Sierra Application Server Migration

On Tuesday, November 17, from 8 am until 10 am, Sierra, InfoSoup, and Encore will be offline. During this time, Innovative will be migrating data from our old Sierra server to our new one. There is no software update involved, just moving data from an old machine to a new one. Innovative has told us that this is usually a relatively easy process and that we should be back up by 10 am. Given the short down time and the early hour, we think that most libraries may prefer to write down checkouts, and enter them in manually once Sierra is online rather than use offline circ. If you do plan to use offline circ during this time, please let us know by sending a note to OWLSnet help owlsnethelp@mail.owls.lib.wi.us.

Even if you don't plan to use offline circ we recommend that you be prepared just in case we run into any problems with the server migration. If at some point during the migration, Innovative tells us that we will be down longer than expected, we will send out a message on Net Support Notify.

Here are a couple of hints for using offline circulation effectively:

1. Be prepared. Print out the OWLSnet Offline Circ Procedures and have them available. The most recent copy of the procedures (dated October 25, 2011) is available at http://owlsnet.org/sites/default/files/owlsnet/OfflineCirc.pdf

2. Please remember not to use the offline circ client to register patrons, to check items in, or to renew items.

3. Please contact the OWLS office either before or as soon as possible after beginning to use offline circ.

4. Please contact the OWLS office before sending offline circ transactions. After Sierra is working at your library, send an email to OWLSnethelp letting us know there are offline circ transactions to be processed. OWLS staff will call you when we're ready to process the transactions.  We find there are fewer problems when these are processed one at a time, so we need to coordinate sending the transactions.

If you have not used offline circ for a while or have any questions at all, please call or email Laura or Patty.