TRUST THE PROCESS

To All Library Staff:

Thank you all for your continued patience and flexibility. We understand the importance of holds in our system, and want to resolve these issues as quickly and as cleanly as possible. After many hours of work and brainstorming, SirsiDynix has developed a plan to resolve our holds issues. In short, all holds will be set to unavailable, and libraries will have to check in every item that is currently on their hold shelf. Please read on for an overview of tasks libraries should perform tonight and tomorrow, as well as a detailed explanation.

Overview of Responsibilities at Member Libraries Tonight and Tomorrow

Tonight:

· Immediately stop filling holds from your hold shelf. These will all be checked in tomorrow. Consider removing all wrappers and slips tonight to save time in the morning.

· Continue operating in offline for the rest of the day

· After completing your day in offline, log into the production server to upload offline data on each workstation that operated in offline mode today

Tomorrow:

· SWAN will open access to the Symphony production server at 7 am

· Consider bringing library staff in as early to check in all items from the hold shelf and all incoming delivery. Library staff may come in as early as 7 am to start this process.

· Resume circulation at your regular opening time

· Continue reporting issues to help@swanlibraries.net

Details

Tonight, libraries will continue to operate in offline mode while SirsiDynix runs a script in the background to set all holds to “unavailable.” This is basically pressing the reset button on all of our holds that have been problematic. Because holds are being set to unavailable, please stop circulating items currently on your hold shelves immediately. Libraries with open hold shelves will want to physically remove those items, or otherwise make them physically unavailable to patrons.

Much like this past weekend, libraries should only be checking out or renewing in offline mode. At closing today, libraries will need to log into the production server on each machine that circulated any items in offline mode. This will upload the files to our server, and we will process these transactions over night. Please upload these files as close to 9 PM or your scheduled closing time as possible so we can begin processing them as soon as possible.

In the morning, all libraries will need to do the following, in this order.
Everyone must do as instructed or this process to fix all the holds across SWAN will fail.

1. Check in each item on the hold shelf (or that was removed from the hold shelf on Thursday night). Follow whatever prompts the system gives you, printing a new hold slip, hold wrapper, or routing label as prompted. Trust the process.

Follow the prompt even if it will not fill the hold for the current patron. It may tell you to route an item back to the home library, or to another library to fill a hold. Even if the system requires you to fill a hold that you normally would not, please follow the prompts exactly. It is important to follow the instructions from Workflows in order to complete the reset that SirsiDynix is starting on our system tonight.

2. Check in each item in your incoming delivery and other items that you have held during this process. Again, it is imperative that you trust the process and follow the prompts given by Workflows. It is possible that it will prompt you to send your nonholdable items to another library to fill a hold. Please follow the instructions and send the item.

You may wish to make a note of the barcode to submit to SWAN for review later, but in this case, please send all items as instructed by Workflows.

Again, it is imperative that all prompts from Workflows are followed. *If prompts are ignored, this process to fix all the holds across SWAN will fail.*

You may want to consider bringing staff in early to begin processing these items. SWAN staff will be available beginning at 7 AM. Processing these items prior to opening the library may help relieve confusion after opening, and will give you a chance to get some of your hold shelf repopulated. After processing your hold shelf and incoming delivery, you may resume regular library operations.

Please note, the pull list will not be run until we are confident that these hold issues have been resolved and libraries have successfully completed the tasks listed above. Similarly, we will not run the clear hold shelf report tomorrow or until further notice.

Please continue to report any anomalies to SWAN at help@swanlibraries.net, being sure to include item and patron barcodes or control numbers where you encounter issues. Without these barcodes, we are not able to troubleshoot your issue.

Please note: SIP connectivity will remain down tomorrow morning. That means that any services or equipment that are not authenticating or functioning today while in offline mode will continue to not authenticate or function tomorrow morning. We will send a SWANcom when SIP connectivity is restored.

Thank you again for your patience. Please continue to direct questions and reports to help@swanlibraries.net or 630-734-5153. We will continue to send updates via SWANcom and will begin an FAQ about this process at https://support.swanlibraries.net/content/migration-hold-fix-instructions-faq

Aaron Skog
SWAN Executive Director
125 Tower Drive
Burr Ridge, IL 60527
Phone: 630.734.5122
Fax: 630.734.5056
aaron.skog@railslibraries.info
http://support.swanlibraries.net