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Code Release: New LibAnswers, LibCal, LibWizard, LibStaffer, LibInsight, LibGuides, and LibCRM features coming your way!

What better day to share the details of our upcoming release than Valentines Day? Sending some love out to our favorite people in the form of features & fixes across our apps!

These releases are on their way to you next week, and will be live in all regions by the end of the day on Friday, February 21st.

There’s one change that we are making across all apps, to make all your sites more secure: we’re deprecating a web server protocol called TLS 1.1. Protocols like TLS are used in browsers to create secure communications between the server that you’re requesting content from and your browser. Like everything on the Internet, protocols age and get replaced by better and more secure protocols. It’s time to say bon voyage to TLS 1.1!

Read about: LibAnswers | LibCal | LibWizard | LibStaffer | LibInsight | LibGuides | LibCRM

LibAnswers

This LibAnswers release brings you tons of nice to have features and fixes in anticipation of the Co-Op Go Live on February 28th!!

Co-Op New Features

For users who have joined one of our Co-Ops as a contributing member (where your librarians will answer chats on behalf of the Co-Op), we have some exciting new features to share!

  • Institution Activity/Coverage Reports – If your library answers chats on behalf of a Co-Op, exciting news – we’ve added a bevy of new reports on your institution’s participation in the Co-Op. These reports are designed to give Institution and Co-Op Administrators all the information they need related to chat monitoring, and display a breakdown of the total number of hours that all users in a given institution have provided in a given time period (and in future, they will also include information about the total number of chats that were answered within that same period). They also show you a detailed breakdown of the participation levels from within a specific Institution, so you know at-a-glance how much your librarians are contributing! To see these new reports in action, Co-Op and Institution Admins can head to Co-Op > Reports > Chat Monitoring Activity.
  • Co-Op Canned Messages – With this release we’re also adding canned messages that can be shared by all librarians who participate in a given Co-Op! Co-Op admins can add new canned messages by heading to Co-Op > Admin > System Settings > Canned Messages. Once created, these canned messages display in the chat operator console for all librarians who are answering a chat that has come in to that Co-Op.

LibAnswers & LibChat New Features

  • We have a couple of key features to share for users in Shared Group Systems. A Shared Group System is a LibAnswers site that is shared by librarians at multiple libraries. New features include:
    • Group Member Filter in chat statistics and transcripts: It’s now possible to filter your LibAnswers chat statistics and chat transcripts to those that were answered by librarians at a specific Group Member Library. To see this in action, head to LibChat > Statistics or LibChat > Transcripts.
    • In combination with the above, we’ve also limited visibility of LibChat statistics and transcripts within these systems. Now, Regular level users in your LibAnswers system can only view statistics and transcripts on chats that were answered by librarians at a specific Group Member Library. Admin level users in your LibAnswers system will continue to be able to view statistics and transcripts on all chats in your system.
  • We’ve updated the page title on the ticket answer page: Instead of using a page title that just reflects your LibAnswers system name, it now displays the original Question text. This will hopefully make these pages easier to find when you have multiple tabs open, and if you bookmark particular pages for later follow up, this will make those bookmarks more meaningful.
  • We’ve added Language Tokens for several LibChat in-chat messages. Language tokens and translations were added for in-chat messages (like “[patron name] is chatting”, etc.); these can be customized by going to Admin > System Settings > Language Customization > LibChat.
  • We’ve also added Language Translations for 2 email elements: “This email is sent from [system name] in relationship to [ticket id]”, and “Read our privacy policy.” These phrases will now receive appropriate translations when you set your system’s base language to something other than English (though please be aware that they can’t be directly customized).

Fixes and Miscellany

  • LibChat Copy and Pasting Links – Previously, some users saw issues when pasting in links that were surrounded by other HTML (which often seemed to be the case for permalink-type links that are displayed in various database search results pages). We’ve updated the way we handle content that’s pasted into the LibChat chat pane to better detect when a link has been pasted in and preserve that link as a clickable link.
  • Active Chat Counts on the transfer chat screen: We received reports from several users that the active chat counts they were seeing were suspiciously high; after investigation, we determined that we were not properly accounting for when a chat was ended by the patron. This is now addressed and the active chat count should now be accurate. To see this in action, head to the new chat dashboard, pick up a patron chat, and select transfer chat.
  • RSS Feed Timestamps in the System Status Management (SSM) Module: previously, the RSS feeds provided by the SSM Module would always include a label indicating the timestamps were in UTC. We’ve updated this behavior so the RSS feeds now indicate the proper timezone associated with a given timestamp. To see this in action, head to Status Management > RSS Feed and note that the timestamps will indicate your system’s local time zone.
  • We’ve fixed an issue where, when initially creating an Address Book entry, the first and last names of the address book user were flipped (so first became last, and last became first). To see the correct behavior in action, admins can head to Admin > Accounts > Address Book and create a new address book entry.
  • Group Level Language Customization: Previously, if your site had both site level and FAQ group level language customizations for the same element, the site level customization was not being saved properly. This is now fixed, so both site and FAQ group level language customizations will be saved and applied as expected.
  • We’ve fixed an issue with notification emails not being sent when a new ticket is merged with an old ticket. This is now resolved, and the original ticket owner will now receive a notification that a new reply has been added to their ticket.
  • In keeping with recent browser related security updates, we’ve updated LibAnswers to prevent the LibAnswers admin interface from being loaded in iFrames. This will provide a more secure experience for all LibAnswers users and will help reduce the potential for clickjacking related exploits of your LibAnswers system.
  • We’ve also included a number of under the hood performance improvements for a number of LibAnswers pages. This includes the LibAnswers Dashboard, the orange command bar that you see at the top of every LibAnswers page, and elements of the LibAnswers Question Form. While you won’t see any direct evidence of these changes, we’re happy to report that they’ll provide a snappier experience when navigating through the LibAnswers interface!

Upcoming LibAnswers Training Sessions:

Also check out our recorded sessions!

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LibCal

We’re excited to bring you lots of goodies in this latest LibCal release!

Equipment/Spaces

Features
  • We’ve added a “User History” option to the (admin-side) Booking Details screen. This new modal gives an Equipment and Space booking history for that user across all Locations.
  • An alert now displays on admin-side pages when making a booking for someone who is on the ‘Banned Users’ list, and includes a link to the ‘Banned Users’ page.
  • When a LibCal account holder creates an admin-side booking, both Equipment and Spaces Booking Details now display who created it.
  • There is a new user level permission for limiting access to the Hours tab in Equipment & Spaces Locations! Admin level users can set whether or not Regular users have access to that tab across the board or on a case-by-case basis. The default is to not allow access. Set this permission across the board by going to Admin > Accounts > Regular User Permissions > Hours Maintenance. Set it on a case-by-case basis by going to Admin > Accounts > Edit a particular user’s account > Permissions.
  • Cancelled bookings can now be copied to create new bookings from the search results in both the Equipment and Spaces Booking Explorer.
  • The Spaces API can now fetch ‘Admin-Only’ locations. We’ve also added a new optional flag, adminbooking, to the /space/reserve endpoint, which will make a booking bypass mediation and public booking limits.
  • A date column has been added to the Fines page search results when reviewing individual fine records.
  • A ’12 hour’ option has been added to the ‘Booking Lead Time’ option for Equipment and Space Category booking limits.
  • The export options on the Fines and Item Inventory page have been standardized for continuity.
  • If you used the Room Bookings module before using Spaces, the Room Booking form responses weren’t exported when using the Spaces Booking Explorer, though they appeared on screen. Now they export, too!
Fixes
  • Users are now prevented from adding custom hours date ranges if no Hours templates exist.
  • Accessibility fixes:
    • Proper input labels have been added for location, category, and ‘when’ on the public Equipment / Spaces availability grid as well as the addition of scope attributes on each time slot.
    • The screen-reader view for Equipment & Spaces no longer shows an empty drop-down menu if the only category at a location is private.
  • Improved display for Equipment items that have no image associated with them.
  • “Mediated Approved” bookings are now included in confirmed bookings from the /space/nickname API endpoint.
  • Equipment master item records set to lost/broken no longer bring up an “Item Not Found” page on the public side when clicking “More Details”.
  • We’ve added logic to prevent a child item from being associated with a deleted master item record.
  • Equipment & Spaces booking form questions show in the expected order on the mediation tab.
  • We corrected an issue with loading very long ‘Terms and Conditions’ after submitting a booking.
  • When LibAuth is used for Space bookings, editing the email of a booking now also properly updates the account field if both fields are the same.
  • A language customization for error/alert “Your email address must end in [domains]” was added.
  • The language customization for “Booking has been…” now properly reflects on the “Booking Cancelled” page.

Appointments

  • We’ve added a preview of the ‘Subject’ line when editing all Appointment email templates.
  • When using the ‘No Preference’ option in a group, Appointment time slot durations will use the duration of the shortest category associated with the group.
  • We’ve corrected an issue with the Appointments stats report where the Summary table (when filtering by a location and/or group) were not correct.
  • Accessibility fixes: Addressed a skipped heading level and keyboard navigation issues on the public Appointments booking page.
  • We’ve corrected a few language related issues, including fixes for the “User must cancel before x” notification on the public page, duration units (was always in English), and the {{START_TIME}} email tag for Appointment reminder emails.

Billing

  • Use the new ‘Export Data’ button on the Admin > Billing > Charges page to export the contents of the data table to a CSV file.
  • Equipment & Space Bookings that have been changed to a $0 cost now display correctly in the booking details.
  • A booking that contains multiple Items / Spaces from both mediated and non-mediated categories where Billing was enabled will no longer cause any issues when taking in-person payments.

Calendars/Events

Features
  • There is new Weekly view option on the public Calendar page.
  • Events with full registrations (and the waitlist enabled) now show how many registrations are on the waiting list.
  • We’ve increased the number of characters allowed in both the Campus & Location fields.
Fixes
  • We’ve corrected these issues related to events and registrations:
    • increasing and decreasing seats for events would move people off the waiting list and overbook the event
    • users coming off the waiting list were getting incorrect dates for series linked events in the confirmation email
    • users on the waitlist were being added to registrations in past series-linked events
    • updating a recurring series event registration close date/time would re-open registration for past events in the series.
    • registering for a series linked event in the middle of a series will register the the user only for the most current and future events in the series
  • Fixed a problem where the Register button displayed the wrong status under some filter combinations.
  • The ‘Mini Calendar’ widget was showing single events multiple times when filtering by multiple categories / audiences. Each event now only shows once.
  • Calendar widget titles now display in the language you’ve set for your LibCal site.
  • Accessibility fixes:
    • Event titles, date, and time are now properly read by a screen reader on the Monthly calendar view.
    • Orphaned labels are removed if the Audience and/or Campus fields are not being used.
    • Public Calendar pages all have a properly ordered <h1> element and scope attributes for <th> tags.
  • The initial bulk export for events when integrating to a Google Calendar will no longer export events with the ‘Draft’ status.
  • The Event page editor now shows instructions for using the {{audience}} tag.
  • Category colors now display in the category filter list on the public calendar.
  • We fixed an issue where the “Add New Event” modal would pop up a second time if event templates were active.

Hours

  • There are new user level permissions for limiting access to the Hours area of LibCal! Admin level users can set whether or not Regular users have access to that area / what they can do there across the board or on a case-by-case basis. The default is to not allow access. Set these permissions across the board by going to Admin > Accounts > Regular User Permissions > Hours Maintenance. Set them on a case-by-case basis by going to Admin > Accounts > Edit a particular user’s account > Permissions.
  • A ‘Go To Date’ button was added to the Hours Preview section. 
  • Deleting a Location also deletes its departments and their exceptions.

Misc Fixes

  • Widget modals now bring focus to them when activated.
  • We have corrected various color contrast issues.
  • A re-used box can now be removed from an individual page in the ‘Homepage Editor’.

Upcoming LibCal Training Sessions:

Have you seen SpringyU? Get detailed training on setting up all areas of LibCal, even if you only have a few minutes here and there! The courses will walk you through everything you need to know, step-by-step. (Courses for other products will be added this year!)

Also check out our recorded sessions!

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LibWizard

We are thrilled to release some key new features, some necessary fixes, and an important announcement about a change to the LibWizard notification email address.

Bulk Submission Delete

You can now delete more than one submission at a time! Simply select the checkbox next to the individual submission reports you would like to delete. You can currently delete up to 100 submissions at a time by selecting the ‘Check All’ checkbox above the submissions (it only selects the list of submissions on that page).

 

Bulk Delete Submissions

 

Notification Email Address Update

With this release, LibWizard email notifications are sent from donotreply@libwizard.com instead of donotreply@libsurveys.com. This change was made to bring all domains up-to-date with the name/domain of the product.

If your IT department previously added donotreply@libsurveys.com to a trusted sender list (also known as a whitelist) for your email server:

  • Please add libwizard.com and (for now) leave libsurveys.com in place.
  • If you do not make this change prior to our update of our email servers next week, you may find that you are not receiving emails from your LibWizard system, because they are blocked by your email server. If you find that happens, please check with your IT colleagues to ensure that libwizard.com has been added to your trusted lists.
  • Once this change is in place, you can safely remove libsurveys.com from your trusted list.

Accessibility

Fixes and Improvements
  • Screen readers now read the intended date format required for a field, such as MM-DD-YYYY (read as “Date must be in MM dash DD dash YYYY format”) and YYYY/MM/DD (“Date must be in YYYY slash MM slash DD format”) as well as the original label.
  • Tab focusing is retained within modals/dialogs.
  • You can tab over the open/close buttons for embedded tutorials in websites.
  • Feedback error messages now have role=alert tags.
  • The HTML formatted though CKEditor’s underline and strikethrough settings is WCAG 2.1 compliant.
  • Required fields now have aria-required tags.

Feature Improvements & Fixes

  • Field Rules:
    • Having a combination of ‘Jump to’ and ‘Show’ field rules for the same field condition now works.
    • We’ve increased the character limit of ‘Then’ conditional field to 512 characters. If the choice exceeds 512 characters, a warning message displays.
    • The ‘Jump to’ conditional now works as expected.
  • LibWizard Full subscribers: we now have a public API for you to use! The API documentation is under Admin > API.
  • A page containing multiple LibWizard button widgets on the same page now properly opens the appropriate item for each widget button.

Data Scrubbing Tool – Coming soon!

With this new Privacy Scrub functionality, we’re making it easier for you to set which fields in your LibWizard items are scrubbed on a rolling monthly basis. An Admin level user at your library will still need to contact our support team to activate the scrub, but you can decide which fields get scrubbed on a form-by-form basis. There are also a few fields that you can optionally set to scrub for your system as a whole, since every form has the potential to have these defined user information fields: IP Addresses and any user submitter fields (name, email, phone).

You’ll find this new setting by editing any item in the system, then going to Options > Advanced > Configure Privacy Scrub. For each field that appears in the list, select whether or not you’d like to scrub that field. An Admin level user would then go to the new Admin > System Settings > Data Privacy tab to send in a request to enable the scrub for your system (which only needs to be requested once). They’ll also be able to go there to see when the scrub was enabled and what it’s set to scrub.

Privacy Scrub

Upcoming LibWizard Training Sessions:

Also check out our recorded sessions!

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LibStaffer

We are excited to release the newest version of LibStaffer. Since the last update, we have upgraded some back end components – most notably, updating to Bootstrap 4. With the update of these components, the look and feel of some of the buttons and elements has changed slightly – but no need to worry! Everything is still located where it was before and LibStaffer functions exactly the same as before…it just looks a little fresher. 😄

As they say on TV: That’s not all! Check out the other awesome features & fixes coming your way soon…

Features & Fixes:

  • Schedules / Shifts:
    • In the ‘Manage Accounts’ tab, you can now choose which schedules are available in the “Schedule for” dropdown on the ‘Schedules’ page.
    • We’ve fixed an issue with the ‘Clear/Delete Shifts’ option so that clicking on any of the preset date options loads the correct dates. Previously, clicking the presets would show 2/29/2020 for both start and end dates.
    • We’ve corrected a shift assignment duplication issue when swapping shifts.
    • We’ve corrected an issue where the Clock In/Out grace period, when applied to the ‘Admin Clock In/Out’ function, could cause an error stating there were no shifts found for the user.
  • Reports:
    • Regular user accounts can now run the ‘Time Off/Unavailability’ Report.
    • We’ve fixed an issue with the Staff Current Status report, regarding which schedule is displayed for a user based on their most recent clock in record.
  • Time Off:
    • We’ve added the ability to add time off for multiple people in the same request. This feature is available for both ‘One Time’ and ‘Recurring’ time off entries.
    • We’ve added an option to remove existing shift assignments for a user if it clashes with a Time Off entry that is about to be approved. 
  • Workflows:
    • We’ve added the ability to customize the text of submission subject lines by allowing the selection of specific form fields.
    • The Notes field is now included in the CSV file generated when exporting a specific workflow form from the Submissions Explorer.

Upcoming LibStaffer Training Sessions:

Also check out our recorded sessions!

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LibInsight

We’re continuing to tighten up our code and do some important behind-the-scenes work on LibInsight; in the meantime we have some fixes to share!

  • When adding charts to a Dashboard, the fields on the Data Point tab now properly display in the dropdown.
  • We’ve updated the logic to hide the ‘Stacked View’ checkbox on Dashboard charts depending on the whether or not the y-axis is a select/multi-select field.
  • We’ve fixed a SQL error that was caused when a custom dataset chart was added to a Dashboard that had an Accounts List multi-select field with unique characters in the data.
  • We’ve fixed an issue where the ‘Sum of the field’ (for a Circulation dataset) displayed on Dashboard charts wasn’t calculated correctly.

Upcoming LibInsight Training Sessions:

Also check out our recorded sessions!

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LibGuides

Just one LibGuides update to bring you for this go-round. We are deprecating the “Remote Script” content type with this code release. There are more secure alternatives to including content from a system outside your LibGuides system, such as including scripts and CSS files at the system level, and using embed code or other widget code in a widget content type.

After this code release, existing Remote Scripts assets will remain in place, but their URLs will no longer be editable. You will also not be able to add new Remote Script content. If you would like to include content from another website in your LibGuides site, but you’re unsure of how to go about it, drop us a line, we’re happy to help!

Upcoming LibGuides Training Sessions:

Also check out our recorded sessions!

LibCRM

This LibCRM release brings a new Interactions UI and a Bulk Import improvement.

Interactions

We’ve reworked the UI of interaction details to make it more user-friendly and allow you to find more useful information. We have also increased the amount of information coming from LibAnswers and LibCal in the form of interactions.

  • Reworked “New Interaction” flow: we reworked the UI of the page to provide a better user experience.
  • Created “Interaction Details” page: we moved the interaction details from a modal window to a page containing the details of the interaction.
  • Reworked “Edit Interaction” flow: we moved the edit interaction flow from a modal window to a page containing the details of the interaction in editable mode.
  • Reworked the information that is coming from LibAnswers and LibCal in the form of interactions. The information displayed now is the following:
    • LibAnswers:
      • Profile: person who asked the question in LibAnswers, who is the “Interacted With” profile
      • Owner: ticket owner in LibAnswers
      • Source: LibAnswers’ source
      • Date: date the ticket was created
      • Status: current status of the ticket in LibAnswers
      • #Messages: number of messages on the thread
      • Tags: associated tags
      • Link to LibAnswers ticket: URL to navigate to the actual ticket in LibAnswers
      • Notes: notes added by the user
      • Attachments: attachments added to the ticket
    • LibCal: information depends on the source of the ticket (Events, Appointments, Space, and Equipment Bookings)
  • Removed the ability to edit LibAnswers & LibCal Interactions, though you can add notes & attachments.
  • Removed the ability to delete LibAnswers & LibCal Interactions. The user can choose to hide them instead in Admin > Manage Integrations.
Bulk Import Improvement

In order to reduce the complexity of the import process, we once again enhanced our bulk import file to help you understand the expected format for each of the fields. Only the .xlsx file format has this update; if you need the .xls format, that will be available soon.

  • Styling & Adding formatting to the import template spreadsheet:
    • Adjusted column size to the size of the text for easy visualization
    • Highlighted header column
    • Highlighted required fields
    • Added the expected input format to each field

  • Styling & Adding formatting to the import page:
    • Adjusted column size to the size of the text for easy visualization
    • Highlighted header column
    • Highlighted required fields
    • Added the expected input format to each field

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That’s it for this round of updates from Springy HQ. We would like to thank you, our user community, for sharing all your great ideas with us! We love making them a reality and look forward to bringing you many more improvements in 2020. We are always here for you if have any suggestions or questions.

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