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Kaaren's Corner
By Kaaren Linton, Librarian/Alexandria Trainer
Where Did it Come from, and What Is this Operation Management Window?
For those of you who have switched from Alexandria v5 to v6, you probably have gotten a shock of sorts when you ran a report or utility and a new window, the Operation Management window, opened. You may have thought that you had done something wrong since this never happened before. Relax, smile, it's perfectly normal to see this window in Alexandria v6 and, I think, you'll find it quite useful once you understand what it does for you.
The Operation Management window may also be opened by going to Tools on the menu bar and selecting Operation Management. Of course, it opens automatically when you run a report or perform a utility.
Alexandria performs many daily tasks behind the scenes that clean up the system by removing expired holds, in-stock holds, and reservations, etc. You can see some of these listed in the Transaction Log as you start Alexandria each day. For instance, in the log I see Checking for overdue items and checking for overdue items to be declared lost. At the end of each Daily Chores cycle, Alexandria will record the operations to the Transaction Log file and deliver the results to the Operation Management window. In addition to the Daily Chores, you will run reports and perform various utilities. If you are in a large library, many staff members may also be doing similar tasks and all these become part of a queue of things for Alexandria to do. Let's take this a step further, in a central union system, all libraries will be running reports and utilities in Alexandria to fill their needs.
The Operation Management window prepares all pending operations and contains the results of completed operations (i.e. reports, utilities, import, or export) and allows users to view the operations that they (or others) have initiated. Simply, think of the Operation Management window as a better, more centralized location for users to find out what operations the system, themselves, or others, have been performing; a Transaction Log for requested operations.
Once a report, utility, export, or import has been initiated, then the Operation Management window is opened, showing the progress of the operation and informing the user how to view their operation results.
The Current User tab is used for viewing operations that the current user has prepared, while the Operation Queue tab is used for viewing pending automatic operations such as the Daily Chores report which clears expired holds and reservations and overdue items declared lost.
In both the Current User tab and the Operation Queue tab, the newest operations are shown at the top of each respective list; each field is date/time stamped, followed by the descriptive name and status of the operation. Three icons can appear on the left end of each recorded operation that appears in the list: Email Results icon, Operation Information icon, and View Report icon.
The Email Results icon shows when email notification is requested. Each operation has the creation date for the operation, the library code (necessary for central union) associated with the operation, the operator (or system) who created it, and a descriptive name for the operation.
Additional information for each operation (such as new or modified records and any error messages or notes, etc.) can be acquired by clicking on the Operation Information icon. If an error occurs during an operation, an Alert icon will appear in the list, informing the user that they should pay special attention to the results—in the PDF alerts and exceptions that are printed in red.
Lastly, if the item in the Operation Management is a report, the View Report icon appears in that section of the Operations Management window. Since the reports that have been run are listed in the Operation Management window, imagine how useful this is if you have run a report and need to have that report run again. No need to rerun the report, just click on it in the Operation Management window! Clicking this icon will open the saved report as either a VWP or PDF file, depending on the Output Format selected in the Locations tab of the Reports window.
Operations may be removed using the Remove Record link or Remove command (<ctrl+R> in Windows or <cmd+R> on Macintosh) or by clicking the Remove (-) icon or by choosing one of the Remove older than selections from the main Actions menu of the Operation Management window.
Further, selected reports can be exported by selecting (highlighting) them and selecting Save to Disc from the main Actions menu.
Current User and Operation Queue Tabs
The Current User tab shows which operations have been performed or queued by the person currently logged into Alexandria. The Operation Queue tab allows a quick view into what system reports and/or utilities are pending as well as the Daily chores.
The Operation Queue interface allows the user to view the name of the operation, a description if available, and it's status. The status of a queued operation can be one of three things --
A) It's in the queue, but has not yet been started. At this point, users with the proper security privileges can view or remove the operation from the queue.
B) The operation is being generated; users with the proper security privileges can terminate the process and view or remove it from the queue.
C) The operation was completed and results are available.
These items may be viewed by all operators, but only some operators have the security privileges to remove them.
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