All Staff Update on Orbis 5.0 Upgrade

Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 11:54:13 -0400
To: yulibl@mailman.yale.edu
From: Melissa Wisner <m.wisner@yale.edu>
Subject: [Yulibl] All Staff Update on Orbis 5.0 Upgrade

Hello,
On behalf of the staff in ILTS I would like to take a moment to update YUL staff on the upcoming Orbis upgrade.  YUL is currently on Voyager release 2001.2.  The upgrade to the latest version, 5.0, is scheduled during the winter intercession of 2005/2006.  In addition to upgrading to 5.0, the Unicode release will also be installed at this time. 

This process will bring our Orbis database up to current standards for support of Unicode, and will also provide numerous enhancements to staff workflows in Access Services and Acquisitions.  Some enhancement highlights include:

• Circulation fine displays will filter by location
• Improved capacity to create/maintain complex serial prediction patterns in Acquisitions
• Support for non-Roman characters in Orbis OPAC and Cataloging module, including displaying and searching
• The ability to purge old records from our patron database
• Keyword indexes of local holdings records for improved searching
• CAS authentication to our Orbis OPAC

    This summer planning and preparations began for this upgrade.  Specifically:

• Detailed project plans were created
• Client testing checklists were updated
• The test server was refreshed with a current copy of our database, and then was converted to the Unicode release and then to release 5.0
• Clients were prepared for testers
• A project website was created: http://www.library.yale.edu/~lso/databaseadmin/Orbis5Upgrade.html

The real work, however, is just getting started. All Acquisitions, Cataloging, Circulation, Course Reserve, Call Slip, OPAC, record loads, reports, and Voyager local programs need to be tested by December 16, 2005.   We need this time to test, and address any problems that we may encounter on the new release.

I have been meeting with Acquisitions Support Group, Catalog Coordinating Committee, Circulation Support Group, Macro Express Group, and ILTS staff to start the process of testing release 5.0.  Additional meetings will be ongoing with PIC, and the Voyager module staff testers.

For more information on the 5.0 with Unicode upgrade, please visit the Orbis 5 Upgrade website at http://www.library.yale.edu/~lso/databaseadmin/Orbis5Upgrade.html This is intended to be a place to keep all staff apprised of progress on the upgrade testing.  New information will be added regularly, including any bugs that testers discover, and updates will be recorded on our test plans.

If you have questions or concerns about the upgrade, please forward them to me.


Sincerely,
Melissa Wisner
Production Systems Manager
Integrated Systems & Programming
 

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