SURPASS HOSTING SERVICE GETTING STARTED AND OPERATIONS GUIDE

Transcription

1 SURPASS HOSTING SERVICE GETTING STARTED AND OPERATIONS GUIDE Welcome To Surpass Hosting Service. This document contains instructions to help you get up and running with your new service. The instructions will vary based on your operating system (Mac or Windows) and your web browser. Note that these instructions are for accessing your hosting account, which is used to launch the administrative applications like Surpass Central and Surpass Copycat. This process is NOT needed to access your on-line Safari catalog. Your Safari catalog is accessible via a separate URL which is provided in your welcome . I. Installing the Go-Global client and browser plug-ins for Window II. Mac: Installing the Go-Global Connection Client and Plug-In III. Connecting to the Hosting Service IV. Printing through Surpass Hosting Service V. Database Maintenance and Backups VI. Setting custom circulation sounds in Surpass Central VII. Accessing your hard drive or desktop to load or save files VIII. Using Surpass Server-Down to circulate during an Internet outage Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 1

2 I. WINDOWS: INSTALLING GO-GLOBAL CLIENT AND BROWSER PLUG-INS FOR WINDOWS In order to connect to Surpass Hosting Service, on a computer, you must first install the client and browser plugins. You can then connect using the Windows client or through a supported web browser. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome are supported. To begin, open your web browser and navigate to Use the option to download the Windows installer. Once downloaded, double-click the downloaded file to run it. Follow the link on the download page to the detailed instructions page, or go directly to for instructions. NOTE: You must have proper security level on your computer in order to install software and browser plug-ins on your computer. You may need to get your system administrator to grant access for you to do this, or login as a user that as administrative privileges on this computer. Once the plug-ins are installed, future updates will happen automatically, without the need for administrator access. II. MAC: INSTALLING THE GO-GLOBAL CONNECTION CLIENT AND PLUG-IN FOR MAC You can connect to Surpass Hosting Service from a Mac by using Apple s Safari web browser or Mozilla Firefox 3.X or above browser. The installer will also install a Mac Go-Global application which can be launched directly rather than connecting through a browser. To begin, open your web browser and navigate to Use the option to download the Mac client. Firefox users will need to double-click the downloaded filename once finished. Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 2

3 Apple Safari browser users will see the browser mount the disk image automatically after download If the installer does not start automatically, look for the gg-client.mac.pkg file on your desktop and double-click it to begin the installation. The installer will launch. Click Continue on the Introduction screen. When prompted to select a destination, choose your hard drive if it s not already selected, then click Continue. Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 3

4 Click the Install button. The final screen will provide confirmation after successful installation. Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 4

5 III. CONNECTING TO THE SURPASS HOSTING SERVICE Once you have installed the Go-Global Plug-In or add-on, you are ready to connect to Surpass Hosting Service. Open your web browser and navigate to the Click the Logon button. Note: Internet Explorer users may see a yellow bar at the top of Internet Explorer warning you that a website wants to run an add-on, click the yellow bar and select allow to allow it to run. Note: Some versions of Windows may display a message indicating that the program does not have a valid digital signature. Click Allow to continue. You can put a check in the box Do not show me the warning for this program again to avoid this step in the future. After a moment you will be presented with the login box. Here, you ll enter your ID and password for the hosting service. Note: You may receive a message that the server cannot be contacted on port 491 rather than seeing the login box. If this happens, it indicates that your firewall is blocking port 491 traffic. You should contact your network administrator and ask them to open port 491. We can provide our server addresses if your network administrator requires the list for opening the port. After successful login the Programs Window will open. This window will have the icons used to launch the various Surpass programs. You may not have purchased a license for each program icon shown. You may close the browser window if you choose. The programs window can be minimized, just as any other program. Applications such as Surpass Central can also be resized or minimized just like any program run from your desktop. IV. PRINTING THROUGH SURPASS HOSTING SERVICE To print through Surpass Hosting Service, you will use a special printer called the "Preview PDF" printer. When you print to this "printer" the print job will open in Adobe Reader on our computer. From there, you can print Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 5

6 to you local printer as you would print any other local document. 1. Install the lastest version of Adobe Reader to your computer. Adobe Reader is free and can be downloaded from 2. From your Surpass application, use the print feature as you normally would until you get to the screen where you select a printer 3. On the print dialog box, look for the list of printers and choose the one called "Preview PDF" 4. Once you print to the "Preview PDF" printer, the print job will open in Adobe Reader on your computer 5. In Adobe Reader choose File/Print to open the printer dialog box. Look for the "Size Options" under "Page Size & Handling" and choose the option for "Actual Size." This will be necessary for proper allignment when printing labels. This setting will be rememberd on your computer so that you shouldn't need to select it each time. 6. Make sure the correct local printer is selected, then press Print. These instructions can also be found by clicking the "Printing Help" link on the main Surpass Hosting Service login page at V. DATABASE MAINTENANCE AND BACKUPS Database maintenance is automatically scheduled for your account and should run once per week for Surpass CL accounts and three or more times per week for other accounts. However, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the maintenance log from the Welcome screen of Surpass Central to be sure that maintenance is running as expected. Please contact us if you find that maintenance is not running so that we can check your account on the server. In addition to backing up our hosting servers to keep all data safe, we also maintain individual backups of your database for you. These are considered local backups within the Surpass program. A local backup is run each time scheduled database maintenance is performed on your database. These local backup files are available for Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 6

7 you to restore in the event of an emergency, such as an accidental deletion of records or some other function that you might perform by mistake. They might also be useful if you make a global change with Surpass Toolbox, or run a large import and realize that you had the wrong import settings. Typically though, you would only restore these backups at the direction of Surpass Support. While the local backups run automatically with scheduled database maintenance, you also have the ability to run a backup manually. It is a good idea to do this before performing a major database task like a large import or bulk deletion of records via the Toolbox utility. You can perform the backup operation by going to the Database item under the Maintenance menu. Click Daily Maintenance then uncheck all boxes except Local Backup VI. SETTING CUSTOM CIRCULATION SOUNDS IN SURPASS CENTRAL There are a variety of sound files available to Surpass Hosting Service subscribers that can be used for circulation sounds in Surpass Central. Here s how to set these sounds: 1. Login to your Surpass Hosting Service account and launch Surpass Central. 2. Go to Circulation/Transactions and click the Settings tab at the bottom right. 3. Look for the Custom Sounds section near the center of the screen. In this area, you can set a sound to play for Success, Attention, and Error events. For detailed descriptions, consult the help file by clicking the Help button in the top right corner of Surpass Central. 4. To select a sound, click the button to the right of the sound field with the three dots (...) on it. 5. In the Select Custom Sound dialog box you will need to manually type C:\SOUNDS into the filename field at the bottom, then click the Open button. The box will then display all of the sounds that we have loaded into this folder for your use. Click a sound to highlight it, then click the Open button. Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 7

8 6. You will now see the sound listed in the field on the setting screen. For example, you might see "C:\SOUNDS\TING.WAV. You can click the speaker button to the right of the field to preview the sound. If you don t like that sound, just click "..." button again to select a different sound. If you have your own custom sounds that you d like to use, let us know and we can arrange to copy them to the hosting server for you. VII. ACCESSING YOUR HARD DRIVE OR DESKTOP TO LOAD OR SAVE FILES There are times when you may want to access your hard drive so that you can import a file, load a patron file, save a report or other functions? When Surpass displays an Open or Save file dialog box, your local drives will show up with the word "client" in front. For example, your C: drive will show up as "Client C (O:)". Each of the drives on your local computer will be mapped to a "client" drive in the hosting session, usually starting with drive letter O:. Desktop Access: The link for "Desktop" in the open and save dialog boxes actually refer to a virtual desktop on the hosting server that you do not have access to. So you should not use that link as a way to access files on your desktop. To access your desktop, start by selecting "Client C: (O:)", then browse to "Documents and Settings" then select the folder with your Windows username and look for a folder named "Desktop". Tip: Because it's cumbersome to find your desktop by browsing using the method above, you may find it easier to create a folder on your C: drive named something like "Surpass Files" that will be easier to find later once connected to the hosting service. You can always put a shortcut on your desktop to point to that folder. You can then use that folder for files you need to load into a hosting session (such as a MARC or patron import file) or files that you're saving from a hosting session to your computer (such as a report). VIII. USING SURPASS SERVER-DOWN TO CIRCULATE DURING AN INTERNET OUTAGE Overview: Server-Down can be downloaded ahead of time and kept handy on your computer or even on a USB flash drive. When your Internet connection does down, you can use this local copy of the Server-Down program to store circulation transactions. When your Internet connection is restored, you can upload the transactions to your Surpass database. Step 1: Preparing for an Internet outage: download Surpass Server-Down 1. Login to the Surpass Support web site at 2. From the list of programs on the right, find Server-Down Circulation and click it 3. From the Server-Down page, click Download 4. You will be prompted to save this file to your computer. You can store the download file on your computer, or on a USB flash drive or other device. 5. After the download, double-click the.zip file that you downloaded. The ZIP file will open and you ll see the Server-Down program inside. Drag it out of the folder to extract the file. Once extracted, you can delete the.zip file and just keep the program file. You now have what you need to keep circulating even during an Internet outage. Keep the file handy (perhaps on your PC s desktop or on a flash drive in a drawer near the circulation computer). Obviously, you won t be able to download it once your Internet goes down! Step 2: Running Server-Down on your computer during an Internet outage 1. When your Internet connection goes down, you ll lose connection to the hosting service. You can run Surpass Server-Down to keep circulating. Server-Down does NOT need to be installed on your computer! It will run directly by just double-clicking the program file (the one you extracted from the downloaded zip Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 8

9 file). This means that you don t have to have rights to install software on your PC to take advantage of this. In fact, you can run it directly from a USB flash drive. 2. Take note that Server-Down will create a new folder named ServerDown in whatever location you run it from. This folder will contain the database of transactions that you ll sync to the server later. So pay attention to the location where you run the program from. Note that you ll need to be able to write to that drive, which means it won t run from a CD-ROM. If your administrator has installed a program like Deep Freeze on your computer, which erases any changes you make to the computer when you reboot, then you ll need to be sure to sync to the server before rebooting. For this reason, it s probably safer to use a USB flash drive if you have that type of software on your computer. 3. When Server-Down opens, click the Circulation menu item on the left. You ll notice that circulating with Server-Down is very similar to standard circulation. Of course, because it s not directly connected to your Surpass database, it can t enforce any circulation rules (i.e. patron has too many items checked out, or a certain material type doesn t circulate, etc.). Step 3: When your Internet connection is restored, sync to your online database 1. When your Internet connection is back up, CLOSE your local copy of Server-Down that you ve been using for circulation. Take not of the location you were running it from. 2. Connect to your Surpass Hosting Service account as usual. 3. Run the program from the Program Window labeled Server Down Sync Upload. This will open the Server-Down application on the hosting server 4. Login to your database as you would login to other Surpass applications 5. Click the Synchronize menu item on the left menu 6. In the Browse window that opens, you ll navigate to the ServerDown folder that the Server-Down application created when you ran it during your power outage. The drives on your computer will be designated with the word client in front of them. For example, your C: drive is usually Client C (O:). Other drives, such as your USB flash drive, will usually appear below this. Click on the ServerDown folder, then click OK. Read the screen about the due date, and change the date if needed, then click the Synchronize button. 7. The transactions you processed while the Internet was down will now be loaded into the application and a report will be generated. Getting Started with Surpass Hosting Service Page 9