[iBorrow] New iBorrow Build: Ouch!

[Al Carlson]

If you never work with URSA/iBorrow, you can ignore this message.

If you do work with URSA, especially in the iBorrow client, you need to
recall the famous line from "Forrest Gump".  You know the one I mean.
"Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to
get."

The URSA client became a box of chocolates today when we loaded the new
build.  When you log in, you could end up in any library, no matter what
your default agency is.  And if you are in your own library for Request
Manager, you can open Search Requests and find yourself in a different
library.  And if you click on the Refresh button, you could produce yet
another library.

But wait.  It gets better.  If you look up at the top of your screen in
any application, you see a dark blue bar.  It has the icon of the
application you are using along with its name and other data.  If you
are logged into the Safety Harbor client, it should say Safety Harbor up
at the top on that blue bar as well as in the upper left of the main
work window you see when you are in Request Manager.  But, in the new
build, it doesn't always do that.  And if there is a mismatch between
the library name at the top and the library name in the Request Manager
window, you may get an error message along the lines of "Unable to get
the list of request records".  Or you may be processing someone else's
records.

Now that you're terrified, let's see how we can get this under control.
We replicated all of these things today in a conference call with
SirsiDynix.  In fact, we found some of them during that call.  We had a
software engineer in on the call, and he thinks he knows the root cause
of this.  So, he may have a fix some time today.

Meanwhile, you can choose Plan A or Plan B.
Plan A is to stop working in the URSA client for a while.  Watch for
Email like this one to keep you in the loop.  Or give me a call from
time to time.  This could work if you have a very low volume of ILL's
and see nothing urgent in your IN box.

Plan B is to keep working in the URSA client, but to be very careful.
When you log in, make sure you are in the right place.  Note the titles
of the first few books in your Mediated Loan boxes and other boxes.  If
you do a refresh or open a new URSA feature, check again to make sure
all the labels-top of the screen, main work window in Request Manager,
main work window in Search Requests-all say that you're at your home
library.  If you're not sure, log out and start fresh.  This is not a
fun way to work, but it may be necessary for you, if you have lots of
requests or urgent requests or both to deal with.

We will try to put out messages like this whenever we get new data.  And
you're welcome to call me.  You may get my voicemail.  If you do, I'm
probably answering one of your colleague's questions or harassing
SirsiDynix.



Al Carlson
System Administrator
Tampa Bay Library Consortium
1202 Tech Blvd. Suite 202
Tampa, FL  33619
813-622-8252 ext. 223

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tblc.org/pipermail/iborrow/attachments/20060907/35aaf426/attachment.html