The Support Center has moved!! See the new website https://support.goalexandria.com/ 
23.5 Release Notes
21 October 2023
This page has been moved over to https://support.goalexandria.com/release-notes/23-5-release-notes/
Can’t remember what you were just doing in Circulation? You know you can check the Transaction Log to see what happened last. Previously, the log cleared if your connection was lost or you refreshed. Now Alexandria will store your last transactions in the browser so you can always pick up where you left off!
For some of you, Scout is the perfect simple interface and you want to make it as uncomplicated as possible. Now you can go to Builder and turn off map and hold controls in Scout.
We’ve had several requests for some way to see which students have a specific textbook title (or device) checked out, and which do not. Introducing the Patron Items Out Count report. You can run this in general to see how many items patrons of a certain selection have, but more importantly, you can run it for a specific title, and see the patrons who have it checked out…and the patrons who do not have it. This report is available in Textbook Tracker only.
Important
The first time you go to Preferences > Circulation > Letters you will need to Save; this just has to do with a change in the order of the letters in the list.
New and Improved
Circulation
The Homeroom tab in Circulation now sub-sorts by patron first names to make it easier for you to view your patrons in order.
Items
- Wondering about how popular your items are? You can already find the 'most popular' items in Search; coming up, you'll be able to see the score for each title when you go to Items > Title Statistics. The popularity 'score' is relative to your collection, and ranges from 0–100...kind of like a percentage. An item with a score of 90 is really popular, and items with scores of 0 might make their way onto your next weeding list.
When you are editing a record, we stop you from conducting a search until you've saved the record.
Localization
- If you’ve tried Alexandria in Portuguese, you’ll know that a bunch of it is still just in English. This release, we’ve added more Portuguese translations to Alexandria.
Admin
- Most of our users host their data with us, but for those of you who self-host, we wanted to make things easier. Now you can forget about the ‘admin’ module of old and simply set your web and archive settings from Preferences > Setup > Self-Hosted. — For those very few of you who run an Alexandria Controller, you’ll notice a new look for our ‘new’ Database Admin.
Researcher
- Researcher timeouts will no longer happen when you’ve opened a Researcher app from Librarian. i.e. If you go from Dashboard or Builder, or use the keyboard shortcut while in Librarian to open Researcher, your session will not time out. Logging in directly to a Researcher app will still timeout according to your settings.
Fixed
- We've changed the way expired licenses display so that you have an idea of what has happened. However, dates weren't being calculated correctly, so some users were seeing these errors incorrectly. We've made adjustments so it should all work better now.
Circulation
- Circulation was remembering the study program of the item you had current last. This was not useful. Now Circulation will forget that study program when the item is cleared!
- If your policies are set to suspend patrons with overdue books, but you manually set the suspension length to 0 in Circulation, Alexandria wasn't sure what to do. Now it's been trained, and will cancel the suspension.
- We've fixed some issues with scrolling in the Transaction Log.
Patrons
- Patron History is now showing Forgiven charges more helpfully as 'forgiven' rather than as payments.
Preferences
- We've corrected text in a few places that said GG4L when it should say Clever.
This page has been moved over to https://support.goalexandria.com/release-notes/
All release notes 23.9 and onward are on the new Support Center.
Cloud-Hosted Updates
When you host with us, we take care of all updates! During these updates—the second to last or last weekend every month (Saturday and Sunday)—please plan for possible downtimes with Alexandria. And if you need to contact Customer Support over the weekend, please call us (emails are only responded to during regular business hours Monday–Friday).
Self-Hosted Updates
Once all of the Cloud-Hosted servers have been updated, we will make the update available to Self-Hosted servers.
We highly recommend you consider Cloud Hosting.
Not every version is able to update to the newest version, so the Available Updates window will only include those versions that meet your machine and version requirements.
Self-Hosted Notice - Mac
If you self-host on a Mac, hold off updating your servers to macOS 10.15 Catalina until you can update to Alexandria 22.8 or later (64-bit compatible releases).
If you self-host on a Mac, here's how to install the update on your Self-Hosted server:
- Log in to Alexandria.
- Append /admin to the end of your Alexandria URL.
- Click the Actions menu, then select Check For Updates.
- Select the update version from the list, then click Update. Your update will now download.
- The update screen will close automatically and you will be redirected to the login window.
Self-Hosted Notice - Windows
As of 2023 our self-hosted update process has changed.
If you self-host on a Windows machine and are on Alexandria 22.6 or earlier: Contact us for instructions and assistance updating to the latest version.
If you self-host on a Windows machine and are on Alexandria 22.12 or later, here's how to install the update on your Self-Hosted server:
- Log in to Alexandria.
- Append /admin to the end of your Alexandria URL.
- Click the Actions menu, then select Check For Updates.
- Select the update version from the list, then click Update. Your update will download to the Updates folder in your Alexandria Support folder.
- The download may take several minutes.
- The update screen will close automatically and you will be redirected to the login window.
- Once the installer has downloaded, and not before, quit Alexandria.
- Remove your existing Alexandria application using Add or Remove Programs in System Settings.
- Run the newly-downloaded Alexandria Installer.
Important Information
Version Numbering Change
As of 20.1, we've simplified our versioning scheme by dropping the series version. We now use the following:
- xx = academic year, beginning in June; yy = month
For example, 20.1 means:
- 20 = 2020 academic year
- 1 = The first monthly update (June)
Centralized Catalogs
If you have more sites than you are licensed for, contact our Sales team immediately at 1-800-347-6439. You can check this in Sites Management; the number of total sites plus the Union Site shows at the top, and the number you have licensed is at the bottom. The Union Site does not require an additional license.
Data Conversion
These Data Conversion notes are for Self Hosted users updating from v7 and switching from v6. If you are cloud-hosted or moving to cloud-hosted, we do everything for you!
Data conversions from older versions may not be supported. Before updating, please check the version you're currently running.
Updating from v7
If you're already running 7.17.12 or newer, you can update to the latest version. But if you're running an older version, you'll need to update a few times.
- Running 7.16.3? Update to 7.17.12 before updating to the latest version.
- Running 7.16.2? Update to 7.16.3, then to 7.17.12, before updating to the latest version.
- Running an even older version? Contact COMPanion Support for assistance. Depending on your current version, your upgrade path may go through one or more of the following: 7.15.3 → 7.16.2.6 → 7.16.3 → 7.17.12 → Current Version
Upgrading from v6
The process to update from 6.23.1 to v7 is quite a bit different than updating from a more recent version. Check out our v6 to v7 Conversion Guide for more information.
Running 6.22.9 or older? Update to 6.23.1, then to 7.17.12, before updating to the latest version.
Data conversion can take up to 10 minutes for a single database of average size or longer for larger collections and Centralized Catalogs, during which time the program will be inaccessible in your browser. Do not fear; it's still working. If you're concerned, check your server logs for a progress update.
