I think I would side towards staff either needing to click through a warning
that they are entering offline mode or having to open a separate program, as I
basically agree with what Michele Morgan said earlier. I think either would be
a useful reminder that this isn't something that should be done because their
connection timed out once.
I would also add a +1 to Michele's suggestion of it being seamless. (ie the
interface uploads transactions when a connection is available without human
assistance) I would rather the system upload the transactions that work and
then dump a report to the local admin about transactions that failed. For
security, such notice could be generic ("some offline transactions from station
[EG WORKSTATION NAME] failed to load at [TIMESTAMP]") and the detailed info
kept inside EG, but accessible in such a way that the local admin could sit at
their computer and make those manual corrections rather than going around to
every workstation.
In addition to making it easier for the local/consortium admins to manage these
situations, I think this would be useful for all staff/improve customer service
since I've seen where in the stress of dealing with an ILS down/internet
down/power outage that staff who do not know how to load offline transactions
will not remember to tell anyone that they used the interface and the
transactions get found (hopefully) the next day by someone who know what to do
with them.
Have a good day.
Joe
Joe Knueven, Director
Wilmington Public Library
268 N South Street
Wilmington, OH 45177
937-382-6165 x101 (direct)
937-382-2417 (public)
---- On Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:37:32 -0400 Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general
<[email protected]> wrote ----
Just to clarify one point, staff can access the current Evergreen offline
interface at any time. The PC does not have to be offline. Just go to
Circulation => Offline Interface and select one of the action tabs (Checkout,
Renew, etc.). They work fine.
-b
On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:31 PM Diane Disbro via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you all for working on this! Front line staff will really appreciate it.
Diane Disbro
Pronouns: she/her
Circulation Coordinator
Scenic Regional Library
251 Union Plaza Drive
Union, MO 63084
(636) 583-0652 ext 110
mailto:[email protected]
On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:17 PM Morgan, Michele via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Since it's Pi Day, I'm just tossing out a pie in the sky idea about this.
It would be great if offline circulation could be seamless, or nearly so. Many
selfcheck kiosks have this feature. They continue to record transactions when
the ILS goes offline, and automatically send them when connectivity restores.
I can't offer any suggestions as to how to accomplish this, but it would be
awesome!
But given Bill's original question, there are merits to an installed
application, a few that come to mind are:
Better control over where it's installed.
The ability to install it when a workstation is offline.
Easier to train staff since it can be invoked at any time.
Still hoping for Pi in the sky, though.
Michele
--
Michele M. Morgan, Technical Support Analyst
North of Boston Library Exchange, Danvers Massachusetts
mailto:[email protected]
On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:04 PM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for all the input, everyone.
JFYI, I chose JavaFX for my experiments because:
1. Hatch uses it, duh, specifically for HTML rendering of print content.
2. It's cross-platform
3. JavaFX has its own markup language (FXML), which comes with a handy "scene
builder" for quickly creating/editing UI's.
4. Companies outside of Oracle, like Microsoft [1] and Amazon [2], are now
creating open source builds of OpenJDK.
I'm open to other technologies, though.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/java/openjdk/download
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/
-b
On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:18 PM Jason Boyer via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
I do like the idea of an installed application. If there is any issue getting
the offline webapp to work staff generally use Excel or Notepad anyway, so
something purpose built would be a big step up from that. These (tried and
true, long-term battle tested, heh) alternatives show that a dedicated offline
utility wouldn’t be required to use Evergreen, just a major UI / UX improvement
over some of the alternatives.
The main issue with the existing offline interface is that if anything answers
on port 80 at all you can’t get into it. So if you have an ldirectord fallback
(for a maintenance page, for instance) the only way to get into offline is
basically to unplug the cable from the staff machine and try again. The
background download of block lists and other assorted settings is also a great
idea. Saving things to a system-wide location (like %APPDATA% on Windows) will
also prevent libraries with per-user OS accounts from accidentally finding and
uploading old transactions long after they were saved.
Making it safer for staff to wipe out their Chrome history is also a good
benefit. (Hopefully they don’t often need to anyway, but making it impossible
to lose pending circs this way is an unqualified improvement.)
Searching around a bit for other systems shows a variety of options:
Alma, Atriuum, and Sierra use a locally installed utility.
Aleph, and Symphony still use locally installed clients that also handle
offline circ.
FOLIO doesn’t handle it.
Polaris has a browser offline client.
Koha can use a browser offline client, FF plugin, or locally installed utility.
I haven’t done a deep dive, but I’ve been given the impression from some email
list postings that the local util is generally preferred. I don’t know the
current status of the plugin, but requiring a specific browser definitely
limits its appeal.
As for specific technologies, I’m like Jeff; we don’t want another Dojo
situation, but am otherwise fairly open. I haven’t messed with Java much since
college but if we want something that’s cross platform that’s pretty much the
choice. I’m not familiar enough with JavaFX to know what additions the FX
brings and so don’t have an opinion on that yet.
Jason
--
Jason Boyer
Senior System Administrator
Equinox Open Library Initiative
mailto:[email protected]
+1 (877) Open-ILS (673-6457)
https://equinoxOLI.org/
On Mar 11, 2022, at 12:23 PM, Jeff Davis via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
My other concern about a standalone app would be picking a tool that won't
become obsolete in a few years (XUL, old Dojo) and doesn't require a ton of
work to stay up-to-date (Angular). I have no opinion on JavaFX specifically,
but we are already using Java for Hatch, so maybe there is precedent?
I personally like the idea of a standalone app if it's easy to manage and use.
I think our staff have found the current offline UI to be unintuitive and kind
of finicky.
Does anyone know offhand how other ILS products deal with offline?
Jeff
On 3/11/22 7:46 AM, Terran McCanna via Evergreen-general wrote:
My initial thoughts on a separate app:
Advantages:
- A lot of staff tend to be confused by the concept of an offline web app and
find it easier to understand an installed program.
- It would get around the need to load pages into cache before using it for
the first time, which staff don't usually understand.
- It could potentially be installed from a flash drive to a computer that is
not connected to the internet.
Disadvantages:
- Staff would need to install it and do upgrades on every machine.
- It would be more difficult to locally customize and it would create a
separate product for the developers to maintain.
Questions:
- How would it handle the workstation name? Would staff need to set it up at
first use? (Note that it would be useful for it to have a workstation name that
indicated that the offline app was used for each transaction so we could
identify offline transactions in reports/logs.)
- Would the staff client still be able to tell if there were pending offline
transactions to upload? (Note that it would be nice to see this alert once
logged into the staff client as well as on the login page.)
- Would this resolve the problem of not being able to download large patron
block lists? (PINES hasn't been able to download block lists at all since
moving to the web client.)
Terran McCanna, PINES Program Manager
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Georgia Public Library Service | University System of Georgia
2872 Woodcock Blvd, Suite 250 l Atlanta, GA 30341
(404) 235-7138| mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
http://help.georgialibraries.org/ <http://help.georgialibraries.org/> |
mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
<https://www.facebook.com/georgialibraries><https://www.twitter.com/georgialibs><https://www.instagram.com/georgialibraries/><https://www.twitter.com/georgialibs>
Join our email list <http://georgialibraries.org/>for stories of Georgia
libraries making an impact in our communities.
On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 10:28 AM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general
<mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Hi All,
I'm thinking of turning my attention to porting the Evergreen
Offline interface as we continue our march away from AngularJS. Unlike
other interfaces, where the end goal is pretty
straightforward -- just migrate it to Angular -- I think the Offline
UI would benefit from some discussion.
I've long been a proponent of not requiring external software to use
the browser client. Once an EG server is up, just open your
browser, and you're good to go.
Hatch is obviously external software, but I don't consider it a
requirement to use the client. It smooths over some aspects of the
workflow, but it does not provide functionality that can only be
done with Hatch.
However, I have also heard some comments in IRC to the effect that
having a purely web-based offline interface may be causing some
consternation / complications. I don't recall the context or the
specific concerns, only the seed stuck in my mind.
Because of these conflicting ideas, I thought it best to get some
feedback.
Here I propose two options to consider that I think cover the
extreme ends of the spectrum. There may be middle ground or other
options entirely.
1. Create a progress web app in Angular that performs exactly as the
AngularJS version. There will be slight style variations and some
differences to how the offline code is managed (Angular has a nice
set of tools for progress web apps) as with the other Angular pages,
but it would essentially be a direct port.
2. Create a standalone application that's just an offline
interface. It would be a separate program you run on your PC. Because I
don't like showing up empty handed, I've created a proof
of concept JavaFX app at https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx
<https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx> complete with screen
shots. (I can explain the choice of JavaFX later as needed).
Both have pluses and minuses. Before we get too into the weeds,
though, I'm curious if there is an obvious direction people feel we
should take, specific technology notwithstanding. (Also, by all
means, let's get into the weeds :)
I welcome your questions and feedback!
-b
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
<http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general>
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
mailto:[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general_______________________________________________
Evergreen-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
