Recently in Notices Category

We're putting the final touches on the documentation and will be going live today with Shoutbomb. 

Soon there will be a link to the instructions under the My Library section on the main InfoSoup page, titled Sign up for Text Message Notifications.  If you have text savvy patrons, feel free to encourage them to use this new service. 

At the moment, most texts will go out between 8 and 9 in the morning, with a second batch of hold pickup notifications at about 4:30 PM.  (The 2nd batch of hold pickup notifications will only include those items that were checked in after the 1st set of notices have gone out.)

As we discussed at the last AAC meeting, we're starting out slowly, which is why the link is not prominently displayed on InfoSoup.  At the next AAC meeting, we'll talk about how the project is going, and what changes we'd like to make, based on feedback from our early adopters.  

UPDATE 9:47 AM The problem has been resolved and email is working again.  We'd made some changes to the email system over the weekend that were causing a problem.  Those changes have been reversed, and email is now working correctly.

8:30 AM Email is not working this morning. We're working on the problem and will post again when we know when the problem will be resolved.

-Gerri Moeller

This morning, we experienced problems with the Millennium server.  We'll be working to determine the full extent of the problems, but right now we know that:
1) There were problems checking items in before around 8:40 AM. We recommend re-checking in any items that were checked in prior to 8:40 AM.  If you continue to experience problems checking these items in, please contact Patty at the OWLS office.
2) The notices were delayed.  The final notices were not sent until 8 AM.  If you checked the notices page prior to this, we'd recommend checking it again to make sure that you've seen all of today's notices.

-Gerri

*** UPDATE*** As of 11 AM, all of the notices have now been posted, and are available from the notice website. ***

This morning, some notices failed to be posted to the notice website.  We're working on fixing the problem.  Once all of the notices have been posted, I'll update this message.

-Gerri

Update 10:12 AM.  All notices have now run, and are posted to the OWLSnet notices page.

The OWLSnet notices did not run correctly this morning.  At about 9 AM, we were able to run some of the notices, but there was glitch in the process, and we're still working on the rest of them.  I'll post an update once all of the notices are finished running.

Tomorrow, Saturday, Feb 28th, there will be two small changes to the hold pickup notices. 

1. The header will now be "Library hold availability notice"
2. The last sentence will now read "Your library card will be required to check out this material."

In both cases, we are eliminating the word pick up or pickup.  We've had quite a few patrons contact libraries about not getting their hold pickup notices while they are getting all of their other notices.  It's possible that something in the notice text is triggering their ISP's spam filters, and the emails are not arriving at the patron's PC. 

So - we're making this change to see if it will help.  If you have comments, please let me know!

Innovative has been unable to fix our bounced emails, so I have made a change that should fix the problem.  Starting tomorrow, your library will again receive bounced emails.  However, the emails may look different. 

It's possible, depending on how your email client is configured, that the original text of the notice may come through as an attachment, rather than in the body of the email.  If you have problems opening the attachment, or simply cannot find the information you need to edit the patron's record, please call or email me.  Please do not forward the email on to me, but leave it in your email account. 

Additionally, you may find that you receive more bounced emails than before.  Previously, Charles was able to remove the type of bounced emails that were merely a notification that the email system had been trying to contact someone.  Now, I expect that you will start receiving these. 

The advantage to this new system is that it does not involve using a separate script.  If it works for everyone, I would suggest that we continue using it.  However, if you have problems with the bounced emails, or feel strongly that you'd preferred our previous method, please let me know.

At today's AAC Meeting (Friday, March 14th), we made the following decisions:

• Check for _____ discs labels were approved.  These will be ordered and sent out to all OWLSnet libraries. OWLSnet staff will send out a list of all popup messages (excluding the in-transit ones), indicating which ones are to be deleted based on previous AAC decisions.
  
• New removable short loan stickers are now available.  For some reason, the previous batch was not.  Replacement stickers can be ordered from Patty.
• The 2008 patron purge was completed on Wednesday.  If your library would like a list of these patrons, please let Laura know.
• A revised Receipt for Payment form was approved.  An announcement will be made when these are ready to order.
• AAC agreed with the PC Management Committee's recommendation that we purchase SAM.
• OWLS will delete all lost and paid items that have been lost and paid for at least a year.
  
• Since we'd like ILL items to come back as quickly as possible, we will change the ILL notice schedule to match the video notice schedule.
  

As of approximately 11:15 AM, all of the notices have now run.  All printed notices are now available to be picked up from the notices website.  Notices that were to be e-mailed to patrons (including courtesy notices) have also been sent.  

Notices did not run this morning, so no overdue notices, courtesy notices or hold pickup notices are available or were emailed to patrons.  OWLS has a call open with Innovative and will send out an update as soon as more information is available.