Evergreen 2.4 overview
This is a major release, which means that new features can be introduced and significant architectural and infrastructural changes can occur.
Minor releases are limited to bug fixes; no new features are allowed.
Important release dates for 2.3
Important release dates for 2.4
Alpha release: February 27, 2013
Beta release: March 13, 2013
Final release: April 3, 2013
Bugfix support ends: April 2014
Security support ends: July 2014
Committed features
The following features have already been committed to the release branch and were generated by walking through the git commit log for master as of February 14, 2013.
Catalogue
Show Hold Patron Name in TPac: When looking up patron information for hold placement via the staff client in TPac the hold patron name is now shown next to the entered barcode
Add graphic 880 field support for search result and record details display
Circulation
Make patron indicators (such as “See notes”) in the Patron user interface clickable.
Display, and enable sorting by, call number affixes in the Simplified Hold Pull List
Warn that a patron’s card is about to expire when their account is brought up in the staff client (warning threshold is configurable)
Cataloguing
Support barcode autocompletion in copy buckets
Add Item Attribute Editor to Local Admin menu so that administrators can create and modify copy templates without having to load an actual copy
Add a link checker to verify that links in 856 fields are still valid
Acquisitions
Infrastructure
Add SIP option to use SIP date format for due dates
Make many more interfaces capable of being translated (requires further work to expose the translatable strings and to actually translate them)
Sample data set that includes bibs, call numbers, copies, patrons, and transactions to simplify testing and reproducing bugs
Add a preference for default search pane (for example, Numeric or Expert instead of Advanced)
Add workstation-level preferences for search library and preferred library (overriding the staff account preferences)
Support RDA 264 field for publisher info and publication date
QueryParser rewrite and full-text search rewrite to address limitations in advanced search and to improve search performance
Possible features
The following features are drawn from the branches that have been proposed for the 2.4 release (specifically the wishlist subset) and have code waiting to be tested and committed. If the code is found to contain significant problems that cannot be fixed and retested as clean, or if there is no testing performed for a given feature, then the code will not be integrated into the 2.4 release.
If there are particular features that we would like to see make it into the 2.4 release, we should be putting resources towards testing and providing feedback on these branches. If there are features that we desire that are not on this list, we should be putting resources towards creating those feature branches.
Catalogue
Circulation
Prevent creating user accounts with “bad” barcodes (where “good” is defined via a per-library setting)
Generate a list of phone numbers for automated calling systems to advise patrons of holds and overdues
Ability to purge holds history for patron privacy
Prevent users from editing their email address / user name / phone notification preference fields (per skin)
Add an option to prevent users from following links to sites outside of the catalogue itself (intended for public catalogue kiosks)
Include “wrong pickup library” holds in clear-expired-holds list
Show pre-catalogued barcode in warning dialogue to enable staff to recognize whether the barcode was misscanned
Support finer-grained floating behaviour for copies (so they can float within just a system, or a set of libraries, rather than across the entire consortium)
Add the ability to print a receipt for a single item, rather than for all items checked out to a user
Add more user name fields to simplified hold pull list
Cataloguing
Acquisitions
Support authenticated Z39.50 servers in MARC federated search
Add a per-provider setting for the default number of copies to order
Support default record-matchpoint settings on a per-library basis when loading records
Infrastructure
Create an “Standalone Client” shortcut in the Windows installer
Teach Fieldmapper (Perl) to record and expose field datatype
SIP: Identify if an item was captured for a hold queue
Update Dojo attributes in anticipation of future Dojo compatibility requirements
Staff client: Make CTRL-Click in staff client open results in a new tab
Reports: Alphabetize fields contained in each source
Remove some hardcoded install settings that inhibit proper packaging on major Linux distributions
Prevent invalid notification templates from being saved
SIP: Support “Renew all” action
SIP: Support “Cancel hold” action