Release date: April 25, 2022

Summary: This release includes numerous new features, enhancements and bug fixes to ReShare.

New features

Patron Profiles

ReShare now stores and validates a patron’s profile (patron type) returned in the NCIP LookUpUser response. These patron profiles can be managed by staff in Settings>Resource Sharing>Host LMS patron profiles. New profiles can be manually created and updated by staff to indicate whether the profile is allowed to submit requests or not in ReShare.
Both the description and actual patron profile code value in the Host LMS patron profile list. The description field is editable but the code remains uneditable.

Note: When adding a new patron profile manually, staff must ensure that the profile code matches the code used in their ILS exactly in order for it to match the value returned in the NCIP LookUpUser response.

When a request is submitted by a patron whose profile has not been configured in your institution’s settings the new patron profile will be added to your list of Host LMS patron profiles. The request will be allowed to be submitted. An email indicating a new patron profile has been added will be sent to the main email address configured in your institution’s root Directory entry. The new profile will display without a or beside it to help users visually identify new entries that have been automatically added.
A new Notice policy called 'New patron profile' and a corresponding Notice template called 'New patron profile' have been added in Settings>Resource Sharing to support the notification of staff to newly added profiles as mentioned above.
If staff submit a request on behalf of a patron using the Request app AND the profile returned for the patron is configured to not submit requests into ReShare, the request will be assigned a state of Invalid patron. The reason for the Invalid patron state will be written to the audit log for staff to review. If staff wish to allow the request to be submitted, a new Override borrower check action is available on the Flow screen for the request.

Note: In Release 1.8 the check on patron profile will only occur when staff submit a request on behalf of patron through the Request app. Release 1.9 will support the validation of a patron’s profile / blocking of placing a request when a patron attempts to place a request through discovery (e.g. VuFind).

Host LMS locations and shelving locations

In addition to an item’s location (Host LMS location), ReShare now stores and validates an item’s shelving location returned in the Z39.50 response when the Auto responder status is turned on. These shelving locations can be managed by staff in Settings>Resource Sharing>Host LMS shelving locations. New shelving locations can also be manually created and updated by staff to indicate whether the shelving location is requestable by adjusting the shelving location’s supplying priority.
The auto responder will now take into consideration both the Host LMS location and the Host LMS shelving location when determining if an item is requestable when assigning the request to a supplier. If either the location or the shelving location have a supplying priority of -1 the item will not be considered requestable.
If a shelving location value in Host LMS shelving locations (e.g Stacks) is requestable in combination with one Host LMS location but not another, staff have the ability to assign an override for the Host LMS location in Settings>Resource Sharing>Host LMS locations to render that combination of locations unrequestable. Using the action staff can create the shelving override by selecting the shelving location and assign a supplying priority of -1 .
A new column called Shelving override now displays in the list of Host LMS locations. Those locations with a indicate that there is an override configured for it.
Both the description and actual location/shelving location value now display in both the Host LMS location and Host LMS shelving location lists. The description field for a given location/shelving location are now editable but the code remains uneditable.

Note: When adding a new Host LMS location or Host LMS shelving location manually, staff must ensure that the location value matches the value returned in the z39.50 response from their ILS exactly in order for the Auto responder to correctly match it.

When responding Will Supply to a New request, the Location and Shelving Location fields are now populated by selecting the Location and/or Shelving Location values from a drop down list. The Iists will include Locations and Shelving Locations that have a supplying priority > 0

TLC NCIP integration

ILS integration with TLC via NCIP. Messages supported include LookUpUser, CheckoutItem, AcceptItem and CheckinItem

Request aging

Ability to have stale requests forwarded to the next supplier in the rota. The following three settings:
- Is responder stale request processing enabled or not
- The number of days that a request is considered as being stale
- Do we exclude weekends when we determine if a request is stale or not

have been added to Settings>Resource Sharing>Auto responder settings to allow tenants in a consortium to turn on the 1. enable the forwarding of stale requests after 2. the number of configured days and 3. whether or not to include weekends when determining when to pass a request on to the next supplier.

Note: For this new feature to work effectively, the three configurable values should be identical across all tenants in the consortium.

Staff processing improvements

Ability to combine the 'Fill request' and 'Marked shipped' into a single action for the supplier.

A new setting called 'Combine supplier actions 'fill request' and 'mark shipped'' in Settings>Resource Sharing>State/action configuration can be changed to allow the two actions to be combined into a single action.

Ability to combine the 'Mark returned by patron' and 'Marked returned shipped' into a single action for the requester.

A new setting called 'Combine requester actions 'mark returned by patron' and 'mark return shipped'' in Settings>Resource Sharing>State/action configuration can be changed to allow the two actions to be combined into a single action.

Ability to have the NCIP CheckinItem message sent when staff mark a request 'Returned by patron'. A new setting called 'Check in request when returned by patron' in Settings>Resource Sharing>Host LMS integration allows tenants to turn on the sending of the NCIP CheckinItem message when staff mark a request returned by patron.

Enhancements

Persistent nature of the 'Hide completed' requests flag was addressed. If unchecked, the flag will now be maintained when moving around the ReShare UI and is only set back to the system default when either the Request app or Supply app is selected from within the Request or Supply app respectively.
Patron notes field now limited to 255 characters.
Patron notes entered on a request now display on the Flow screen.
Patron notes entered on a request now display on the pull slip.
Character limits on the title, author, publication and publisher fields expanded to 255 characters on the Create patron request page.
If only one pickup location is configured for an institution, it will default in the pickup location in the request confirmation screen in VuFind.
If only one pickup location is configured for an institution, it will default in the pickup location field in Create patron request.
A pickup location column has been added to the Request App.
An error will no longer be returned when an NCIP CheckInItem response returns a status of ‘Item is already checked in’.
The harvesting of stats was updated to use a new mechanism. This is done by adding the tag “ACTIVE_BORROW” to REQ_SHIPPED and “ACTIVE_LOAN” to “RES_ITEM_SHIPPED” and then reporting the count of all requests with those tags in the statistics interface.

Bug fixes

Symbols in tenant's Directory records must now be unique, fixing the issue where the Directory would break when a user would set an existing symbol on a branch record.
Values deleted in a Directory entry will now propagate to other tenants in the consortium.
Persistent nature of the SearchAndSortQuery options for default sort/filter were fixed. Previously they would be added back to the search if you leave and return to the search results page. They will now be maintained when moving around the ReShare UI and are only set back to the system default when either the Request app or Supply app is selected from within the Request or Supply app respectively.
Update app fixed to utilize exact match searches, fixing the issue where errors were returned when requests with similar numbers, e.g. XYZ-5, XYZ-56 were scanned in the same session.
Update app fixed to display errors correctly, fixing the issue where it appeared requests had successfully been processed but their state had not changed.
WMS auto responder will now find OCLC numbers beginning with 'on'.
Auto responder responds correctly when a bib record has more than one item.
Auto responder no longer rejects pairs of print/electronic items with the same ISBN.
Accept Item failure audit log message revised to indicate the temporary barcode number when 'Item With This Barcode Already Exists' message is returned.
Sending of messages are now recorded in the audit log.
Typo in ILL Loan Policy drop down menu fixed.
End of rota notice prevented from being sent before request confirmation. The user will now either receive a request confirmation or an end of rota confirmation at the time the request is placed.
Loan to borrow statistics were not in sync with current requests - this has been corrected.
The REQ states for a supplier’s request are now fully data driven and not hard-coded.
Addition of a brand new symbol to a tenant's institution record no longer causing 'Unknown Requesting Institution Symbol' error when placing a request.
Permission issues around Host LMS locations corrected.
Corrected an issue where a ‘Valid action was not supplied' message is returned when filling a request.

Non-functional changes

ReShare upgraded to Stripes 7
ReShare upgraded to Juniper