Ares Ideas
240 results found
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Quickly and easily print a list of items from a queue. Staff would like a quick and easy way to print a list of items in a queue within Ares, without exporting a file to another program like excel. Perhaps first identify (a limited number of) columns desired in the printed list, as there are so many. If this could all be done in the client, with just a few steps, it would be great. Items would not necessarily have to be updated to another status, just printed. Or maybe update would be a toggle on/off option. the most important thing is to print the list. We have staff doing screenshots…
4 votes -
Allow Instructor Tags to be a Shared Field on Shared Lists Our institution currently processes all of the readings for instructors. Thus, the vast majority of our processing happens in the Staff Client.
We're using a shared list to manage readings for a course that has multiple sections. Previously, if a reading changed (or a link broke), we would open each course section (since each section has a different Ares course ID) and fix the problem. Fixing problems that way was time-intensive and inefficient - sometimes we forgot to change the problem in one section, but fixed it in the others. Now with shared lists, we can go to the shared…
3 votes -
Allow custom web tables to highlight specific request statuses UMBC has a custom queue called "Awaiting Instructor Response" and would find it helpful for the items included in the default tables to to be customizable OR to be able to create new tables and define which fields and statuses are displayed. Being able to group this status into the Awaiting Supply By table or giving it a separate table that could be displayed on ihome.html would help remind the instructors that they had outstanding communication.
2 votes -
Ability to add additional information during LTI LMS course creation Particularly course department - when creating course and selecting semester dropdown, also offer other dropdown options. Please give us use cases!
7 votes -
Review web interface for compliance with WCAG 2. Within the last year our institution (Towson University) reviewed the Ares web interface for accessibility prior to procurement. We did customizations independently and with Atlas Systems to improve the accessibility of the web interface, and suggest accessibility be part of the product plan. A report of our findings are available by request - jcaffrey@towson.edu
15 votes -
Deadlines for Request Submission To combat the issue of instructors requesting material up until the start (and sometimes after) of the course, perhaps a deadline restriction can be set for open quarters / semesters to prevent last minute requests.
1 vote -
Accessibility for the client Would like ability to tab through options in staff client and customization manager and possibly accommodate a screen reader.
6 votes -
Being able to add individual items to multiple courses at one time, including instructor uploads Instructors would like to be able to add an item to multiple courses at the point they fill in the request form. For example, many of our faculty teach two or more sections of a course. Mid-semester they may add an additional article. After filling in the article form, it would be great if they could check off other current classes they'd like it added to at the same time. That way they do not have to go back and clone the item into each section.
11 votes -
Breakdown Clone Item Notes Options to allow by Type Clone Item Notes currently is YesNo and applies to Copyright notes, User Notes, and Staff Notes. Would like the ability to toggle per note type.
2 votes -
Improve Web Proxy Automatic Capabilities The current behavior makes it too easy to create bad links. Instructors don't know if ProxyDefault is set to Yes and it will automatically break links to non-proxied URLS without the knowledge of the instructor. The actual link doesn't display on the Show Item screen and if the default functionality of letting WebLinks go straight to available is turned on, there's nothing to stop the broken links from immediately going live.
Also, if there's a value in the WebProxy key, even if UseProxy is set to No, it will prepend the value if you click the checkbox and actually add…
1 vote -
Course and user information comes from the load (overwrites Ares data) Course and user loads - changes to the user and course information loaded would overwrite the user and course information in the Ares database. There would be an option to prevent web users from editing their own user info and course info. Course and user info could be edited (overridden) in the staff client, but subsequent edits of the course and user info would not carry over after the client edits were made.
22 votes -
Cloned items should inherit pickup location of new course, not pickup location of original item Cloned items currently inherit the Pickup location of the original item, not the pickup location of the new course. Most of the time this is fine, but when the location has changed it is inconvenient and easy to miss.
2 votes -
Ability to import citations from an Excel or Word document Submitted by ALA attendee: Many instructors drop off or email their syllabi. It would be nice if Ares could import the citations automatically from either Excel or by doing a screen scrape of a Word document, the way that Zotera does. This would save staff time on having to create requests from scratch.
11 votes -
Add Routing button to the Shared List Item form's ribbon Add a Routing button to the Shared List Item form's ribbon. That way if a request is processed from this form, it can be fully processed and made available right from here. The idea is that if this is for a physical item, and a book is on reserve, then the books for all those individual shared list items would also be at the same status. Or if it was a link to a PDF or a website, then again, all of them would be at the same status.
2 votes -
Set end date for full proxies. Many faculty only need a particular full proxy for one academic year, but there's no way in Ares to indicate when their access to the instructor's material should end. This is problematic for copyright and also because Ares addresses all emails to instructors AND their full proxies, which means proxies may get emails about all sorts of irrelevant courses after their work with the faculty member has ended. Having the option to set an end date (or end semester) would be very helpful. The full proxies could either be purged on that date or simply flagged for review.
1 vote -
Enhance Custom Search / Grid Batch Options: Email, Tags, & Flags Staff users should be able to send batch emails from custom search results and other search result/appropriate grid lists. Staff users need to be able to remind large numbers of users about retrieving inactive reserve items and responding to unfilled "I will supply" items. These should be sent to the instructor and proxies designated with the course that owns the item record.
Staff users should be able to batch assign and remove tags in these same grids and custom search results.
When staff users assign custom flags to multiple items and then look at a result list in Custom Search,…
4 votes -
Make <#DLL> tag more restrictive so won't output querystring parameters if the action was the exit/logoff action (action=99). UOttawa uses a language toggle JS button we put on their pages. If a user logs out and logs back in, the 99 form number is retained in the URL. If the user then goes to change the language, the JS will reload the page, within a separate web folder that houses the alternate language pages. Since the URL still has the 99 action, the user is logged off.
1 vote -
Keep all tabs open when moving between processing sites We use multiple processing sites. If I have a search or an item record open, they automatically close when I switch to the other site. It would be great if that search or item record stayed active despite what site I'm on.
1 vote -
Need more granular staff permissions for the Ares client. This has been a pressing need for us for many years, and never seems to make it into the development priority list. Collections librarians, as well as learning/curriculum support librarians are constantly asking for access to the Ares client in order to understand what kinds of materials instructors in their subject area are adding to their course lists. But there is no way currently to provide client access without also giving access to user's information as well. Also, we really want them to have "view only" access - not to be able to change or delete materials that instructors have…
12 votes -
Send mass email to instructors via Ares client. We'd like to be able to send a mass email to all instructors who use Ares i.e. create one email and be able to choose "instructor" as the subset of Ares users that the email gets sent to. This enables us to send out reminders and other notifications to all faculty at once.
24 votes
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