Discover Release Notes September 2024

Release Date: September 04, 2024

StackMaps (Premium and Consortia)

Vega Discover Premium and Consortia versions support an integration with StackMap, an indoor mapping web application that helps patrons easily locate library resources. Vega Discover Premium and Consortia libraries can reach out to support@stackmap.com to request the required script to embed into their custom header code.

Please reach out to your Account Manager if you would like to know more about Discover Premium or Discover Consortia.

BUG FIXES

Inn-Reach

A bug was fixed where Inn-Reach was not showing for unavailable titles. A future release will allow you to set Inn-Reach to also show when titles are available. This will match the design of the Custom Passthrough display options.

Custom Passthrough

Premium and Consortia libraries can to link to other Vega collections sites using a Custom Passthrough search.

  • For works, the author and title are not required to save the URL. You'll have better success with a title search, we are continuing to work on saving author and title passthrough.

  • A bug was fix where editing a Custom Passthrough changed the order after saving.

  • Special characters have been enabled for Custom Passthrough searches.

Reading History Improvements

The performance of reading history loading was improved.

Home Page Scheduling

The schedule counts at the top of the page will be hidden until the feature is fully released.

Home Page Accessibility Fixes

  • The text alternative includes the item title for cover images in the Author showcase.

  • Aria roles have been added to the grid view icons.

  • Events are focusable using a keyboard.

Kids Themed Home Page

A bug was fixed where covers were elongated and the proportions broken for the Comic, Steampunk, and Vega themes

Release Date: September 26, 2024

Note: Discover environments on NA and Engage environments on NA2 will be released the week of September 30.

Bulk Holds Enhancements

Place a Bulk Hold from Showcase View All views

Bulk Holds can now be used from Showcase View All views allowing users to select all or specific titles from this view and place a bulk hold on all selected titles.

Guest User access to Bulk Holds with Login prompt

Guest users will now see select boxes in Search Results and the Showcase View All views allowing them to begin to select items for a Bulk Hold. When a guest tries to initiate a bulk hold they will be prompted to login and will return to complete the hold.

Support for Not Needed After and Not Needed Before in Bulk Hold

Not Needed After (Sierra Libraries) and Not Needed Before (Polaris Libraries) functions are now supported for Bulk Holds. Selected dates will apply to all materials in the Bulk Hold.

Bulk Bookmarking

To further support patrons in Bulk HOld workflows, a bulk bookmarking feature has been added to both the search results and showcase view all views. Selected items can be bulk bookmarked to one or more bookmark lists by making selections and using the Add to Lists button. After building a list, patrons can use the Place Holds button in the list view on selected materials to place a bulk hold.

Serial Date Display Updates

After our recent bug fix for Serial display dates that displayed dates as ranges we have made additional changes based on customer feedback as follows: For each serial date we will display the exact dates from the Date 1 and Date 2 (if applicable) by replacing any unknown 'u' with an X and treating 'uuuu' and '9999' year values as continuing publications. For example:

  1. 19uu9999 displays as 19XX-

  2. 199uuuu displays as 199X-

  3. 19902021 displays as 1990-2021

Schedule Showcases for the Home Page

Requires a post-deployment step, please check on Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone.

You can schedule home page content to appear on your home page in advance.

Vega Discover customers can configure 5 additional rows of scheduled content.

Vega Premium customers can configure 20 additional rows of scheduled content.

Please keep in mind that:

  1. Scheduled content is prioritized over unscheduled content.

  2. Scheduled content is displayed by looking at the scheduled start date first, and the time second.

  3. When there is more scheduled content than the published limit of 5 or 20 rows, the additional content is not shown.

  4. When you hit the maximum of 10 or 40 rows of content, you will see a message that your home page can't schedule any additional content.

  5. Scheduled content can be arranged in the draft view in the order it displays on the page.

Scheduling is attached to the entire component block. For example, if you have a hero that is published, but you would like it to change at a specific date and time, you would create two versions.

  1. Scheduled version with the changes and a start date/time

  2. Published version with an end date/time that's before the scheduled start time

On the Preview page, the scheduled content is:

  1. On a gray background

  2. Has the applicable start/end date information

Schedule your content from the Block Settings.

Schedule Showcases for Discover

Requires a post-deployment step, please check on Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone.

When creating a showcase, staff has the option to:

  1. Set a start date.

    1. Only set a start date (never expires)

    2. Set a start and end date (expires)

    3. No start is published immediately

  2. Check-box to opt into deleting the showcase when the end date is reached.

Why does scheduling work differently for Home Page and Discover?

Home Page is a pull process, when a patron loads the home page it pulls the components that are in the right date/time range in real time.

Discover is a push process, where Vega is pushing content to display on the full resource card. This is a scheduled process that runs every 6 hours. Scheduled components may take up to 6 hours to appear when scheduling for the same or next day.

Search in a Showcase

Requires a post-deployment step, please check on Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone.

Showcases created from a Bookmark List are searchable by:

  1. Title

  2. Author

  3. Publication Date

  4. Series

Showcases created from a Saved Search, select 'View Search Results' to adjust the filters.

  1. As the creator of the showcase, changes to filters are saved for other users.

  2. As a patron, I can make changes to the saved search, but the changes are not saved for other users.

  3. As a Library Admin, I can make changes to the saved search, but the changes are not saved for other users.

  4. Please note, users need to be logged in to see the 'View Search Results' option, and staff need to be using a promoted patron account. This will be resolved in a future release.

Favicon

Requires a post-deployment step, please check on Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone.

Favicons can be added to your main site or collection sites and is uploaded next to the library logo on the Header and Footer customization page, Favisons are very small, so choose a simple image or logo that will look clear when resized. Your image should be square, with a minimum image size of 32 x 32 and a maximum image size of 192 x 192. When a Vega link is saved as a desktop link, this is the icon saved.

  1. When the Main site has a favicon, but the other languages do not, all languages show the Main site favicon.

  2. A different favicon can be uploaded to each language.

  3. When a new favicon is uploaded to the main site, any language that hasn't set a specific favicon will see the updated favicon.

  4. New languages can be configured with a logo and favicon without changing any other languages.

  5. Adding a new language without uploading a favicon will default to the Favicon set in 'English (US)'.

Passthrough Configuration for Collection Sites

After selecting and editing a collection site, a new menu option for Passthrough sources has been added. This allows you to create a custom passthrough unique to that site. Passthroughs from the main site can be hidden using the switch.

Inn-Reach and Custom Passthrough Improvements

Requires a post-deployment step, please check on Friday or Saturday depending on your time zone.

  1. Inn-Reach can be rearranged and interfiled with Custom Passthrough.

  2. The Full Resource Card options for a Custom Passthrough have been added to Inn-Reach.

    1. Show for all titles

    2. Show only for unavailable titles

  3. To help with results, when saving a Custom Passthrough keyword URL, KEYWORD must be in all uppercase to save. This matches the example text on the page.

Accessibility Improvements

  1. The 'View All' links use the Showcase block title even with the Showcase block title is hidden.

  2. When using the X button to clear a search, the focus indicator has been corrected to highlight the button.

  3. The text overlay over image pills has been updated to include a white background that provides a contrast to the text.

  4. Added alt text to Custom Pills to use the pill name for screen readers and added WCAG 2.1 AA image accessibility guidelines to the Configure home page documentation.

  5. Users can tab from the Edition information through the search field and continue to the first Syndetics widget on the page.

  6. Updated the green and red grid view icons for better contrast ratios.

Bug Fixes

No Preference Selected now Translabale in all Languages

In the Patron Profile the 'No Preference Slected' string that displays when no Notification Preference has been selected by the patron was previously unavailable for translation and has now been added to the language strings for all languages with a default translation. To add the correct translation for your non-English languages see this string and modify "No preference selected" to the desired translation for each given language:

  • Line 1706: "noPreferenceSelected": "No preference selected",

Logo Can be Saved for Additional Language Headers

A problem was fixed where libraries were unable to save a logo for Global Header pages in additional languages to US English. Logos can now be loaded and saved for additional languages and should appear immediately as configured when switching the view to the desired language in Vega Discover.

"For later" Translation When Logged Out of a Patron Account

A bug was fixed where a logged in patron saw the translation in the My Bookshelf text, but a logged out patron did not.