Polaris 3.2 to 3.3 Upgrade Finger Lakes Library System Ithaca, New York Upgraded to 3.3 Build 617 in June 2007 Rex Helwig Polaris Users group conference.

Polaris 3.2 to 3.3 Upgrade

Finger Lakes Library SystemIthaca, New York

Upgraded to 3.3 Build 617 in June 2007Rex Helwig

Polaris Users group conference 2007

About the Finger Lakes Library System

• 31 member Public Library Consortium with 1 Reading Center and 1 Contracted Special Library

• We span 5 Counties in New York State from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania Border

• 6 Servers (Production, 2 Terminal, Training, PowerPac & Application(in the Central Library))

• 140 Users• 2 Instances of SIP

Preparation• Upgrade the Training Server• Scheduled the Production Server Upgrade• We examined the “What’s New in 3.3” document

paying special attention to the new settings that needed input from the member libraries– Shelving Cart Status (new setting).– Processing Fee (moved down to the branch level and

expanded to each material type).– Default Replacement Cost (moved down to the branch

level and expanded to each material type).– Consortium Circulation-Governing Library for Fine

Calculation (new option-Use Lending Branch).

Preparation

– Prevent Holds on Statuses (new setting that would prevent the libraries registered patrons from placing holds on items that are Checked-In and/or On-Order at their library).

– Collection Agency (new setting “Patron Branch”, this prevents one branch from sending another branches patrons to Collections).

Training

• Our Training Coordinator (Jan Aguirre) was able to familiarize herself with 3.3 so she could develop the training curriculum and materials for the staff and member libraries– She divided it up into 2 categories (Patron

Services/Circulation and Cataloging/Item maintenance. She scheduled 12 sessions (6 of each) in our regional training locations using our mobile laptop lab and connecting to the training server and started training.

Customizing

• I took a look at all the places we were going to need to implement the settings changes. – I documented where each of the new settings where so I

could make those changes on the Production Server as soon as the upgrade was complete and before we released it to our member libraries.

• I looked over the new version of PowerPac– I started by comparing the layout and the text used to see

what I was going to need to change.– I started to customize the Training PowerPac, documenting

each step so I could recreate my customizations .

Customizing• I started looking at the new implementation of the

Receipt Printer Drivers (for us these have to work in both the standard Polaris client install and in Terminal Services). Polaris has made the table for the printer control codes accessible and customizable and pushed the printer and driver down to the individual Polaris function driving the receipt (Check-in, Check-out, Patron Status etc.).– In the following slide you will see the Receipt/Slip options

that are now available in the Item Record, CKI, CKO, Patron Status, Request Manager, Request ,etc. which allows you to turn on and off the individual Receipt options and which printer to send it to.

Customizing

Customizing

– Our Epson printers don’t have the paper cutoff feature so I set the Options for Printer to Generic/Text Only and the Driver to <Other>. I started seeing a wrapping and spacing problem. This was corrected by creating a new form in the Printer Server Properties for each workstation and on the Terminal Server called Receipt setting the width to 3” and the length to 5”. To assign this new form I went to the receipt printer properties and set the Paper to Receipt and the Paper Source to Cont. Feed-No Break.

– For the Ithaca Thermal Receipt Printers I had to add a new line to the Printer Codes table with the correct Hex Control Codes for its features which are in the next slide.

Customizing

Production Upgrade

• We planned for 2 full days for our Production Server upgrade.– We had already upgraded to MS SQL Server 2005 last

November.

• Our upgrade went very well and we were done and back in business with the new settings updated, the PowerPac customizations completed and the Offline files processed by 5-5:30PM

Gotchas• We had a couple of issues– For the Collection Agency, we chose the new Reporting By

setting of Branch which in effect turned Collection Agency off and then back on again reapplying the collection fee which turned out to be a fair amount of work for our site Manager (Kristin).

– The Offline files weren’t accessible to the member libraries that used Offline Polaris to circulate. I was able to use the Terminal Services client as the administrator to upload and process their files. This may have been more to do with the policies I have for the Terminal Server users. The location of the offline files does move to a new location though.

Our users also Love 3.3• There are too many great new features in 3.3 to list but

here a few that we really like:– Notices-You can select specific libraries from the list and

print notices only for those libraries– PowerPac now retains “My Lists” in the patron record– Find Tool-Limiting feature is awesome– Sent Notices History-in Patron Status and Item Record– As of build 721

• Resizable Check-in/Check-out screens• Replace barcode from Check-in• Change Due Date and Circ Status from Check-out