Problems with the OPAC? Part Deux

I'm still working with Bob Trotter on our various and sundry OPAC problems, and he's asked me to give him the full URLs of the oddities.

So, from here on out, report any OPAC weirdness to me as follows.

1.) Copy and paste the URL of the problem page into the body of a plain text email.

2.) Include as full a description of the problem as possible [what problem is occurring (we have three right now), time, date, what kind of search you were doing, did you go in through the Quick Search originally, what you clicked on right before the bug occurred, etc.] There is no such thing as too much detail here. Give me everything you can think of.

3.) Email this to me at tminchew@gpc.edu.

You no longer have to send me printouts, just follow the above instructions.

To recap, these are the three different instances of "weird" OPAC behavior we are working on now:

1.) Sometimes the Item Status in a record display will read "No Information Available" even though there are clearly item records attached, as the number of items will be set. Then the Item Status will revert "Not Checked Out". I'm not clear on whether or not this happens automatically, or if the user has to hit Refresh. On the one instance report I have of it, the item status read one way on one computer, and a different way on the other during the same one minute period.

2.) When leaving search results idle for a little while, then coming back and clicking on the Quick Search link at the bottom of the screen, people are being thrown into a plain white screen containing only the text "lost+found".

3.) After taking some action in the OPAC, people are thrown into a screen entitled "Builder Search". The style sheet changes from our usual blues to reds, and the search itself doesn't always work. The majority of the time folks seem to have been doing an exact search, then left the connection idle for a while, then clicked on New Search, and were thrown into the red screen. However, this is not always the case.

Thanks everyone! Keep these reports coming. Hopefully Bob will be able to figure something out. And please let me know if you have any questions or encounter any new problems.

Pharos

In a recent gen-mail from Keith Chapman, he stated that students can access their printing account either by swiping their card or by entering their official GPC login and password at the print release station. When I asked Barry Bailey about this in December, however, he said students can only access their account by swiping their access card. I checked with Keith about his e-mail and he said his understanding was that, "Dexter's group with OIT is installing a password authentication program on all print release stations." Keith said he thought maybe Dexter hasn't gotten to Dunwoody with it yet. I haven't heard any more updates since then. So, does anyone know about this? Do other campuses have this password authentication program? We need to clarify this because we have had students ask about this (yes, apparently someone actually read the gen-mail).

Problems with the OPAC?

I've gotten a couple of reports about problems with the OPAC since the upgrade. The scenario is always the same, after taking some action in the catalog, people are thrown into a screen entitled "Builder Search". The style sheet changes from our usual blues to reds, and the search itself doesn't actually work. The only option to get the OPAC working again is to completely exit and start over.

I've had this happen to me a couple of times over the years, but not often enough to worry about. After the upgrade, I've had it reported by two librarians on two different campuses, and each says that it's happening several times a week or more. Bob Trotter and I can't seem to replicate it, so there isn't much that we can do right now, and I was just wondering if this is happening to anyone else. If so, please drop me a line and give me as many details as you can (time, date, what you were trying to do in the catalog when it happened, etc.). Thanks!