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A guide to configuring the SimplyE Circulation Manager, for hosting/implementation providers or technical library staff
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- Getting your initial Circulation Manager installed and configured to a state in which a Sysadmin can access and use the configuration UI
- Getting a testable version of the App through test flight so they may evaluate and troubleshoot configurations and operations prior to pilot.
Assumptions/Requirements
Deployment: Your . Your Circulation Manager should be completely deployed and available on the Internet to fully test the configuration elements presented here. Refer to the Deploying a SimplyE Service document for more information on deployment scenarios and instructions on deploying to virtual servers and Amazon Web Services.
Requirements
System and Library Information. This document refers to data you will need to complete the configuration of several areas of the Circulation Manager. For example, in a production environment as the hosting provider/implementor, you should have already received information from a library to be added to the Circulation Manager. The required library data is described in detail in the document SimplyE Library Implementation Guide.
In addition to the library information, we make reference here to system-related information. For example, when you deployed your Circulation Manager infrastructure you should have implemented a domain name for the SimplyE Circulation Manager service and added it to your DNS zone. For a single library implementation within a statewide SimplyE implementation (the original design thinking for the service), the domain name would have the form You will need a Chrome or Firefox web browser to access the configuration panel. The admin panel does not display correctly if using Internet Explorer/Edge.
You also need the domain name for which you created a DNS entry in the previous document. The administrative panel site will have a URL of the following form: http://test.example.com/admin
The following steps are needed to get the SimplyE Circulation Manager server installed and ready for configuration.
Domain Name for Circulation Manager
You will need to secure a domain for your instance of SimplyE. The established convention is https://library_name.simplye-state-abbreviation.org (com or net) You will need SSL certificates as well to establish secure communications with the applciation services.
DRM Token for Adobe Vendor ID
To enable a library to borrow ebooks from its various provider collections (Overdrive, Axis360, etc.) in the SimplyE apps, you need to register your library deployment with NYPL's SimplyE Adobe ID service. This allows your Circulation Manager to authorize users with the NYPL Adobe ID license. You'll need to contact NYPL staff using their SimplyE Slack site as mentioned above.
Here is a basic outline of the process:
- Send a direct message (DM) to Leonard Richardson (@leonardr), supplying the following information (the information is the same as you will gather and enter into the Library configuration page below):
- Library website: https:/www.abclibrary.org (make sure of HTTP vs. HTTPS)
- Leonard will create a shortname for your library, six characters long. The first two characters will be a two-character postal abbreviation.
- Leonard will create a shared secret for your Circulation Manager to use in creating a token for use in borrow actions using the NYPL Adobe ID license.
- During the process of adding the new library to the Circulation Manager, you'll run a script on the (or one of) your webapp servers to register the library with NYPL's service. See section Register a Library with the NYPL Adobe ID Service for details.
- Send a direct message to Greg O'Neill with the following information:
- The URL of the circulation manager and library (the library's feed URL: see section X.y below [TBD])
- The barcode/user_id and PIN/password for the library's "good" test user
- Potentially, information referencing the library's logo and color choice [Feedback needed: what is required/optional; is this only set in the library's Circulation Manager configuration?]
- When the Test Flight mobile applications are updated and tested, Greg will respond back with links to/copies of the test applications.
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- Configure admin authentication you must do this before you can proceed
- Verify the initial server settings automatically created for your system
- Configure Elasticsearch AWS Getting Started Guide
- Register the circulation manager with the metadata wranglerI need to add this to the guide.. Guide Document
- Configure library / libraries. Guide DocumentThis needs a document
Note: When configuring the library, you MUST provide a default email address to use when notifying patrons of changes.
- Configure a patron authentication technique (SIP or ILS) and associate it with the libraryDocument needed?
- Configure an analytics mechanism and associate it with the library.Document needed?
- Configure collections and associate them with the library. Guide Document
- Register your library with NYPL's library registry.
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. With a change in software implementation to host multiple libraries on one Circulation Manager instance, and with providers offering services not constrained by geography, the Circulation Manager domain might take the form https://circulation.org-name.com/ or https://simplye.org-name.com/. For the sample configuration in this document, we will use the fictitious information below:
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SimplyE Provider Domain: Library Name: |
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TECHNICAL NOTE: The provider domain above uses a simple HTTP service, not an encrypted site. The simple test deployment instructions referenced in Deploying a SimplyE Service do not install the OpenSSL library/module needed to provide HTTPS service. This is by design: the circ-webapp container does not include an SSL service. In a production environment, we assume the Circulation Manager application service will actually be deployed as a multi-server cluster behind a load balancer for reliability and scalability. In that case, the HTTPS service will terminate at the load balancer. Communication between the load balancer and the back-end application server instances will be via simple HTTP. This is standard practice as it decreases load on the application servers. If you will deploy a single application server host for your production Circulation Manager service, you will need to implement SSL on the circ-webapp container or potentially build a custom container. In production, then, we expect the provider domain to be available only via HTTPS. |
Web Browser. Last, you must use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to work in the Admin configuration interface. The Admin interface currently does not render correctly in Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Edge browsers.
Accessing the Circulation Manager Admin Interface
Once you have installed the circulation manager software, go to https://<your-circ-manager-url>/admin, and:
- Configure admin authentication you must do this before you can proceed
- Verify the initial server settings automatically created for your system
- Configure Elasticsearch AWS Getting Started Guide
- Register the circulation manager with the metadata wranglerI need to add this to the guide.. Guide Document
- Configure library / libraries. Guide DocumentThis needs a document
Note: When configuring the library, you MUST provide a default email address to use when notifying patrons of changes.
- Configure a patron authentication technique (SIP or ILS) and associate it with the libraryDocument needed?
- Configure an analytics mechanism and associate it with the library.Document needed?
- Configure collections and associate them with the library. Guide Document
- Register your library with NYPL's library registry.
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