.xhtml|\.xml|\.jpg|\.png|\.gif)$>
    SetHandler None
</LocationMatch>

To. 

<LocationMatch ^/eg/.*(\.js|\.html|\.xhtml|\.xml|\.jpg|\.png|\.gif)$>
    SetHandler None
</LocationMatch>

After making this change, restart Apache to make the change take effect.

Add to Permanent Bookbag

TPAC was modified to allow a logged-in user to add records from search results and record summary screens to their permanent bookbags rather than to a temporary bookbag that goes away when logged out.

The search results and record summary screens were modified so that the "Add to my list" will show a menu when moused over by a logged-in user. This menu will display the option to add to a temporary bookbag, the user’s default list (if any), up to ten of the user’s other bookbags, a "See all" option to allow the user to choose one of the bags not on the menu, and to create a new list and add the record to it.

Choosing the temporary list from the menu will add the record to the temporary my list as TPAC does before the addition of this feature.

Choosing a named list will add the record to the chosen list.

Choosing "See all" or "Add to new list" will take the user to their My Lists page. (The only difference being that "See all" will actually list all of the user’s bookbags if they have more than the current limit.) The My Lists page will have a new button "Add to this list" next to each of their existing lists. In addition, if the user creates a new list on this screen, the selected record will automatically be added to this new list.

You can tell all of the above is working if you are redirected to your search results or record summary after adding to a list. If there was a problem, you will get either an error page or will see your My Lists page.

The user’s My List screen has had a Make Default List button added for each list. Clicking the button will cause that list to be registered as the user’s default list. This is the list that will be added to when a user chooses the Default List option on the Add to my list menu in search or record summary.

The current default list has a Remove Default List button next to it. Clicking this button will unset the default status of the list and return to a state of having no default list.

One handy way that users may want to use this feature is to create a new list, and then designate it as the default. This list could then be used to add records from searches based on a current topic of interest. Changing the default list is so easy that users may want to do so when changing search topics in order to keep their results better organized.

If a user has a bookbag with an overly long name, the end of it will jut out past the right margin of the menu in Firefox and several other browsers. To change this behavior, you may want to edit the .popmenu li:hover li a css entry in web/css/skin/default/opac/style.css by adding an overflow property. If you desire to have the longer names clipped to the size of the menu then add overflow: hidden. If you prefer to have a scroll bar for oversized entries, then add overflow: auto.

Warn When Adding to a Temporary Bookbag

TPAC has been modified so that a user will see a warning before adding a record to a temporary bookbag. This message serves to inform the user that they are adding to a temporary list that will disappear when their session ends.

A new org. unit setting has been added, opac.patron.temporary_list_warn, that will enable this warning when set. Sites may choose not to display this warning.

The user may also set a preference in their search preferences to disable this warning. The setting only works when a user is logged in, of course.

Kid’s OPAC

The Kids OPAC (KPAC) is a public catalog search that was designed for children and teens. Colorful menu items,large buttons, and simple navigation make this an appealing search interface for kids. Librarians will appreciate the flexible configuration of the KPAC. Librarians can create links to canned search results for kids and can apply these links by branch. The KPAC uses the same infrastructure as the Template Toolkit OPAC (TPAC), the adult catalog search, so you can easily extend the KPAC using the code that already exists in the TPAC. Finally, third party content, such as reader reviews, can be integrated into the KPAC.

Locale picker

In situations in which more than a single locale is configured, the TPAC header will display a locale picker based on the registered locales.

Hidden Place Hold Links

The title-level Place Hold link in TPAC will be hidden on the search result and record summary screens when there are no holdable copies on the bib. This is based on the copy, status and location holdable flags.

When enabled in config.tt2, the Place Holds link in TPAC will also be hidden if copies are available in the search location.

Library Selectors in Advanced Searches

The library selector is now available on the numeric and expert search pages.

Journal Title Search

A journal title search is now available as a stock TPAC filter.

Public Patron Notes

Public patron notes are now visible in the Account Summary box of My Account.

Auto-Override Permissible Patron Hold Fail Events

A new Library Setting is available that tells TPAC to automatically override hold placement failure events in cases where the patron has the permission to do so. The goal is to skip the confirmation step previously required by patrons when overriding a TPAC hold.

Cataloging

Z39.50 Source Attributes Management Interface

There is a new interface for managing Z39.50 attributes on a Z39.50 source. The interface is linked from each source name in the Z39.50 Source administrative interface.

In addition to attribute creation, deletion, and editing, it’s also possible to clone a set of attributes from one source into another. When cloning, any attributes present in the cloned source that are not present in the destination source are copied into the destination source.

Vandelay (MARC Import/Export) Copy Overlay

Vandelay Item Attributes (Cataloging → MARC Import / Export → Import Item Attribute Definitions) contains a new field called "Overlay Match ID". The presence of data in this field extracted from an import-item copy indicates to the Vandelay import process that a copy overlay is requested instead of new copy creation. The value for the field is the copy id for bib record queues and the ACQ lineitem_detail ID for Acquisitions Queues. For either type of queue, however, overlay occurs against a real copy (asset.copy). In the ACQ queue case, we use the lineitem_detail ID because this is the data ACQ providers and sub-systems will have access to.

When a match point ID value is a set and a matching copy is found, the values extracted from the inbound copy data are used to replace values on the existing found copy, including the call-number label. Any fields on the inbound copy that are empty are ignored.

One use case for this feature are shelf-ready items produced by a 3rd-party (e.g. ACQ provider) and delivered to the library via MARC file for upload. The file might contain improved MARC bibliographic data as well as real barcodes (i.e. not temporary ACQ generated barcodes) for the copies already purchased through the vendor.

This adds a new permission called IMPORT_OVERLAY_COPY which is required to perform the copy overlay step.

Regardless of permission, it is not possible to overlay values on a copy unless the imported bib record links (creates/overlays/merges) to/with the owning bib record for the copy to be overlaid. This is both for security and removal of a potent foot-gun.

Circulation

Simplified Hold Pull List

There is a new hold pull list interface based on the Flattener service that’s designed to perform faster than existing pull list interfaces, both in staff client display and printing.

You can sort on any one column by clicking on it. Click again to reverse direction. This is typical of similar interfaces.

Now you can also sort by multiple columns. Right click the column headers of the grid in the pull list interface to get a dialog that allows you to sort by multiple columns, in any order.

The same dialog that allows you to choose multiple sort columns (accessed by right clicking any column header) also allows you to toggle the display of any column available to the pull list on or off.

Once saved, your changes in this dialog persist for your user account. Column display, display order, and `sorting choices affect printing as well as displayed output.

Administration

Search Filter Groups

Search filter groups support the collection of free-form search queries into named groups of named filters which can be applied to searches. The purpose is to allow systems to fine tune filters in the catalog.

Editing the groups and their entries is done in the staff client at Admin → Local Administration → Search Filter Groups.

Consider a new filter called "reading_level". It uses a combination of MARC audience and shelving location to differentiate items. It might have entries that look like this:

Children’s Materials ⇒ audience(a,b,c) locations(1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

Young Adult ⇒ audience(j,d) locations(5,6,7,8,9,10)

Adult ⇒ audience(e,f,g, ) -locations(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)

<span>[% ctx.filter_groups.reading_level.label %]</span>
<span>
[%
    INCLUDE 'opac/parts/filter_group_selector.tt2'
    filter_group='reading_level'
    none_ok=1
    none_label=l('All')
%]
</span>

Standing Penalty CAPTURE and FULFILL Blocks

This feature adds two additional types of standing penalty blocks to manage holds.

When a user has a standing penalty containing CAPTURE in the block list, the user can place holds (pending no HOLD block), but no holds for the user will be captured. This is effectively a policy-based freeze of the hold.

Users that have penalties with FULFILL in the block list will be able to place holds and have their holds captured (i.e. delivered) but will not be able to check out the captured holds. This is basically a way to get patrons in to pay outstanding balances.

Copy Location Additions to Circulation Policies

Similar to circulation modifiers, circ policies can now be based on copy location. This also adds copy location to the circ matrix weights and to circ limit sets.

Staff Client

XULRunner / Firefox

Support for later versions of XULRunner is included, which means that later improvements to XULRunner can be taken advantage of. This also means that the Firefox extension mode works in Firefox 3.6+, though some frequent tweaking will be needed due to the rapid Firefox major release schedule.

The majority of the actual changes are backend changes, but there are some significant things to note for local customizations.

Remote XUL no longer works in XULRunner/Firefox 4+, but to work around it a custom extension now creates an oils:// wrapper. Within the staff client that wrapper contains a "remote" host, from which server-side XUL can be loaded.

Custom XUL pages stored on the server will need to reference the new wrapper to function.

As a note: The new wrapper is used for all OPAC access and only talks SSL.

The enablePrivilege command that would allow code to access various protected functionality is no longer available. Any code that depended upon it will need to be adjusted to use the oils:// wrapper created for Remote XUL.

Unfortunately, the oils:// wrapper has one less than useful effect. Any JavaScript loaded via it loses access to cookies. This is most notable when you are dealing with authtoken cookies. This only applies to JavaScript, however, and the server can still see the cookies when it gets requests.

As a workaround you can load the data stash and fetch authtokens via it instead. This should always work when using the oils:// wrapper due to the elevated permission set it gets (nearly, if not equal to, local XUL).

Finally, as a useful feature, the url_prefix function is now slightly easier to use. Instead of needing to reference urls.SOMETHING you can instead just put the SOMETHING at the start of the url to prefix:

url_prefix(SOMETHING/stuff.html)

In this case SOMETHING can be terminated by the end of the string or up to the first instance of a slash (/), question mark (?), or pipe (|). The pipe is a special case and is removed during the replacement.

For example, if urls.REPLACE were set to oils://remote/replace:

url_prefix(REPLACE/stuff) becomes oils://remote/replace/stuff url_prefix(REPLACE?query) becomes oils://remote/replace?query url_prefix(REPLACE|ment) becomes oils://remote/replacement

The pipe is intended for cases where the urls entry may or may not already contain a query string, say for differences between OPACs where one requires that something be passed into the query string, but the other uses a path component instead.

New Operator Change Features

The operator change dialog has a new dropdown allowing the selection of a Temporary, Staff, or Permanent authtoken. The first option provides a temporary operator change as has typically been done through this menu item. Staff uses a normal staff login authtoken for a multi-hour timeout. Permanent is a staff change that disregards the previous login instead of allowing it to be recovered by using the menu item again.

Additional Work Log Entries

Entries for bill payment and hold placement are now available in the Work Log.

SIP

Support for credit card payment type and fine items details

Support is now available to create a credit card payment type in the SIP Fee Paid message. There is also now support for SIP clients to retrieve and display a detailed/itemized list of billings to the patron.

Staff Client Initial Hostname

For fresh installs of the staff client a common issue is people remembering what hostname to specify. If you are building your own staff clients you can now fill this in automatically.

You can specify this when configuring Evergreen with a new configure option:

--with-initialhost=example.org

It is also possible to specify when building the staff client itself using the INITIAL_HOST variable:

make INITIAL_HOST=example.org build