what’s new in talis alto 5 - capita libraries · 2010. 11. 10. · what’s new in talis alto 5.1...

What’s New in Talis Alto 5.1

System Manager edition

November 2010

TA-510-WNSM-03 Page 2

About this document

This document explains the new and amended functionality in Talis Alto 5.1.

It is based on the standard What’s New In Talis Alto 5.1 document, but this System Manager edition includes additional information that is relevant for System Managers. Section 5, Changes in System Management, does not appear in the standard What’s New in Talis Alto 5.1 document. Additional information in other sections is formatted with a shaded background so that System Managers can easily identify those areas of particular importance.

It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with Talis Alto.

Talis Support

If you are experiencing difficulties, please contact your System Manager/IT Department in the first instance.

You can now raise, track, and close your support cases using Talis‟ 24 x 7 My Support web service. You must have a user name and password to access the service – you can register at the following address: http://www.talis.com/services/register/index.shtml

Talis Support Site: http://www.talis.com/services/support/

Telephone: +44 (0)870 400 5400

Email: [email protected]

Copyright notice

This document is the copyright material of Talis Information Limited. It may not be copied without prior consent, in writing, from Talis Information Limited. All trademarks are acknowledged.

Talis Information Limited endeavours to ensure that the information in this document is correct, but does not accept liability for any error or omission. However, Talis Information Limited would be pleased to receive readers‟ views on the contents of this document.

The products described in this document are subject to licence agreements, which govern their use. Statements in this document are not part of any licence or contract save insofar as they are incorporated into a licence or contract by express agreement. Issue of this document does not imply any entitlement to use of or access to any or all of the products or facilities it describes.

http://www.talis.com/services/register/index.shtmlhttp://www.talis.com/services/support/


Contents

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................4

1.1 Summary of the new functionality ................................................................................................................4

2. Changes in Cataloguing ........................................................................................................................................5

2.1 Locked records .............................................................................................................................................5

2.2 Authority ........................................................................................................................................................6

2.2.1 Library of Congress authority records ................................................................................................... 6

2.2.2 Authority Web Service ‘Please wait ...’ message .................................................................................... 8

2.2.3 Authority Web Service ‘Failed to connect ...’ message ............................................................................ 9

2.2.4 Authority report changes ..................................................................................................................... 9

2.2.5 Check Authority matches ................................................................................................................... 10

2.2.6 Amendments to the authority matching rules ...................................................................................... 10

2.2.7 Removing an illegal character ............................................................................................................ 10

2.2.8 Defect fix for Edit operator (Defect 6295) ........................................................................................... 10

2.2.9 Defect fix for References limit (Defect 6382) ....................................................................................... 10

2.2.10 Defect fix for Authority matching (Defect 6423) ................................................................................. 10

2.2.11 Defect fix for Saving large records (Defect 6633) ............................................................................... 10

2.3 Bibliographic .............................................................................................................................................. 10

2.3.1 Defect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590) ................................................................................ 10

3. Changes in Circulation ........................................................................................................................................ 11

3.1 Item ............................................................................................................................................................ 11

3.1.1 Defect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590) ................................................................................ 11

3.2 Income Manager ........................................................................................................................................ 11

4. Changes in Configure Alto .................................................................................................................................. 12

4.1 Defect fix for Help ...................................................................................................................................... 12

5. Changes in System Management ....................................................................................................................... 13

5.1 Talis Alto ..................................................................................................................................................... 13

5.2 Script amendments ................................................................................................................................... 14

5.2.1 archive_trandumps and trandump ...................................................................................................... 14

5.2.2 checkstorage .................................................................................................................................... 14

5.2.3 dump2disk.pl .................................................................................................................................... 14

5.2.4 top5 ................................................................................................................................................ 14

What’s New in Talis Alto 5.1 System Manager edition


1. Introduction

This document introduces the functional changes in Talis Alto 5.1, to allow staff to see in advance of the upgrade what the changes will be, and how they will affect their day-to-day work.

It is arranged by functional areas, as found in the Talis Alto menu bar, so that staff can pick out the sections relevant to them.

Note: The screenshots shown in this document were prepared during software development. The build numbers do not reflect the

general release version.

1.1 Summary of the new functionality

In Cataloguing:

A new environment variable can be set to give users the option to unlock a locked authority or bibliographic record in Talis Alto.

It is now possible to search for and import Library of Congress authority records.

A message now displays if the Authority Web Service is not available when a user logs in.

A message now displays while Talis Alto is waiting for a response from the Authority Web Service.

A message will display if the Authority Web Service is not running when a user tries to generate the authority report.

Progress information is displayed while the authority report is being generated.

It is now possible to edit authority records that contain illegal characters.

Improvements have been made to the authority matching rules, so that relator codes in bibliographic fields are excluded from matching, and subject heading matching rules have been relaxed.

In Circulation:

An improvement has been made in the speed of displaying the Income Manager form when paying a charge from Talis Alto

In System Management:

The Eureka fault logging tool can now be configured to send email using the local email client rather than SMTP.

A new log file is now produced by Talis Alto, containing exception messages.

Log files produced by Talis Alto are now limited in size, so they do not continue to grow.

More logging has been added to the Authority Web Service to help with problem diagnosis. Talis Support will provide information on how to switch this on if it is required.

There have been defect fixes or improvements made to several scripts.



2. Changes in Cataloguing

2.1 Locked records

If Talis Alto crashes while a cataloguer is editing a bibliographic or authority record the record is left locked. It cannot be opened for editing until it is unlocked, which until now has required a process to be run overnight.

The findlock and unlock utilities are used to unlock records. Now an environment variable may be set to allow a locked record to be opened in edit mode. Your system manager will need to set this up in the Configure Talis Alto application for users who require this ability.

The environment variable is TAL_FORCE_UNLOCK, which should be set to YES to enable the functionality outlined below. When a user tries to open a record that is locked, a pop-up is displayed giving the option to open the record in read-only mode.

Bibliographic records:

Authority records:

If the user responds „No‟ and the environment variable is set a second pop-up will now be displayed.

Bibliographic records:



Authority records:

If the user responds „Yes‟ the record will be opened in edit mode.

2.2 Authority

2.2.1 Library of Congress authority records

The Library of Congress (LC) Name and Subject authority files are now hosted on Talis Base. Users with the necessary enablements will be able to search these and import records once they have been added to the list of targets available via Authority Search.

Instructions for creating these targets are in the Talis Alto 5.1 release notice.



On the Results tab the References count is only an estimate at this point. Clicking Get Ref Count will update the count and change the row to bold to indicate that it has been updated.

The Control Number column has been widened to show the full LC control number.

The Import button will only be available if you have authority control switched on and the Authority Web Service is running. Similarly on the Full Record tab the Import and Display Bib. Records buttons will only be available if authority control is switched on and the Authority Web service is running.

The results of a Talis Base authority search will be in control number order, but they can be sorted into heading order by clicking the arrow in the Main Heading column heading.



Clicking Display Bib. Records will display a list of bibliographic records in your local catalogue that contain the main heading of the current authority record:

If you attempt to import an authority record whose main heading exactly matches an existing record in your local authority file an error message will be displayed and the import will be prevented:

You will therefore need to delete your existing record before importing a new one.

2.2.2 Authority Web Service ‘Please wait ...’ message

The message „Please wait while communicating with the Authority Web Service‟ will now be displayed while Talis Alto is waiting for the Authority Web Service to respond. There is a two minute timeout and the message shows a countdown in seconds to show that Talis Alto is still waiting.



2.2.3 Authority Web Service ‘Failed to connect ...’ message

A message now displays if Talis Alto cannot connect to the Authority Web Service when a user logs in:

This indicates that the authority control functionality will not be fully functional until the service becomes available.

2.2.4 Authority report changes

If the Authority Web Service is not running when you click OK on the pop-up form to generate the authority report, a message will now be displayed. The pop-up form will close and no processing will take place.

If the Authority Web Service is running when OK is clicked, the pop-up form will close and a progress report will be displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the Talis Alto Window:

This will show you when the report has completed and whether or not it was successful:

If an error occurred in checking a bibliographic record, the report will show „Error‟ and the text of the error.



2.2.5 Check Authority matches

The limit on the number of matching authority records that may be returned to the Check Authority function has been increased from 500 to 1000.

2.2.6 Amendments to the authority matching rules

Relator codes in bibliographic fields (subfield e in most fields, subfield j in x11 fields) are now excluded from matching.

Subject heading fields (6xx) that have „4‟ in the second indicator, meaning „No attempt to code‟ for the subject heading scheme, will now match subject authority records that have any code in the 008 for subject heading scheme.

2.2.7 Removing an illegal character

The message „An illegal character in context‟ will display if an authority record contains an invalid character. It is now possible to open and edit the record to remove the character.

2.2.8 Defect fix for Edit operator (Defect 6295)

When a bibliographic record is updated by editing or merging an authority record, the record‟s Edit operator is now updated to „auth_edit‟ rather than the login name of the user who performed the edit or merge. The Edit location is set to blank.

2.2.9 Defect fix for References limit (Defect 6382)

When merging authorities, if the non-host authority has more references than the limit, a warning message is now displayed. Previously this message displayed when the host authority had more references than the limit.

2.2.10 Defect fix for Authority matching (Defect 6423)

Spaces and punctuation in the 440 and 830 fields in bibliographic records are now stripped out to prevent matching on authority records failing.

2.2.11 Defect fix for Saving large records (Defect 6633)

An error message is no longer produced by the Authority Web Service when a very large bibliographic record is saved.

2.3 Bibliographic

2.3.1 Defect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590)

When an item screen is printed using the Print button the shelfmark may now be followed by “…” to indicate that it has been truncated. Previously the first 19 characters and the last character of the shelfmark were printed and there was no indication of truncation.



3. Changes in Circulation

3.1 Item

3.1.1 Defect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590)

When an item screen is printed using the Print button the shelfmark may now be followed by “…” to indicate that it has been truncated. Previously the first 19 characters and the last character of the shelfmark were printed and there was no indication of truncation.

3.2 Income Manager

An improvement has been made in the speed of displaying the Income Manager form when paying a charge.



4. Changes in Configure Alto

4.1 Defect fix for Help

A problem introduced in Talis Alto 5.0.0.42 has been fixed so that pressing the F1 key in Configure Alto now brings up context sensitive help.



5. Changes in System Management

5.1 Talis Alto

5.1.1 New Eureka email switch

Eureka is the fault logging tool included within Talis Alto. It traps errors such as Access Violations and produces a report, which can be emailed to Talis. You should only activate Eureka when advised to do so by Talis.

Some customers are unable to use the default email method (sending the email via SMTP on the Talis server), getting the message:

A new switch has therefore been introduced to make Eureka use the local email client to send the email. To activate this, edit the shortcut you use to start Talis Alto on a PC (either a shortcut on the Desktop or the menu item Start | All Programs | Talis | Alto | Talis Alto) and add a space followed by /Q after /K on the command line in the Target field.

5.1.2 Defect fix for /Z command line switch

Some libraries have experienced errors when enabling the zoom log (the log of Z39.50 commands created by setting /Z on the command line). These should no longer occur.

5.1.3 New log file to trap exceptions

Talis Alto will now produce a log file, Alto.exc.log, to which any exception messages will be written. This will be of use to Talis when investigating errors. It will be produced even if the /K switch is not set.

5.1.4 Limiting log file sizes

Up to now, any log files created by Talis Alto (by setting /S or /Z on the command line) would be appended to indefinitely as long as the switch was set, potentially generating very large files.

Now, when a log file reaches a certain size, it will be copied with a .old extension, and a new file will be created. The next time this happens, the previous .old file will be overwritten.

The default file size is 2Mb, but this can be changed by a new command line switch. This is /LFSIZE followed by a colon and the required size in Megabytes. For example, /LFSIZE:5.



5.2 Script amendments

5.2.1 archive_trandumps and trandump

A defect that, due to a rare condition, could have resulted in data loss if a database restore was required has been fixed.

5.2.2 checkstorage

The information in the .log file has been simplified. The original output can be found in a .run file and details of any faults are in a .faults file. All three filenames include the name of the database checked

e.g. checkstorage.prod_talis.0920.run

checkstorage.prod_talis.0920.faults

checkstorage.prod_talis.0920.log

A second version of the log file named as before is also produced

e.g. checkstorage.0920.log

5.2.3 dump2disk.pl

A –k switch has been added to kill user connections to the database being restored on the MIS server.

5.2.4 top5

This script is being shipped to ensure that all customers have the latest version.

IntroductionSummary of the new functionality

Changes in CataloguingLocked recordsAuthorityLibrary of Congress authority recordsAuthority Web Service ‘Please wait ...’ messageAuthority Web Service ‘Failed to connect ...’ messageAuthority report changesCheck Authority matchesAmendments to the authority matching rulesRemoving an illegal characterDefect fix for Edit operator (Defect 6295)Defect fix for References limit (Defect 6382)Defect fix for Authority matching (Defect 6423)Defect fix for Saving large records (Defect 6633)

BibliographicDefect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590)

Changes in CirculationItemDefect fix for Printing item records (Defect 6590)

Income Manager

Changes in Configure AltoDefect fix for Help

Changes in System ManagementTalis AltoNew Eureka email switchDefect fix for /Z command line switchNew log file to trap exceptionsLimiting log file sizes

Script amendmentsarchive_trandumps and trandumpcheckstoragedump2disk.pltop5

what’s new in talis alto 5 - capita libraries · 2010. 11. 10. · what’s new in talis alto 5.1...

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