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

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 19. Read about LibGuides | LibAnswers | LibCal | LibWizard | LibStaffer | LibInsight

LibGuides

In addition to improvements on the E-Reserves Request form, we are implementing a bunch of Accessibility improvements on the A-Z Databases page and the Search page.

E-Reserves Request Form

We’ve made the E-Reserves request form more user-friendly by getting rid of the accordion collapsible sections, indicating required fields with a red asterisk, and changing how the “Type” choices work.

In addition, you can indicate whether these fields should be required or hidden through the E-Reserves > Settings > Request Form > Request Form Field Options.

And Coming Soon…

• Support for LTI 1.3 in Canvas (with support for additional Learning Management Systems coming after that)
• Additional accessibility fixes

Upcoming LibGuides Training Sessions:

• Build-a-Basic LibGuide – Hands-on Workshop, Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
• Best Practices for Creating LibGuides, Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
• Build a Blue Print Guide, Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Also check out our recorded sessions, and don’t miss out the LibGuides release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

LibAnswers

Our current LibAnswers release is chock full of performance improvements to help bring you a faster and more performant reference management platform! In this release, we’re introducing many under-the-hood updates, including a refreshed Reference Analytics module, improved connectivity for LibChat on mobile devices, and so much more. For the full breakdown of everything rolling out in this release, head to the Springshare Lounge to view the full release notes.

Reference Analytics Update

We’ve spruced things up under the hood to bring you a fresher, faster version of Reference Analytics. We’ve refreshed the entire code base, with a goal of updating code and improving response times. While most folks using the Add or View/Edit Transactions screens won’t notice many UI changes, Admins can see this refresh reflected in the edit Reference Analytics dataset screen. We’ve updated the functions around editing datasets, and added the ability to reorder responses in a field without impacting past recorded data (yay!). To see this in action, Admins can head to Admin > Ref. Analytics > Edit Dataset button.

Mobile Chat Improvements

In this release, we’re updating the behavior of chat widgets on mobile devices. Now, most chat widgets (everything except for embedded chat widgets) will pop open in a new tab/window when viewed and accessed on handheld mobile devices. This will essentially replicate the behavior of the patron choosing to pop the ongoing chat into a new window, which we’ve seen can help prevent patrons from inadvertently disconnecting from a chat, especially on handheld mobile devices, where wide-finger issues are still alive and well! The resulting chat window is mobile-optimized and ready to assist your patrons. To see this in action, head to any slide-out, floating, or button chat widget and start a chat!

And Coming Soon…

We’re hard at work revamping several of our back-end search features, in an effort to bring you a faster and more intuitive search interface! Our first order of business is updating the chat transcript search page; in our next release, we’ll be overhauling our underlying search engine to bring you even more powerful chat transcript searching.

Upcoming LibAnswers Training Sessions:

• Personal LibChat Settings – Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 12:30 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.
• Embed Chat and Add FAQs Anywhere – Thursday, February 18, 2021, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Also check out our recorded sessions, and don’t miss out on the complete LibAnswers release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

LibCal

While we are hard at work to bring you (teaser alert!) interactive mapping functionality for seat/space bookings in the very near future and improvements to streamline and improve admin management aspects of Appointments, we have a few exciting updates for you! This release includes lots of accessibility modifications, small improvements, and performance improvements that can be read about in the Springy lounge release notes.

Appointments

• Booking limits for Appointments have arrived! We’ve added the ability to set daily, weekly, monthly, and/or yearly limits on the number of appointments that can be booked by each patron/student. These limits are available to set on the system level, as well as by individual users who can either use the system limits or define their own set if needed. Head to Admin > Appointments > Booking Limits > System Defaults to set this for your entire LibCal system, or click the Edit button in the User Limits Overview section to set for one user at a time.

• Also now available is the ability to list Appointment locations on your LibCal homepage, Hours page, and event pages. Your public locations will show as a drop-down menu where Appointments are displayed:

Seats / Spaces / Equipment

• We’ve also added API support to return availability for period-based locations when retrieving seat / space booking information.
• We’ve added a warning on the admin side “Booking Grid & Availability” tab when hours for a Location, Category, Space, or Item will expire soon. Admin users will see a warning like the one below when availability is set to expire within 7 days. A warning will also be displayed if a Location, Category, Space, or Item has no hours assigned.

Upcoming LibCal Training Sessions:

• Setting Up Calendars for Online Events, Monday, February 22, 2021, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Also check out our recorded sessions! Check out the LibCal release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

LibWizard

Folders

We have added a much-requested feature for creating folders for your LibWizard items! Anyone (Admin and Regular level users) can create new folders by clicking on the “+ Create New Folder” button on top.

Admins will have access to create, delete, or rename all folders. Regular users will be able to create new folders, but will only be able to rename and delete their own folders.

Deleting a folder will not delete the folder contents and will move any existing contents outside of the folder to the main level list.

Finally, users will be able to move existing items to different folders or create a form directly within the folder. Please note that folders cannot be nested at this time.

Changes to the Actions Column

We’ve updated the Actions column for Forms, Surveys, Quizzes, and Tutorials pages and the Question Bank page with a dropdown to make the column less cluttered.

Upcoming LibWizard Training Sessions:

• Learning Lab: Virtual User Testing: Leveraging LibWizard to Solicit User Feedback, Thursday, February 25, 2021, 1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.

Also check out our recorded sessions, and check out the LibWizard release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

LibStaffer

We’ve added some exciting enhancements to both the regular and recurring shift assignment process!

• You can now set a weekly frequency as well as select or deselect staff members for recurring shift assignments.
• A “Select All” / “Deselect All” feature has been added to the regular and recurring shift assignment screens, when there are more than 8 users assigned to a schedule.

Upcoming LibStaffer Training Sessions:

• LibStaffer for Virtual/Hybrid Environments, Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Also check out our recorded sessions, and don’t miss the LibStaffer release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

LibInsight

Manage Accounts Layout Change

We’ve converted the “New Account” and “Import LibApps Accounts” to their own pages for easier use.

Dataset Upload Format Change

As a processing and performance improvement, we have updated a few dataset types to allow only .csv format (Comma-Separated Values) for data uploads:

• Finance
• Reference
• Calendaring
• Custom/Shared

To save any Excel file as a .csv file, go to File > Save As.. and choose Comma-Delimited file. For the tech-minded out there who might use a text editor, we are looking for a UTF-8 file with CRLF line breaks. 🙂

Check out the LibInsight release notes on the Springshare Lounge! [Back to Top]

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 2021. We are always here for you if have any suggestions or questions.