Latest platform updates - June 2022

We’re looking forward to connecting with Partners at the upcoming ALA conference in DC later this week. If you’re able to make it, come and join us in The Tiny Library where we will be showcasing all things Communico! it’ll also provide a chance for you to explore some exciting major platform updates, including:  

• The upgrade to Connect (formerly Engage), our customer- facing mobile app 
• The upgrade to Roam, our point of service staff-facing mobile app 

 As well as two recent additions to the Communico product suite: 

• Read- bridging the digital divide with immediate and affordable access to your digital catalog. Your customers can ‘Search, download and read’ all within your library branded environment.  
• Interact  - empower your customers to self-serve. From self-check to room reservations, event registration, and beyond.    

In addition to these large projects, I’m also pleased to share with you some smaller recent changes to the platform. As always, if you have any questions or would like some extra support with any of these changes (or anything else!), our support team is on hand [is there a link to email support or something that’d be good here?]. 

Best, 

Shiv Myles

VP of Product

RESERVE

ENHANCEMENT: Setup & breakdown times displayed for all types of room bookings in Control Panel  

Managing your spaces is no easy task! We’ve made a small change to the platform to help ensure that things run smoothly. We’ve added any setup and breakdown times, linked to a room, to both the ‘reserve via the basket’ and ‘edit’ views. 

HOW IT WORKS:

Previously: when editing a room reservation, which is not tied to an event, within the control panel, setup and breakdown times were not displayed. Likewise, reservations made using the basket feature did not display setup or breakdown blocks. 

Now: Setup/breakdown times have been added to the both these views, to make it clearer when a room is and is not available.  

Basket reservation view:

Edit reservation view:

SCHEDULE

ENHANCEMENT: Status field added to Appointments API  

Partners who maintain their own reporting or dashboards can now report or display the status of appointments from schedule. For example, partners wishing to analyze the number of no-shows in their own reporting package can now do so by using the status field.  

Status fields 

The possible values that can be returned are: 

• PREPARATION_COMPLETE 
• COMPLETE 
• NO-SHOW 

• CANCELLED 
• APPROVED*  

 * Approved as a status has been added ahead of mediation being added to Schedule. Until mediation functionality is added, there will be no appointments with this status.  

 HOW IT WORKS:

• In the  ‘GET /v3/schedule/appointments’ endpoint, you now have the ‘status’ option. This is documented on the /docs page, it will default to all bookings where no status is specified. Further details can be found here.  
   
• In the ‘GET /v3/schedule/appointments/{appointmentId}' endpoint , you can now request the optional ‘status’ field in the 'fields’ box. This will return the status of the booking and these statuses. 
  

CONNECT

ENHANCEMENT: Default pickup location now matches customers ‘preferred’ pickup location (Polaris only). 

The Polaris ILS gives your customers the option to set a ‘preferred pickup location’. This can be different to their ‘home branch’, entered at registration. 

The Communico App usually defaults a customer’s pickup location, for holds, to their ‘home branch’. However, as Polaris customers can set a ‘preferred pickup location’ within your library OPAC, we’ve enhanced our approach to default to this, where one is set.  

HOW IT WORKS:

• For Polaris customers, where a default pickup location has been set, the default pickup location will now honor this over the registration branch. Where the preferred pickup location is not recognized or is not entered, the system will default to the registration branch.  
• This will apply to all Polaris customers using Engage. An app update will be required for this change to take effect. 

 We will begin updating Polaris partner apps from June 20. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to our Support team.