Pardon the mess! The Support Center is undergoing construction. 
21.1 Release Notes
10 June 2021
Highlights
We've got more on Researcher statistics, Reports, and Textbook Tracker. Take a look at what's new!
Are patrons actually checking Bulletins? How much was Search used in September vs. October? Answer these questions and more with the new Researcher Monthly Usage report!
See our Researcher Statistics article for information on using this report and the Researcher Queries export.
Thanks to Holly from Churchill Co. High School for this idea!
Copy List is now in Textbook Tracker. See a comprehensive list of each textbook’s copies, including their statuses, locations, and more.
Now you can include cover art in the Overdue Items Notice report’s email format! This will help patrons and parents more easily identify those items. (Librarian only)
We’ve got more helpful Reports updates for you! Take a look below for details. You can expect more helpful changes in the next few releases.
We've added a lot of cool new features over the year.
New & Improved
Import/Export
- Removed Copy ID from imports and exports.
Items
- Added ebook accession statistics! When patrons click ebook links in Researcher, those now get recorded as title statistics. You can see those stats in Items > Actions menu > Title statistics, and in future releases the numbers will be included in reports.
Preferences
- Added Gumdrop Books to our Services Preferences. In the future, you’ll be able to automatically import Gumdrop Books.
- Updated Security Preferences to match the new and renamed Reports categories.
Reports
Most of these changes apply to both Alexandria Librarian and Alexandria Textbooks.
- Updated to the Overdue Items Notice report, Overdue Items and Unpaid Charges Notice report, and Unpaid Charges Notice report:
- Shows patron location by default.
- Letter to Parents format is now a checkbox option for the Letter format (Address to %Additional Contact%).
- Removed Letters with Summary and Self Mailer formats.
- Cleaned up the 2 Per Page and 4 Per Page formats.
- Integrated the Lost Items Charge Notice report into the Unpaid Charges Notice report by adding options for what kind of charges to include. Because of this, the Lost Items Charge Notice report has been moved to the Legacy category and will eventually be phased out.
- Improved the Temporary Items Information report:
- The 1 Line Landscape format is now a Landscape checkbox option for the 1 Line format.
- Integrated the Complete format into the Detailed format since they are very similar.
- For the 1 Line format, we removed the call number since it isn’t relevant.
- Renamed Barcode column to Patron Barcode and Copy Barcode.
- Updated formatting for the Detailed format, including replacing call number with location.
- Added a new Charges and Overdue Fines report, which is a combination of the old Complete, Charges Only, and Fines Only reports. Here are some things to note:
- It can be found in the Charges / Payments category.
- Use options to see only charges, only fines, or both.
- The Charges and Overdue Fines – Complete, Charges and Overdue Fines – Charges Only, and Charges and Overdue Fines – Fines Only reports have now been moved to the Legacy category, meaning they will be phased out in the future. If you currently use any of those reports, we recommend creating a new Charges and Overdue Fines report using the options to indicate what you want to see.
Textbook Tracker only has the Charges and Overdue Fines – Complete report, which has been moved to the Charges / Payments category.
- The Charges and Overdue Fines – Complete report will now show results when sorting by grade.
Self-Service
- While in /SelfServiceInOut, patrons can once again return to the In/Out selection window by clicking on the “I’m Done” button even when no transactions have been made.
System
- As always, improved performance and reliability!
Utilities
- Added Patron Policy and Days Overdue selections to the Declare Checked Out Copies Lost utility.
- Saved reports, utilities, and exports now properly save Location/Homeroom.
Self-Hosted Notice
If you self-host on a Mac, hold off updating your servers to macOS 10.15 Catalina. Alexandria will be 64-bit compatible in a future release. We highly recommend you consider Cloud Hosting.
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.
