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ILS - Sierra

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  1. During the Circulation Forum at this week's IUG, a few libraries brought up their continued interest in going fine free, but also shared how they still faced challenges within their respective institutions from those who felt materials would not come back.

    This is a realistic concern, especially for libraries that couple going fine free with the protracted loan periods made possible by autorenewals. It can sometimes be challenging to get customers to return things, so we appreciate the availability of patron blocks that will prevent checkouts, renewals, etc., but not penalize a customer financially, like the ability to suspend borrowing…

    10 votes

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  2. These two fields can be incorporated into searches performed within create lists but are not available among the fields that can be exported. Best title normalized is particularly helpful for data brought into a spreadsheet as the removal of special characters and diacritics can greatly improving sorts and searching.

    These fields are available via SQL, where I make frequent use of them, but for most of our users Create Lists is the only option for extracting data from the system.

    10 votes

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  3. Currently when NCIP items are returned via a sorter, SIP2 is not able to check them in. This results confusion for staff and patrons, as when staff check in the item it traps the hold once again. Currently, the only solution is to re-check out every item returned through a sorter to the patron, and then re-check it in via SDA, which adds to overall workload.

    10 votes

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  4. Previous versions of Sierra (version 5 and below) allowed the saving of usernames and passwords in the Sierra desktop app login screen. Since upgrading to 6 this functionally has been lost.

    10 votes

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  5. When using import invoices, Sierra will warn staff if they are about to process an electronic invoice that shares an invoice number with one already in the system. This can be quite helpful as it's very easy to accidentally download an invoice multiple times if you're not careful.

    However, recently one of our libraries has found that two different vendors have been producing invoices for them using the same numerical range and these are leading to false duplicate warnings.

    It would be helpful if the duplicate check compared both the invoice number and the vendor code, instead of just the…

    9 votes

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  6. Under the count use function, is it possible to add a location column? Currently, we have Title / Barcode / Count / Status. This way, when staff collects used but not checked out items and counts their usage, they can also see - at a glance - if the item belongs to a different floor/location and can separate it on the spot.

    This added information will save staff time and minimize the chance of something being misplaced.

    9 votes

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  7. We would like to see more granulated permissions for user administration, especially with assigned permissions, settings, options, workflows, etc.

    We would like the ability to assign a particular group of user accounts (e.g., circ student employees) to a specific admin (e.g., head of circulation) without assigning ALL system administration. It would be helpful for troubleshooting and having this department be able to assign macros, specific permissions, and print settings to different accounts.

    Ideally, this "group admin" would have the ability to edit settings on accounts for options, settings, and workflows. It would be great if they could clone and create…

    9 votes

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  8. As a consortium, our system has hundreds of location codes. We appreciate the new functionality to add locations to scopes ourselves, but it is cumbersome to scroll through the list of hundreds of branch entries each time to find the code you need to add. It would be helpful if there was search functionality, where you can type in the code, and it brings up the corresponding entry in the branches list for you to select.

    9 votes

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  9. Because our library does not use fines, having the "Failed to acquire fines payment lock. If not cleared, fines payments cannot be processed" message is of no utility for us. We'd love multiple users to be able to view a patron record without this message showing up.

    9 votes

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  10. The only option for eReceipts is plain text. It would be a fantastic feature to customers to be able to build a nice HTML email for them.

    9 votes

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  11. Passkeys are both easier for people to use and safer than using passwords and PINs. Passkeys allows users to sign in to their account using the same mechanism they use to unlock their device - fingerprint, face recognition, etc. There are a couple of good introductions to the benefits of Passkeys over traditional username/password credentials here:
    https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys/
    https://developers.google.com/identity/passkeys

    9 votes

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  12. Persistent Column Resizing in Summary Tab:

    Currently, users can resize columns in the Summary Tab (Orders, Items, and Holdings) during a session. However, these adjustments are not retained after the session ends, requiring users to reapply their preferred column sizes each time they log in.

    I propose an enhancement to allow users to permanently save column resizing preferences across sessions. This feature would greatly improve usability and efficiency by enabling a more customized and consistent interface tailored to individual workflows.

    This enhancement would benefit users who frequently manage data within the Summary Tab by reducing repetitive actions and ensuring a…

    9 votes

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  13. I understand that III is planning to incorporate AI functionality into the Vega platform (newsletter text, website content, etc...). I think it would be really useful to have AI data cleanup functionality developed for Sierra.

    I'm not sure exactly what this would look like but here are some potential ways this could improve catalog metadata:
    - catalog record cleanup (bad codes, incorrect codes, codes inconsistent with local practices for similar records, etc...)
    - patron record cleanup (bad codes, codes inconsistent with similar-type accounts, etc...)
    - automatic tagging of demographic (we use one of the patron codes to indicate reciprocal library…

    9 votes

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  14. I know its shocking when the subject of pop-ups in Sierra comes up that anyone would want "MORE!," but our Acquisitions staff would like to see a warning of fund spending over limit at invoicing in addition to ordering.

    Their rationale is that shipping & Mylar costs usually cannot be pre-determined. Once posting happens, the fund goes negative. Since there is no going back, like when you're about to go down the chute at the end of Splash Mountain, there should be a warning.

    9 votes

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  15. The automated tool employed by Clarivate support to update iii and iii-root passwords every 30 days has an 8 character limit, which falls short of PCI requirements (15 characters). The Sierra application server, which hosts the web page connecting to PayPal is in scope for PCI, and therefore login credentials that can edit that web page need passwords of 15 characters or more.

    9 votes

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  16. When staff opens a patron's record, add a shortcut feature that allows them to print out patron barcodes. This will really help when someone comes in and don't have their library card with them, so wants to get their barcode information

    9 votes

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  17. As I'd done in similar scenarios countless times before, yesterday, I was in the process of modifying the activeholds on my account in Sierra to change them to a newly created pickup location.

    There were several that needed changing, so I selected 'All.' However, rather than make a batch change of the half dozen or so that needed updating, Sierra cycles you through each item individually, forcing multiple arguably unnecessary clicks, when the expected & more intuitive outcome in this scenario would be to indicate the desired change once & see it changed for all selected records.

    9 votes

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  18. We are interested in being able to tap into the Days closed table programmatically but it is inaccessible to both the APIs and SQL, and doesn't even have a native export feature (though you can copy and paste it easily enough).

    Creating a SQL View for it seems the most straightforward solution, just provide access to the existing table, along with row numbers to preserve the ordering.

    8 votes

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  19. Currently, in order to maintain the out loc field in an item record while it is checked out for libraries with auto-renewal, the actual renewal location statistic group number must be zero. This is frustrating as the zero stat group number does not display in reports and we need all renewals to appear in reports. There needs to be a way to retain the out loc in an item record when the renewal stat group number is not zero.

    8 votes

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  20. When a new library card is created in a month, Sierra auto-populates the expiration date for the card as next month +3 years, but this has to be manually adjusted every month by the Circ supervisor. It would be nice if Sierra could automatically set the expiration date for library cards created every month.

    8 votes

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