Important Version 18 Dates and Information

April 24, 2008
To: Consortium of MnPALS Libraries
From: Linda Richter
Re: Important Version 18 Dates and Information

Staff Privileges

Although it was announced in December that staff privileges on dev18 (the test instance of version 18) would be carried forward to production from that date, the privileges on dev18 have inadvertently been overwritten. During the April conversion, the privilege records from harp (the production server) were copied to dev18. The good news is that this means any changes you have made to harp since December have been moved to version 18 for you. The bad news is that any changes you made to dev18 between December 28 and March 31 have been overwritten. If you need assistance in updating privileges on dev18, please send a request to the PALS Support Center at http://pals.custhelp.com , and we would be happy to help. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

The privileges from harp WILL NOT be copied when we do the final conversion in May.
The privileges that are in place on dev18 on May 30 will be the ones that will be carried over into production on version 18.

Privileges for Integrated ILL

There are some changes that are needed related to staff privileges for Integrated ILL. Current ILL users have a user name in the Web ILL product, which in some cases is the same as their Aleph user name, and in other cases is different. When the upgrade kit is used to convert from version 17 to version 18, these user names and the associated privileges are converted to Aleph user names. If the name is the same, ILL privileges are added to the existing Aleph user name. If the name is different, the Web ILL user name is added as a new Aleph user name, with associated ILL privileges assigned.

Unfortunately, not all privileges that will be needed for Integrated ILL are assigned by the upgrade express kit. Therefore, you will need to update the privileges for each of your staff members that will use Integrated ILL. Once these changes are made in the test instance of version 18, you will not need to redo them when the software is put into production. The Systems Librarians will receive detailed instructions for making the needed changes. If you need assistance in updating ILL privileges, please send a request to the PALS Support Center at http://pals.custhelp.com .

Interlibrary Loan – During Downtime

Interlibrary loan will not be available from either a blank form or the link from the OPAC during the downtime of May 29 – June 1. If a patron clicks on either of these links, they will receive a message indicating that interlibrary loan is unavailable.

We will notify MINITEX of the downtime so that they may make adjustments for the MnLINK Gateway. If they choose to point to lute for searching, interlibrary loan from the MnLINK Gateway will continue to work, but requests will be queued for processing when the system comes back up.

Interlibrary Loan Blank Form on June 1

If your library has a link to the ILL request blank form from your web site, we will redirect the link so that it will work correctly with integrated ILL when version 18 goes live on June 1. After June 1, we will provide information on the change you will need to make to this link so that it will work in the future. We will keep the redirect in place for a period of time to give everyone a chance to make this change.

Other Important Dates

Updated version 18 client available to libraries – April 28
Last day to update tables in version 17 – May 16
Date of data used to refresh lute (for OPAC during downtime) – May 17
Last day to update tables and forms on dev18 – May 23
Last day to update privileges on dev18 – May 30
Production server unavailable – May 29 (at the end of the day) – June 1 (plan to be back up early in the day)
Final version 18 and ILL conversion – May 29 - June 1
Go live on Version 18 and Integrated ILL – June 1