I have some great news, and I couldn’t wait until next Tuesday to post it! Our hard-working development team has gotten fixes in place, wrangled the new server, and generally addressed the various issues discussed in the last update.
This means that 7.7 Preview Databases are now available by request to all Keystone-hosted and all Linux-based self-hosted customers!
(Deployment for Windows-based self-hosted customers is still being ironed out; we hope to be able to offer Preview Databases to you soon.)
These demo databases will allow you to spot-check your data and settings to ensure that everything migrated correctly to the new version, train staff, and practice using the new features and duplication workflows. It will also allow us to do some load-testing of the new server to make sure that connection issues don’t crop back up, and that nothing new decides to go sideways on us.
Having a demo database in place also puts you on the fast-track to getting a live version. We will be bringing customers up live one every week or two, starting right away after the KLAS Users’ Conference (and maybe even sooner, if the demo roll-out goes well).
For more information on version 7.7, check out the New Release Webinar! (Note: you must be logged in to KLASusers.com to access that link.)
Future Updates
The wait for 7.7 has been longer than anyone had expected, but once you're upgraded to 7.7, future updates will come along much quicker! Instead of needing a large bundle of updates to be ready all at once, incremental updates will be applied to 7.7 about every two weeks. Fixes and improvements will go out steadily over time, rather than in a large batch after a long wait.
Even better, these updates will occur smoothly and easily, without any need to download and apply an update through your browser. For more information on how updates will work in version 7.7, see the Installation and Upgrades Post.
Duplication on Demand
Our new Duplication on Demand workflows are included in version 7.7, including full Gutenberg integration. NLS is in their final testing phases of this integration, but it is in place, and will continue to be refined and improved.
The Gutenberg device itself will of course come from NLS, and does require custom set-up per customer. We will work with them to fast-track our customers as much as possible, but there is a high demand, and only so many people at NLS who are able to do the set-up and testing needed. At the NLS Western / Southern Regional Conference, they indicated that they expect a pace of about 2 Gutenberg set-ups per month. Who gets one of these devices, and when, is entirely their decision; we can only work with them to get each device’s connection to KLAS in place ASAP.
For those who are considering a Scribe instead, we are pleased to announce that it now supports both the Patron-Centric Cartridge model and the Cartridge Recycling model! We were able to get this in place because the Cartridge Recycling workflow had already been developed to support Gutenberg—we just did a little tweaking and testing to make sure that it worked with the other hardware as well.
Final Thoughts
Thank you all so much for your patience!
We have heard loud and clear that Duplication (and particularly Gutenberg integration) is the priority that the Users’ Group has set for us, and have been hard at work on it since last year. We believe that the results are robust, flexible, reliable, and efficient; everything that we hope you can expect from a Keystone Systems product.
We know that the process has taken much longer than we initially announced, but we think that the final product will be worth the wait. We will continue to do everything we can to get those of you under a time crunch (or who are just eager to get started) up and running on a Duplication on Demand workflow of your choice as soon as possible.
For those libraries not racing to transition to a Duplication workflow, you haven’t been forgotten! With the bulk of the work finished for Duplication, we will be able to integrate improvements that will benefit you as well back into our development cycle.
