Springshare Support Blog

Last week we introduced you to our awesomesauce Cross Tab reports.
This week we’re all about bringing you the cherry on top: customization…and more customization!

1. Custom Ordering of Fields

You’re psyched you have so many options and can really record any data you want – we hear ya, it’s pretty darn sweet. But you also want to put them on the page in any order you want? Done.

For example, if you want to have a multiple choice field of “Location” and want one of the options to be “Other”, now you can put a free text field just under it and have people record what “Other” actually is.

Just think of the options…the freedom! Now go have fun rearranging your instances…

2. Custom Head Section For Each Instance

What to the what now?! Each instance in LibAnalytics now has a custom Head section where you can insert your own custom CSS or JavaScript. Use this field to customize the look and feel of each instance like hiding some fields or labels or creating a different layout. Awesomesauce? Indeed!

If you thought LibAnalytics was tasty, then our new awesome-sauce feature will blow your data tastebuds away! Cross Tab Reporting is like the umami of comparative statistics.  It enables you to see a full comparison between any 2 multi-choice fields, making it easy to identify interdependencies between the data you track.

For instance, let’s say you’re tracking Reference transactions in your library. You might have chosen to track things like “Question Method” (in person, phone, email, IM, SMS) and “Who Asked the Question” (Undergraduate, Graduate, Faculty, Staff, Visitor). With Cross Tab Reports, you can create an instant comparison of the values in those two fields, making it easy to see where various users are asking questions:

Love it? Us too! Even better, you can filter cross tab report results by date range, day of the week / time of day, data entered, and/or text in the question. This helps reveal interdependencies in the data you track.

To get cooking with cross tab reports, LibAnalytics users can head to the Data Explorer, and select the “Cross Tab Report” tab. As always, thanks to the community for this most excellent feature suggestion!

Let’s hear it for code updates! We can’t wait to share the latest features & updates with you, so without further ado…

Simpify. Eliminate. Integrate. (Part 1).
Check out the latest edition of Springy News for a great visual walkthrough the new SEI changes! Here’s the highlights reel:

• Guide Index Screen – Say hello to the new central management hub for your ‘guides. We brought the heat, and revamped the Guide Index – now, you can view and edit guide info, editors & co-owners, tags, & subject categories for your guides all in one page. There’s also a wealth of new filter, sort, & export options from the guide index screen – it’s bonkers!
• Guide Editing Toolbar – Scroll, and the toolbar scrolls with you!
• Change Guide Info – We’ve reorganized the guide settings menu – now, everything is in one screen, separated by tabs, so the function you want is easier to find! We’ve moved lots of things to this screen, including the Guide Publishing options, Subject Categories, and Friendly URL.
• Add Box screen – We’ve added so many new box types over the years that the “Add Box” window was screaming for reorganization. Check out the Box Types Explorer, which outlines the box features. Added bonus: for all our Netbook users, you won’t have to zoom out to add a box!

After we gave a sneak peek to our clients via last week’s newsletter, today I am pleased to announce that the Mobile Site Builder and LibAnalytics systems are now available for anybody to check out. These two new tools expand our Springshare web platform in two important directions – mobile web and statistical analysis. Both of these are hot topics for libraries, and since our goal is to bring the latest and greatest web technologies to our clients this is a natural extension of our product lines.

Mobile Site Builder (http://springshare.com/mobile) works with LibGuides or CampusGuides and it enables libraries to effortlessly create and maintain a professional-looking mobile website. We handle the coding, the automatic redirects for mobile devices, hosting, etc. – you just log on, create menus, submenus, add content and voila – your mobile users have information on the go. Mobile Site Builder is offered as a module to LibGuides/CampusGuides so our clients will feel right at home in terms of the ease of use and familiar interface. Oh, and did we mention it costs only $299/year? You won’t find a better deal for a comparable mobile tool, so get in while the going is hot. For more information, check out http://springshare.com/mobile, and let us know if any questions pop up.

LibAnalytics (http://springshare.com/libanalytics) is our new platform for recording, tracking, and analyzing data at your library. LibAnalytics grew out of our Reference Analytics module in LibAnswers. We took Reference Analytics, which was targeted for gathering reference statistics only, and added tons of new features, more fields (up to 30 metadata fields to track) and data types (multi-choice, numeric, & free-text), improved filtering, better charts and reports, greater flexibility, and … LibAnalytics was born.

If you like statistics and data (who doesn’t, right?) LibAnalytics will feel like data-Nirvana. Instruction Statistics, Reference Statistics, Workflow Statistics, … literally any type of statistical information can be recorded, tracked, and analyzed in LibAnalytics. And the pricing starts at $299/year for a single instance. Yes, you read that right - it’s affordable, it’s powerful, it’s great looking, it’s easy to use, it’s… a typical Springshare web-app. Take the first step toward becoming a Data Ninja: http://springshare.com/libanalytics.

Developing these tools wouldn’t have been possible without our awesome client libraries who are always giving us fresh ideas and great feedback, so big thanks to everybody who contributed their comments, feedback, and ideas which resulted in these two really neat, and really useful new tools. Onwards and upwards!

We are very excited to announce a brand-new release of LibAnswers system with tons of new features and improved functionality. The updates went out this past weekend so everything is live already. Here is the rundown of the new stuff:

1. LibAnalytics. We introduced a new product called LibAnalytics, which borrows from the functionality of the current Reference Analytics module. This is for libraries who require the statistics functionality of the Analytics module but do not need the rest of the LibAnswers system (public q/a, the ability for patrons to ask questions, etc). In LibAnalytics, libraries can define multiple analytics instances – each instance can track up to 10 metadata fields with up to 30 values per field. You can track anything you want with LibAnalytics, i.e. it is not just limited to reference. So, track and analyze away!  Please contact us if you would like more information on LibAnalytics.
2. The Reference Analytics module has been expanded to support additional instances as well (just like the LibAnalytics product but this is integrated into LibAnswers).  Now the Reference Analytics clients can define multiple analytics instances (i.e. if you’d like to track statistics at the circulation desk, info literacy sessions statistics, or media desk, etc – you can track anything you’d like). Contact us if you’d like more information on the expanded Reference Analytics module.
3. The “More Ways to Contact Us” box now has icons/options for phone contact and email contact (previously it only had twitter/sms contact icons). With this enhancement your patrons can easily note how to contact you via the phone or email.
4. Private questions can now have replies. Emailed answers include a link for the recipient where they can comment/leave a reply to the answer. These replies/conversations are threaded in the View/edit private answer page.
5. It is now possible to “close” a question without sending an answer.
6. Linked answers! They are here, at last! When answering a public question you can “link” to an existing answer, so any changes to the original entry will automatically be propagated to all “linked” answers (it works just like linked pages/linked boxes in LibGuides).
7. Added privacy/access control options. Now you can put your entire system behind an IP access/address range, or you can password-protect access to the entire system. There is also a new option to disallow search engine indexing.
8. Improved QuerySpy interface. QuerySpy is the unsung hero of LibAnswers – people love it and for a good reason. Now it’s easier to use – you can delete entries from the grid, set date range filters, export data to excel, etc. Check it out – it’s cool!
9. Improved “Comments” for q/a pairs. Comments can now be edited directly from the admin interface. Logged in users’ comments are approved automatically, and you can automatically send an email to the original questioner, with the text of the comment.
10. “Change Topic” dropdown now appears on the homepage, to enable visitors to easily browse the list of topics.
11. “Featured Questions” box on the homepage – now you can customize which questions will appear on the homepage (this works just like the featured guides box in LibGuides).
12. Improved mobile interface – you can now set the default text inside the “Ask us” box in the mobile interface.
13. The “success” message on the question form submission page is now fully customizable.
14. Emailed answers now explicitly note if there is multimedia (videos, or attached files) associated with the answer, and point the email recipient to the anchored page where they can view this multimedia.
15. To see other questions from the same email address you can click on the email address in the “Unanswered” tab or click the link next to the email in the answer/edit page for the individual answer.
16. Link checker! Yes, you read it correctly, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Link checker is now available in LibAnswers, too – it will periodically (twice a month) check the validity of links you included as part of your answers.

Phew, that’s a lot of new stuff, so check it out when you get a chance and, as always, please let us know what you think. Thanks to everybody who contributed their ideas, comments, suggestions, testing, and blood sweat and tears which went into developing this awesome new LibAnswers release.

A quick update – we’re rolling out a small enhancement to the public display of guides. If your guide only contains one page, the “Home” tab will no longer display in the public view. You’ll still see it when editing in admin mode, but your patrons will see a cleaner page view. A big thanks to everyone who requested this enhancement!

This past weekend our friends at Serials Solutions announced that custom database names are available via their API, so we are now able to import those custom values into LibGuides!

The way it works is as follows – if your resource has been assigned a custom name in the Serials Solutions interface, we will import the resource into LibGuides using that custom name. For any resources that do not have a custom name assigned, we will use the default resource name provided by Serials Solutions as we have done in the past.

If you have already imported your resource list and would like to update your existing links to use the custom names, just run the A-Z import tool from within LibGuides and be sure to check the box for all links you wish to update. Any links that were previously imported using the default name will be updated to use your local, custom name – it couldn’t be easier!

If you’d like to learn more about this tool, check out our guide: A-Z Resource List Management

In our recent code update, the Form & Survey tool got a massive face lift. If you’re not yet familiar with the Form & Survey tool, it’s all kinds of awesome. It’s a standard part of any CampusGuides/CommunityGuides system, and offers a centralized way to manage, deploy, collect and analyze just about any type of form-based information. Creating forms and surveys only takes a few minutes, and we make them super easy to deploy by providing persistent URLs, and simple embed code. Results are collected in real-time, and can be exported directly into excel.

How can you use this tool? We’re glad you asked! Here are a few examples:

• Use it like a survey tool to collect:
  • Formal feedback about library programs and services
  • Targeted feedback about your guides (or any web-presence you maintain)
  • Feedback on special events and programming
• Use it like a form builder to collect:
  • New materials suggestions
  • Appointment request forms
  • Interlibrary Loan request forms
  • Requests for live instruction sessions

In our recent update, we added many new features to this tool. We expanded the types of questions you can ask, which now include radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down selections, as well as single- and multi-line free-text fields. We did a massive update to the overall interface (mad props to JC!) – now, you can view a form’s properties/css style and a preview of the finished version side-by-side, so you can see your changes update as you edit! Form styles are fully customizable, so you control every aspect of the look and feel. We expanded the preference options, so you can control your form’s visibility dates, assign multiple email addresses to receive submission notices, and create optional password protection. We added an easy “copy” feature, so if you’re adding a new form or survey, you don’t have to start from scratch!

We’re very excited about these new updates. If you’re a current CampusGuides/CommunityGuides customer, you can check out the changes right now! If you’re not, what are you waiting for? Email sales@springshare.com and request your free demo account!

If you noticed a lack of code updates for LibAnswers in the past couple of months, that was just the quiet before the storm because we are excited thrilled to announce a major LibAnswers code update which went live last night. There are lots of little fixes in this update but the biggest changes are:

1. Mobile version of LibAnswers. It’s here. And it looks awesome! Just like with LibGuides, the system will auto-detect when the user is accessing LibAnswers from a mobile device and serve mobile-friendly pages. You have to try it out. The Auto-suggest feature works great, and the question submissions via mobile are enabled as well. Here’s an added bonus – now your patrons can send you SMS questions just by clicking on your local SMS phone number – how cool is that?! You do have to have our SMS module for this SMS functionality to work – those of you that don’t have it, what are you waiting for?
   In general, the mobile version of LibAnswers is looking great, working great, and we look forward to hearing your suggestions and ideas for making it even better!
2. Multi-lingual interface for public pages. We have worked with several of our international clients (in Sweden and France) to translate the public screens in LibAnswers and we’re pleased to be able to offer a multi-lingual interface for LibAnswers public pages. If you are interested in translating your LibAnswers system into your local language, please email us at our standard springshare support email and we will send you the translation files.
3. We also made many behind-the-scenes improvements in the code and in the database so the system is now faster than ever!

Big thank you to all our clients who contributed ideas which went into this update, and also thanks to Derik and the LibAnswers team who made it all happen! As always, we’re here if any questions pop up, and please continue sending us your ideas and suggestions for further improving LibAnswers.

The theme for our October newsletter is “mobile”! As a premier provider of useful (and cool) web apps for libraries we want to make sure we got your mobile needs covered as well. We released the mobile version of LibGuides, and the reviews have been uniformly great. We did not dive head first into mobile to get something out quickly – instead we carefully designed the mobile version from the ground up and it seems everybody loves it, which is music to our ears.

In fact, we are really excited that you are excited about LibGuides mobile, as this means everybody is going to love our upcoming mobile website builder tool! Creating mobile websites will be as easy and as fun as creating guides. We are putting the finishing touches on this new tool/module and will release it by year-end. The LibAnswers mobile interface is just about done and will be out by the end of the month.

The Newsletter also features an informative interview with the librarians at Johnson & Wales University Rhode Island Campus. They are doing some wonderful things with the LibAnswers SMS Module, and as a result their SMS Reference service is racking up huge usage numbers. No wonder Rosie (Dean of University Libraries) and her team are also known as the rock stars on campus!  Great job Rosie, keep it up.

Going forward, each edition of the newsletter will feature an interview with an existing Springshare customer who will share their advice, and tips and tricks from the field about how they are making a real difference in their community by using Springshare tools and apps…

Read the complete newsletter at http://help.springshare.com/news-Oct10