Latest Features and Improvements to TinyCat

If you're not subscribed to our monthly TinyCat Post newsletter and if you don't read the LibraryThing blog—what are you doing, anyway?—you might not know about all of our latest improvements to TinyCat! I'm going to list them here for you so you can check them out for yourself. Some new features and improvements have yet to be announced, too, so consider this a sneak peek:

NEW Features

Transactions Reports

From the "Reports" page in the TinyCat Admin portal, you can now download automated checkout and patron reports from your lending history. You can filter by start and/or end dates, too, so you can look at a specific time frame when weeding the stacks, preparing reports for the budget, and more.

Watch the Tiny Tutorial here.

Patron Email Reminders for Checkouts

You can now have TinyCat send up to one automated checkout reminder email and up to three overdue emails to your patrons, making it easier to keep your collections intact.

Set your preferences from your Circulation Settings.

See it in action with our Tiny Tutorial here.

"Extend all due dates" Feature

With the entire world currently in a social distancing state of life and libraries temporarily shuttered, we’ve added the ability for you to extend all due dates within your Active Transactions.

Watch the Tiny Tutorial here.

IMPROVED Features

Transaction Notification Emails to Admins

Transaction notifications emailed to admins now include a direct link to the patron’s account, so you can quickly access more information for each patron as needed.

Transaction Notification Emails to Patrons

Previously, patrons would only get notification emails if they checked out a book or placed a hold on a book to their own account/s. All patrons will now get confirmation emails for every lending transaction, including when they return an item and when an admin checks a book out to them.

Logging into your TinyCat Admin Portal

You can now log into your TinyCat account directly from librarycat.org, rather than just from your LibraryThing account or TinyCat homepage.

TinyCat Admin Patrons Page

We've added pagination to your Patrons page in the Admin portal, so you can view multiple pages of your patrons and load them more quickly. You can also opt to view them 10, 25, 50, or 100 at a time.

We've also added searching capabilities to your Patrons page, so you can quickly find your patrons by name, barcode/ID, or email address.

Starred Lists

Starred Lists in TinyCat used to be session-based only, so in order to clear your entire list at once, you had to clear your session. Now, for visitors and patrons wanting to create multiple Starred Lists within TinyCat, they can use the "Clear list" button, rather than waiting for a new browser session to do so.

Learn more about Starred Lists in our new Tiny Tutorial here.

Checkout Notifications on the Check in/out Page

We already gave you notifications when an item was already checked out on your Check in/out page, but we've also added who actually has the book so you can decide how to handle the book/s more quickly.

Patrons' Pages in the Admin Portal

When looking at individual patrons' pages in your Admin portal, you can now use the quick "Renew" button next to checked out items to renew items with fewer clicks (or taps).

Distinguishing Renewals from Checkouts

Previously, when an item was renewed, our transactions tracking still marked the item as "Checked out". Now, all renewed items are getting marked as "Renewed", so you know exactly whether the item was checked out once or multiple times in a row.

We hope you enjoy all the work we've been putting into TinyCat lately! If there's something you're still waiting to be added to TinyCat, let me know! Email me at tinycat@librarything.com, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Kristi :)

Thank you! I appreciate the hard work you're doing. These are some very exciting improvements!

2 quick suggestions for the new reminder emails:
-Can the template include patron ID number so patrons can log into their accounts more easily?
-I would love more options for the number of days - especially for 2nd or 3rd emails. I wouldn't want to get 3 emails in 9 days, but I would rather spread it out maybe a week apart.

Thank you making TinyCat awesome! :D

>2 hefclibrary: Can the template include patron ID number so patrons can log into their accounts more easily?

Good suggestion, I'll make a note and see what we can do!

I would love more options for the number of days

Ditto, I'll see what we can do.

Thanks for your feedback!

I read that "You can now have TinyCat send up to one automated checkout reminder email and up to three overdue emails to your patrons". It sounds like the automated checkout reminder is optional, but I would like to stop it because I'm entering the information from our old card system. When I do that, the patrons get the automatic notice telling them they have checked out... It would be useful if we could customise the message, but if not, could I just stop it from going out?
In addition, I have chosen not to send patron email reminders on the circulation setting page, but they go out anyway. What can we do to stop them?
Thank you for your help.

>4 AAGP: So the checkout reminder email is just that: that you have a book already checked out and is due soon.

What you're still seeing are our automatic checkout confirmation emails which happen every time a book is checked out for a patron. Those have been sent out from the beginning of TinyCat and we didn't/don't have a setting to not send them. That said, I can bring this to the team and see if we can add some sort of setting or "unsubscribe" option for patron notifications. I can't make any promises, as I'm not sure how "messy" it might get for individual email settings for every TinyCat library, or for patrons not getting any notifications for lending (which would be troublesome).

Can I ask what you're wanting to customize for the notification, exactly?

Because I'm in the process of moving from our old system of cards in a wooden box, I'm entering the information on the cards about who has checked out what book, often a long time ago. The patrons don't understand why they are getting the message, especially since our library is closed right now. I did send a message out explaining why this was happening, and stopped entering the information halfway through to see if there was another way to do it without the message. If there isn't, I'll just finish entering all the checked out books and the awkward moment will pass. The customising would have been just to say, yes you have checked out a book a while ago and you are getting this message as part of a move to a new system. If the possibility doesn't exist, it's not worth going to the trouble of creating it.

On the other hand I don't understand why, if, in "patron email reminders", when I have chosen "no reminders" for all 4 categories, the reminders still go out. Right now they are confusing, since our library is closed because of Covid. This is a temporary problem and once the new system is in place and the library is open, we will want to send out reminders, of course. So again, if there's nothing I can do right now, I'll just bite the bullet and the problem will pass without mobilising your good services to fix my temporary problem.
Thanks for your quick answer.

>6 AAGP: Okay I see, yes, that does create an awkward use case! I'll bring that to the discussion and see where we can land.

Re: the "Patron Email Reminders" your settings should be working as-is. At least, your patrons should not be getting checkout reminder emails or overdue notices if you've set them to "No Reminder". The emails that patrons are likely still getting are our default confirmation emails that get sent out when books are checked out/put on hold/returned/etc.

The confirmation emails—which are not reminders—have been there since the beginning of TinyCat. They let the patrons know that yes, the book they just checked out (albeit not adhering to your use case here of swapping systems over), is actually checked out on their account. Same for holds and returns, etc. The subject lines for those emails would be "Item checked out at...", "Hold placed at..." etc.

Reminder emails, which you can enable or disable from the Patron Email Reminders setting, would have an email subject line such as "Item due soon at..." or "Item overdue at...".

We've been adding a bunch of new features and improvements to TinyCat lately, and I'm still working on getting all of the YouTube tutorials and Help Wiki pages updated to reflect the new improvements. I'm going to be adding information about what the reminder/notification emails say, and will work on adding helpful text under the Patron Email Reminders setting so admins know exactly what they're changing there. If you have other ideas for things you'd like to see, to make this easier to use, please let me know! I'm all ears.

Thanks for your patience!

Hi,

I have tried to use the extend due dates functionality but it does not seem to be working. Any suggestions on how to get this working?

Thanks,

>8 KensalRiseLibrary: Hi, and sorry for your trouble! Can you offer more specifics? What steps are you taking, what date are you trying to extend active due dates to, and what happens for you when you try to save this? Do you see anything change on your screen? Do you see any error message/s and if so what do they say? Any specifics you can offer so I can reproduce your issue myself would be useful, thanks in advance!

Hi,

I have tried this again today in preparation for reopening and this functionality still is not working.
I go to Active Transations and click on Extend All due dates. A pop up dialog comes up asking me to select a new future date.
I select a day in the future e.g. April 4th and click on Extend all due dates.
Another pop up dialog comes up saying Are you sure you want to extend all active checkouts to the 2021-04-14.
I select "OK".
Pop up dialog closes and none of the active transactions are updated.

Okay,

1. Can you tell me what operating system (e.g. Windows 7, etc.) and web browser (e.g. Google Chrome version 46, etc.) you're using?
2. Do you have any browser add-ons/extensions like an Ad blocker?
3. Finally, do you have javascript enabled?

This should help me narrow any issues down. I can try testing on my end: are you trying to extend all due dates to April 4 or April 14? Your post isn't clear on that.

Thanks!

Hi,

Sorry for the late response.

1. Window 10, Firefox
2. No browser add-ons
3. Javascript is enabled.

I will try another browser now and update you.

Yes, I am trying to extend all dates to April 14th.

Thanks,

Hi,

I have tried using Microsoft Edge and it worked. So, it does look to be browser related. The version of Firefox I am using is :86.0.1 (64-bit)

Thanks

Okay, thanks! Found and verified on your setup, and also my own FF browser on my Mac. Sending a report to the developers to look at this when they have time, thanks for your help.

This has slipped off my radar, but I'm here to post that this issue should be fixed! Please let me know if you're still having any trouble.

Thank you for doing this - it looks very useful.

I'm trying to get comfortable with TinyCat, but I'm having a hard time with the written tutorials, and so I wandered over to YouTube to see what's there.

It looks like the videos are two, three, four years old. I don't want to waste time (they are an hour each, about half my free time in a day) nor get confused trying to follow an out-of-date video.

Are all the videos on your channel correct and up-to-date?

I'm not sure if I want to add patrons to the system, or not. It might be very useful, but it also might be too much overhead.

I'm just curious if some of the content on your Playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL17Ps1kS79R5CZa-uKTCteCmFVo3LFqSH) is out of date.

Also, is there another, or better way to find the TinyCat instructions?

Again, thank you very much for all the thought and work that has gone into this.

>16 SeattleMetaphysical: Hi there! Re: the YouTube videos, it sounds like you're looking at our webinars. Those are mostly up-to-date and essentially cover the same content, though obviously the most recent might have a few newer developments added since then. We haven't removed any functionality, only added/improved some things over time.

We also have Tiny Tutorials—all about 00:30 in length—and curated playlists based on what your goals are, which should really help out. I'd recommend our Beginners' Bootcamp playlist for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGOMIrmZ8-U&list=PL5TMrN56GuquEhCkxHWWE_ZWeF..., which gives a good overview of everything just starting out. The tutorials should all be current.

The playlist you linked to has a bunch of other stuff in it, and appears to be from a completely different YouTube channel (Vintique Books). I would ignore that completely. Go here, instead: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHdpcxqVcUR4rXciaInacPQ. That's LibraryThing's official YouTube channel.

We also have the TinyCat Help Wiki, re: instructions, but you had noted you were having a hard time with the written tutorials. If you haven't seen everything there, yet, I'm linking you to it now: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/TinyCat.

Of course, please let me know if you're having trouble with anything and I'm happy to help. You can email me directly at kristi@librarything.com or tinycat@librarything.com.

>17 kristilabrie: thank you!