SirsiDynix Symphony Update 8/3

Big thanks to everyone for effectively handling the problems created by the network issues on Thursday afternoon. We are working with City ITD and SirsiDynix to find the cause and prevent future disruptions. If you do need to switch to offline mode, be sure to alert the IT Helpdesk that you are having problems and doing this, and when you go back online, notify the Helpdesk again so that your offline transactions get uploaded to the system. Remember that Offline Procedures are posted on the Staff Training Portal.

Updates:
New Books--A number of issues related to cataloging, ordering and receiving materials have been resolved. Look for new books, many to fill customer holds, to start arriving in the next few days. We continue to work through AV issues.
Holds--Most of you should now be retrieving your Holds Reports and Clear Hold Shelf reports from the Intranet. These reports are longer than you may be used to. This is the result of not having run reports in awhile but more importantly, it is the result of how Symphony treats holds. Many holds that had stopped paging in III (they had already paged through all owning locations but had not expired) have been reactivated in Symphony. Symphony does not stop paging unexpired holds until the hold is filled or all circulating items have been marked missing.
Hold notifications--Customers for whom we do not have email addresses should now be receiving phone calls when their holds are ready for pick-up. This took awhile to set-up which is why we did not run clear hold shelf reports immediately.
Periodicals--We have successfully loaded the missing periodical barcodes into Symphony. This means that when you go to circulate your new periodicals, you will not need to attach the barcode to the Item on the Fly record. Please continue to use the Google spreadsheet method to check-in your new periodicals. We are working to create check-in records in Symphony for each subscription but this is a slow process.
Item on the Fly--Felicia Brisco will be sending out procedures shortly. The most important thing to remember is to make sure that the item home location is HOU-LMS. This will send the item in to Library Materials Services when it is returned so that we can catalog and process it properly. Symphony does not have a pop-up message to warn you when an item on the fly is checked in so we are depending on the home location to do this.

Message from Marcia Chapman, manager of ILL:
There are some items that we received during the transition from III that we processed to a generic interlibrary loan record. Not all of these migrated to Sirsi, so you will probably get the item not found message when the customer returns them. Send those back to us with a note. We are returning these to the lending library so that they come off of the customer's ILL account and making a note of these barcode/request numbers. All new items that we started receiving, beginning Monday, July 29th when we came back upon Navigator, will be in Sirsi and you scan the barcode without the B.

We continue to work with Sirsi to get all of our data into Symphony and working properly. I know that working in Symphony is very different from III Millennium and it can be frustrating. Information is displayed differently and not always where you expect to see it and the terminology changes only add to the confusion. You are doing a great job in coping with all of this while continuing to provide the highest level of customer service. Thank you.

Thanks,
Syma

Syma Zerkow
Chief of Library Materials Services
Houston Public Library