Aspen Discovery 21.08.00 Release Notes

by Mark Noble on Jul 7, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.08.00 release is now available. See the Release Summary here.

Mark Noble, Aspen Discovery Lead Developer, recently commented on the release:

We hope our power users will love the new ability to cancel, freeze, and thaw holds in bulk as much as we enjoyed developing these and many more new features."

Account Integration

• Users with auto-renew preference turned off will no longer see auto-renew messages on My Checkouts page
• Users can now select multiple or all holds to suspend/freeze
• Users can now select multiple or all holds to resume/thaw
• Users can now select multiple or all holds to cancel
• If no checkouts are eligible for renew the buttons at the bottom will no longer display
• If auto-renew is turned off, they will be able to manually renew eligible titles
• If auto-renew is turned off, and an item is ineligible for manual renewal, users will see a message as to why
• If auto-renew is turned on, and an item is ineligible, users will now see a message as to why
• When manually renewing items, users will now see how many renewals they have remaining
• My Account will now display the count for holds available for pickup making it easier for mobile users to find

Browse Categories

• If a user without a home library creates a browse category, it will be assigned to the current library instance
• Users will only be able to create new Browse Category Groups if they have permission to Administer All Browse Categories.
• Browse Category pagination will only look at the total count of categories the user has access to.
• When creating a new Browse Category Group, users will now only be able to add sub-browse categories that they have access to.

Cloud Library Updates

• Remove awards and other information within parentheses while grouping titles.

eCommerce Updates

• Create settings to make fine payments using Comprise SMARTPAY.

Hoopla Updates

• When processing Hoopla titles, check the fiction element for a title to determine if the title is fiction or non-fiction.
• When grouping Hoopla titles, check for the presence of the titleTitle field. When that field exists, process titleTitle as the title and the title field as the title.

Indexing Updates

• Add the ability within Indexing Profiles to define how Unknown Audiences should be treated. Valid values are Adult, General, and Unknown.
• Correct loading Available Now At Facet values for libraries that have a single location.
• Add detection for Book + CD, Book + DVD, and CD + Book formats based on physical descriptions within the MARC record.
• Add detection for Book Club Kit - Large Print titles.
• Records with a 655 including Library of Things will now be identified with a format of Library of Things
• Video games on CD now properly show the video game format rather than CD.
• Store information about manifestations, variations, records, and items within the database to improve indexing times.
• Remove unused code related to Patron Types from Indexing

Koha Updates

• Correct placing item level holds where a not needed after date is specified.

Record Grouping Updates

• If a record is marked as not grouping with other titles, Aspen will not check for alternate titles to regroup the record.

Open Archives Updates

• Strip characters in brackets from subjects.

OverDrive Updates

• Retry calls to OverDrive up to 3 times if we receive a 404 response.
• If Aspen retrieves a 500 error from any call to an OverDrive API, make sure that product deletions do not occur.
• Remove awards and other information within parentheses while grouping titles.

Polaris Updates

• Correct counts for available and unavailable holds within the account summary.
• Load Reading History from Polaris if available.
• Properly handle holds that require confirmation when placing holds.
• Add the ability to place item level call number holds for Polaris records that have volume information filled out for one or more items.
• Detect additional error conditions when placing holds on materials within Polaris.
• Optimize indexing when no bib records have changed since the last extract.

Quipu eCARD

• Quipu eCARD can now be used as a self registration option. To enable this, you must configure settings for you eCARD account within the 3rd party enrichment section of the administration menu and then elect to use Quipu eCARD for self registration within your library settings.

Web Builder

• Fix loading pages by alias when multiple libraries within a consortia use the same alias.
• Custom forms with a required checkbox will now be a required field for submission
• Custom forms with a date field will now generate a datepicker field
• Staff Directory will correctly scope to the current library instance
• Fixed bug with consecutive row-level accordions to not properly work

Other Updates

• Buttons that open a new tab or window now have an icon indicator for being an external link
• Sideload access links will now open in a new tab.
• "Prev" button in pagination will properly send the user back to the previous page.
• Grouped work facets now have independent pluralized versions of display names.
• The facet search lock is now a Font Awesome icon instead of a graphic.
• Fixed an issue that if the first sub-browse category had a scheduled time to display, it would prevent the other sub-browse categories from displaying.
• Update to disable menu link if show login button is turned off in Library settings.
• Updates to Library Permissions.
• Cleanup git at the end of upgrades.
• When showing password fields, display placeholder text if the password has already been filled out.
• Automatically strip non printable characters from text fields in the administration interface.

Watch the 21.08 Aspen Updates in an Instant Recording