Millennium Offline Circulation
What happens when telecommunications fail? Grinding of teeth and pulling
of hair are usually followed by the distributions of pencils and note paper
on which to manually record transactions until the network stabilizes.
Welcome to the brave new world of telecommunications.
While it may not seem that way all the time, what with the virus and
worm road bumps that have upset network traffic repeatedly in recent
months, great strides have been made in underlying expansion of bandwidth
and improvements in the routine elements of maintaining connections.
We are still, however, far absolute 100% uptime, all the time guarantees.
The Millennium Offline Circulation module is available as a stopgap
more convenient than pencil and paper. It allows one to capture checkout,
checkin, renewal and patron registration transactions electronically
and, as soon as the connection is back, upload them into Minerva.
The Offline Circulation software can be downloaded here.
Every Minerva site should have the ID and password for this site. If
you cannot lay hands on it, contact InfoNet staff.
The online manual at http://minerva.maine.edu/manual contains
information on use of the software package. Start at entry #100138.
Setup
-
Download and run the software (offlinecirc2006_3.exe as of July, 2007). This is a self-extracting executable
install program.
-
Start the program and select View... Preferences from the pulldown
menus.
-
Enter your Statistics Group number. (If you skip this step you will not see offline transactions in your regular circulation reports.)
-
If you do not use the standard 14-digit barcodes for you patrons, uncheck the "check barcode validity" option.
-
If you will be registering new patrons while the online system
is down, you will need to define Patron Registration Settings. The
tags and typical prompts are shown below. You can vary the
order and modify the prompts, but the tags always mean the same. You
should enter the most common values for patron type and patron statistical
code.
b Barcode
n Name (lastname, firstname)
a Primary address
t Primary phone
z Email address
h Secondary address
p Secondary phone
0 (zero) Patron type
Include one, but not both of these, based on whether your patron statistical
codes are stored in Pcode3 or Pcode4:
3 Pcode3
8 Pcode4
Using Offline Circ
-
Remember that each machine running Millennium Offline Circ is independent
in terms of Preference settings, transactions captured, and uploading
of transactions. If you are using multiple machines, be sure
their settings are identical.
-
The program inserts a "b" at the beginning of every line
where you are expected to scan a barcode. Do NOT delete the "b". Enter
the barcode after it.
-
After you are back online, transactions from each circ machine must
be uploaded to the server using the File...Upload option of Millennium Off Line Circ. When asked
if the server is ready, say YES. When asked whether to erase
transactions, say NO. This gives you a second try if something
goes wrong with the initial upload. Once you have confirmed
that the upload was successful, you MUST come back to File... Erase
and get rid of the transaction to make the software ready for a future
use.
-
Once you have uploaded transactions from one or more machines running
Offline Circulation, use telnet to go to the Minerva server and "receive" them. From
the main menu, select the menu options: C - A - P - P - P. If
there were any problems with the upload, you will be offered the
chance to view a list of error messages. Contact MSL staff
if you have questions about error messages.
-
Check a couple sample transactions to be sure that they were applied
properly. If they were, go back to Offline Circ and select File...
Erase to delete the item and patron transactions just uploaded and
clear the decks for the next time the program must be used.
- If you have questions or problems, contact Deb Hensler right away. Indeed, depending on the permissions of the person attempting to accomplish step #4,
it may be necessary to ask Deb to do that step.
