[Evergreen-general] Planning the next EG Offline Interface

Mon Mar 14 14:01:51 EDT 2022

I think I would side towards staff either needing to click through a warning that they are entering offline mode or having to open a separate program, as I basically agree with what Michele Morgan said earlier.  I think either would be a useful reminder that this isn't something that should be done because their connection timed out once.  

I would also add a +1 to Michele's suggestion of it being seamless.  (ie the interface uploads transactions when a connection is available without human assistance)  I would rather the system upload the transactions that work and then dump a report to the local admin about transactions that failed.  For security, such notice could be generic ("some offline transactions from station [EG WORKSTATION NAME] failed to load at [TIMESTAMP]") and the detailed info kept inside EG, but accessible in such a way that the local admin could sit at their computer and make those manual corrections rather than going around to every workstation.  

In addition to making it easier for the local/consortium admins to manage these situations, I think this would be useful for all staff/improve customer service since I've seen where in the stress of dealing with an ILS down/internet down/power outage that staff who do not know how to load offline transactions will not remember to tell anyone that they used the interface and the transactions get found (hopefully) the next day by someone who know what to do with them.  

Have a good day.

Joe

Joe Knueven, Director

Wilmington Public Library

268 N South Street

Wilmington, OH 45177

937-382-6165 x101 (direct)

937-382-2417 (public)

---- On Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:37:32 -0400 Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote ----

Just to clarify one point, staff can access the current Evergreen offline interface at any time.  The PC does not have to be offline.  Just go to Circulation => Offline Interface and select one of the action tabs (Checkout, Renew, etc.).  They work fine.

-b 

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:31 PM Diane Disbro via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

Thank you all for working on this! Front line staff will really appreciate it.
Diane Disbro

Pronouns: she/her

Circulation Coordinator

Scenic Regional Library

251 Union Plaza Drive

Union, MO 63084

(636) 583-0652 ext  110

mailto:ddisbro at scenicregional.org

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:17 PM Morgan, Michele via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

Since it's Pi Day, I'm just tossing out a pie in the sky idea about this.

It would be great if offline circulation could be seamless, or nearly so. Many selfcheck kiosks have this feature. They continue to record transactions when the ILS goes offline, and automatically send them when connectivity restores.

I can't offer any suggestions as to how to accomplish this, but it would be awesome!

But given Bill's original question, there are merits to an installed application, a few that come to mind are:

Better control over where it's installed.

The ability to install it when a workstation is offline.

Easier to train staff since it can be invoked at any time.

Still hoping for Pi in the sky, though.

Michele

--

Michele M. Morgan, Technical Support Analyst

North of Boston Library Exchange, Danvers Massachusetts

mailto:mmorgan at noblenet.org

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:04 PM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

Thanks for all the input, everyone.

JFYI, I chose JavaFX for my experiments because:

1. Hatch uses it, duh, specifically for HTML rendering of print content.

2. It's cross-platform

3. JavaFX has its own markup language (FXML), which comes with a handy "scene builder" for quickly creating/editing UI's. 

4. Companies outside of Oracle, like Microsoft [1] and Amazon [2], are now creating open source builds of OpenJDK.

I'm open to other technologies, though.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/java/openjdk/download

[2] https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/

-b

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:18 PM Jason Boyer via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

I do like the idea of an installed application. If there is any issue getting the offline webapp to work staff generally use Excel or Notepad anyway, so something purpose built would be a big step up from that. These (tried and true, long-term battle tested, heh) alternatives show that a dedicated offline utility wouldn’t be required to use Evergreen, just a major UI / UX improvement over some of the alternatives.

The main issue with the existing offline interface is that if anything answers on port 80 at all you can’t get into it. So if you have an ldirectord fallback (for a maintenance page, for instance) the only way to get into offline is basically to unplug the cable from the staff machine and try again. The background download of block lists and other assorted settings is also a great idea. Saving things to a system-wide location (like %APPDATA% on Windows) will also prevent libraries with per-user OS accounts from accidentally finding and uploading old transactions long after they were saved.

Making it safer for staff to wipe out their Chrome history is also a good benefit. (Hopefully they don’t often need to anyway, but making it impossible to lose pending circs this way is an unqualified improvement.)

Searching around a bit for other systems shows a variety of options:

Alma, Atriuum, and Sierra use a locally installed utility.

Aleph, and Symphony still use locally installed clients that also handle offline circ.

FOLIO doesn’t handle it.

Polaris has a browser offline client.

Koha can use a browser offline client, FF plugin, or locally installed utility. I haven’t done a deep dive, but I’ve been given the impression from some email list postings that the local util is generally preferred. I don’t know the current status of the plugin, but requiring a specific browser definitely limits its appeal.

As for specific technologies, I’m like Jeff; we don’t want another Dojo situation, but am otherwise fairly open. I haven’t messed with Java much since college but if we want something that’s cross platform that’s pretty much the choice. I’m not familiar enough with JavaFX to know what additions the FX brings and so don’t have an opinion on that yet.

Jason

-- 
Jason Boyer
Senior System Administrator
Equinox Open Library Initiative
mailto:JBoyer at equinoxOLI.org
+1 (877) Open-ILS (673-6457)
https://equinoxOLI.org/

On Mar 11, 2022, at 12:23 PM, Jeff Davis via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

My other concern about a standalone app would be picking a tool that won't become obsolete in a few years (XUL, old Dojo) and doesn't require a ton of work to stay up-to-date (Angular).  I have no opinion on JavaFX specifically, but we are already using Java for Hatch, so maybe there is precedent?

I personally like the idea of a standalone app if it's easy to manage and use.  I think our staff have found the current offline UI to be unintuitive and kind of finicky.

Does anyone know offhand how other ILS products deal with offline?

Jeff

On 3/11/22 7:46 AM, Terran McCanna via Evergreen-general wrote:
My initial thoughts on a separate app:
Advantages:
 - A lot of staff tend to be confused by the concept of an offline web app and find it easier to understand an installed program.
 - It would get around the need to load pages into cache before using it for the first time, which staff don't usually understand.
 - It could potentially be installed from a flash drive to a computer that is not connected to the internet.
Disadvantages:
 - Staff would need to install it and do upgrades on every machine.
 - It would be more difficult to locally customize and it would create a separate product for the developers to maintain.
Questions:
 - How would it handle the workstation name? Would staff need to set it up at first use? (Note that it would be useful for it to have a workstation name that indicated that the offline app was used for each transaction so we could identify offline transactions in reports/logs.)
 - Would the staff client still be able to tell if there were pending offline transactions to upload? (Note that it would be nice to see this alert once logged into the staff client as well as on the login page.)
 - Would this resolve the problem of not being able to download large patron block lists? (PINES hasn't been able to download block lists at all since moving to the web client.)

Terran McCanna, PINES Program Manager
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On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 10:28 AM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
   Hi All,
   I'm thinking of turning my attention to porting the Evergreen
   Offline interface as we continue our march away from AngularJS.     Unlike other interfaces, where the end goal is pretty
   straightforward -- just migrate it to Angular -- I think the Offline
   UI would benefit from some discussion.
   I've long been a proponent of not requiring external software to use
   the browser client.  Once an EG server is up, just open your
   browser, and you're good to go.
   Hatch is obviously external software, but I don't consider it a
   requirement to use the client.  It smooths over some aspects of the
   workflow, but it does not provide functionality that can only be
   done with Hatch.
   However, I have also heard some comments in IRC to the effect that
   having a purely web-based offline interface may be causing some
   consternation / complications.   I don't recall the context or the
   specific concerns, only the seed stuck in my mind.
   Because of these conflicting ideas, I thought it best to get some
   feedback.
   Here I propose two options to consider that I think cover the
   extreme ends of the spectrum.  There may be middle ground or other
   options entirely.
   1. Create a progress web app in Angular that performs exactly as the
   AngularJS version.  There will be slight style variations and some
   differences to how the offline code is managed (Angular has a nice
   set of tools for progress web apps) as with the other Angular pages,
   but it would essentially be a direct port.
   2. Create a standalone application that's just an offline
   interface.  It would be a separate program you run on your PC.     Because I don't like showing up empty handed, I've created a proof
   of concept JavaFX app at https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx
   <https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx> complete with screen
   shots.  (I can explain the choice of JavaFX later as needed).
   Both have pluses and minuses.  Before we get too into the weeds,
   though, I'm curious if there is an obvious direction people feel we
   should take, specific technology notwithstanding.  (Also, by all
   means, let's get into the weeds :)
   I welcome your questions and feedback!
   -b
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