Author: Jamen Mcgranahan

Blocking unwanted calls

3 Comments on Blocking unwanted calls

Most of us already have in place a method to block spam emails. And with our cell phones, we can easily block calls. But what about Skype for Business? Is there a way to block unwanted calls there? I am here to tell you that yes, there is way to do this, but it does require a little effort. First and foremost, you have to know what number you are wanting to block. Then, we have to create a Contact within Outlook (which is integrated with Skype for Business).

Open up Outlook, go to “New Items” and select “Contact”:

Enter a recognizable name, something like “Blocked Contacts”. Enter a bogeous email address (something like blocked@bad.com). And then under Phone numbers, enter the phone number you want to block. Be sure to include the +1 (for US) and the area code.

Now, go to Skype for Business and search for the contact you created:

Right-click on the contact, go to “Change Privacy Relationship” and select “Blocked contacts”:

You will then get a message, stating that once this user is blocked, they will not be able to contact you in any way – including phone calls (which is what we want). Just click “OK” and voila!, you are now blocking that unwanted caller. Now please note, you can add more numbers to this contact you created, but only up to 7 numbers. After that, you would need to create another Contact and do the same process as above. Hopefully you will not need to use this a lot, but for those annoying fax calls or telemarketers, it might come in handy.

(Thanks goes to Sele Training who provided a YouTube video explaining this, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CN44dZ6Syc)

Build Your Own Search Widget

Did you know that you can create your own search box, customized to included limits such as your Library or even a search query? It is readily available to anyone who would like to try it out and is found here:

https://apps.library.vanderbilt.edu/primo-search/

Where can you use this widget? If you have a Libguide and want to actually “guide” students to resources, you can do so by providing this search widget. This is just one of many tools we have available. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Your LTDS Team

My Account to EResources

One of the benefits of using the same authentication system for both Alma and EZProxy is that we can offer true Single-Sign-On services. This is why we strongly encourage users to log into “My Account” first (“Sign In” on https://catalog.library.vanderbilt.edu/).

This does assume the users have accounts in Alma – accounts that are using VUNet ID as their Primary Identifier and are set as External. By doing this, when users log into “My Account”, their information will automatically pass them through to other resources that they are authorized for.

How to add your signature in Web Outlook

If you have even used the web Outlook client, you might have noticed that it does not maintain the signature you might have set in your Outlook client on your desktop. This brief tutorial will help alleviate this.

First, log into https://email.vanderbilt.edu/ using your VUNet ID and password.

Look in the right-hand corner for “See all options” and click it.

This results in the following screen:

Now, click on “Settings”

The first box you see is the E-Mail Signature box. Put in here whatever you would like. What this does is that anytime you use the web client and you send out an email, it will add your signature to the bottom. It allows you to present yourself in a consistent manner.

Google Chrome Extensions

Chrome allows the ability to customize your experience with your browser by providing a number of extensions via the “chome web store” (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions?hl=en) which can be used in a variety of ways. At the LibTech 2019 Conference (https://libtechconf.org/), Olivia Moris of Metronet demonstrated several of the ones she uses daily. These are all free and readily available. Pick one and try it out for yourself!

Boomerang – allows you to decide when to send an email. Also can let you know if the email has been sent has not been addressed

Clockify – timer

Pocket – storage container for things you want to read later; downloads articles on whatever device you are using to read later

Rescue Time – tracks how long you stay on a tab

Stay Focusd – set timer allowed for sites

ToDoIst – a to do list

News Guard – verified news sources for credibility

Screencastify – create a free screen cast; 10 minute limit per video

Panic Button – Hide all your tabs at once with one single button and restore them later.

And many, many more, found here: https://bit.ly/libtechextensions

 

Alma: Notifications Widget

In order to keep up with important information related directly with Alma, it is vital you have the “Notifications” widget installed on your Alma dashboard. To do this, log into Alma. Then, click on the + sign over to the right of your name:

It will bring up a new window, asking you which widgets you would like to install:

Click the box next to “Notifications”:

Then click the “x” in the top right corner of the “Manage Widgets” box to close it:

Then voila! You are receiving notifications:

This box will be used for informing the staff of important updates, enhancements, down time, OCLC issues, anything that might relate to Alma. Please install this widget in order to stay informed. Thank you!

Your friendly neighborhood LTDS

What has LTDS been doing the week of 8/31-9/6

Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
* Replaced Alumni IDs with Alt-IDs (from Sirsi)
* Continued to work on clean-up projects including the duplicate charges
* Configure Sandbox access
* Continue working on notification letters

Desktop/Application support (Judy, Matt, Nancy, Jamen)
* Deployed a few new laptops
* Processed new and released ETD’s/troubleshoot ETD’s
* Ordered equipment, computers and software
* Troubleshooting hardware issues
* Worked with VUIT on increasing resources to improve performance

Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott)
* DIL got up to full speed with a working plan for scanning
* Continued to upload items into the system
* Scanned items for upcoming Divinity exhibit
* Created book batches to prepare items for ingest
* Ingesting ESSSS scans & troubleshooting

Web/Web applications (Jodie, Jamen, Matt)
* Drafted document detailing the election process for Library Advisory Council
* Resolved several issues with the commodore-r-group repo/website in Github
* Renewed & installed SSL certificates
* Setting up “From the Director’s Chair” box on Biomedical home page
* Continued cleaning up formatting issues
* Implemented accessibility improvements on Heard and division home pages

Other (all):
* Triage inform tickets
* Alumni access issues
* Answering Libanswers related to Alma/Library Catalog
* Training of LTDS Student Assistants
* Calibrate and test 3D printer upgrade
* Begin adding LogMeIn and local accounts to podium computers

Inform tickets resolved through Thursday:

How to “Share Your Desktop”

Occasionally, we in LTDS will ask you to share your desktop with us. Now if you are not familiar with this concept, you may wonder how you are going to bring your desk to us and/or how that is going to help.

What we mean by “share your desktop” is for you to launch an application that will essentially show us what you are seeing at that very moment on your computer screen. How is this done? Actually, it is fairly simple. You know that application we chat with – the application that all of us have access to? It’s former name was Lync, but now it is called Skype for Business. When you are chatting with one of us, and we ask you to share your desktop, if you look at the bottom of your chat window, you will see a number of different icons. The one you want to click on looks like a monitor:

When you click that icon, you will see the following options:

Select “Present Desktop” and voila! You have just shared your desktop with us. See – pretty simple. And in fact, anyone who is using Lync can do this, so if you have a colleague in your department who is tech savy and you are chatting with them, you can share your screen with them so they can see what is happening. They may even request control which essentially allows them to remotely “fix” your machine. Once done, you just end the session and the sharing stops. If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask! We are here to help.

 

Technical Freeze Starts This Weekend – So What Can I Do??

1 Comment on Technical Freeze Starts This Weekend – So What Can I Do??

What is going to happen this weekend? What will I be able to do? What can be done during the Technical Services freeze? These are all valid and reasonable questions, which I will try to address in this post. No fear, though – you will still be able to work!

Starting this weekend (June 22/23), as soon as Mary Ellen completes the fiscal year roll over (after which she will notify myself), I will launch several scripts on the Acorn server in order to do the full extract of our Symphony data. This is a server-load intensive process and requires several hours of work, during which time Workflows/Acorn will be impacted. You may see slowness. You may have difficulty logging into Workflows. Acorn (web catalog) may be down. DiscoverLibrary will only be impacted if it has trouble picking up the Real-Time Availability information from Symphony, but searching should be fine. My Account feature may also be impacted. But please be patient. We have to do this because Ex Libris needs the data no later than Wednesday, June 27; but our goal is to get the extract done by Monday, June 25, so we can review the data for any errors.

In addition to Acorn, we also need to provide Ex Libris a full extract of our SFX and Verde data. Those processes do not take too long to complete and since they are on separate servers, will not have a huge impact on library services.

But Symphony is a different beast. You may wonder why it takes so long. This is because not only are we extracting all of the data (which, by the way, are millions of records), but we also have to modify some of the data in order to meet Ex Libris’s data requirements (specifically, the Invoices and Orders). This is where it gets tricky, which is why we want a day or two in order to review the data to make sure it is as accurate as we can get it before sending it off. We know from experience that we cannot always depend on the scripts to run correctly all of the time, so we need to be able to re-run the scripts if it obvious there was a problem.

During this time, we specifically request that no large reports be ran because that will slow the process down even further. If it is apparent that a report is running and it taking longer than normal, I will kill the report which means you will need to re-run it once the extract completes. We want to get this done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. In order to do that, we need to minimize the number of processes running on the server, which includes reports.

Once the extract is complete, everything should return to normal. However, if you modify a bibliographic record, add an item record, pay an invoice or any other Technical Services activity after the extract completes, that data will be LOST because we will not be doing another extract of our entire system. On July 18, there will be a Circulation Freeze after which we will need to use Alma’s Offline Circulation Utility for circulation transactions. This means all functions within Symphony should be discontinued. At this time, I will extract patrons, loans, and holds from Symphony and send to Ex Libris. And on July 20, we go live with Alma.

Between June 22 and July 20, you can still use Symphony for running reports, as long as they are read-only reports (not writing). This would be a good time for any statistical data you need to gather. You could also be looking for problems that are currently in Symphony (problem records, diacritics, etc.) and make note of these so that at Go Live, you have a list of items you can check to see if they are any better. You can also compare with our Alma instance at that time to see how the data looks. Alma will be available during most of this time until Ex Libris copies over the data, so you can continue testing and training and honing your skills. This would also be a good time to go through the various training modules available from Ex Libris (https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/), especially if you are unclear on how to do something, so there is plenty of work to be done.

We are trying to make this as painless as possible, but take a deep breath. Learn. Live. Laugh – and have fun. We are all in this together!

VUIT Update

On Sunday, March 4, VUIT will be updating the authentication system used by Vanderbilt [Ping] starting at 6am. VUIT will be doing this as a rolling update so we do not expect any down time. Areas that this affects are DiscoverLibrary, Proxy server, and several Vanderbilt systems that require log in. LTDS will keep an eye on the systems, but if you experience any issues, please let us know by submitting an INFORM. Thank you.