MLS Eclipse OnPrem to Hosted - Our Journey

[timbo343]

I thought i would document our journey from MLS Eclipse OnPrem to Hosted and point out some of the things we have found out.

 

Overall, MLS Hosted isn't too bad (maybe this will come back to haunt us later!)

 

Like many of you that are reading this, we had MLS Eclipse.net (silverlight version) OnPrem and MLS said that there would be no more upgrades for those using OnPrem version. After looking around to see what other alternatives were out there and hearing the bad press about MLS Hosted, we were put off by the hosted version. After attending a Network Managers meeting, in the room we found that the majority were happy with MLS hosted and didn't experience any issues. Also the Librarian meets with other Librarians who run MLS hosted, they too say it works fine so we decided to give it a go. At the end of the day, you cannot you don't like something if you've never experienced it.

 

After a quick phone call to MLS to get the ball rolling on a Monday, we uploaded our database to MLS and by the following Monday (18.12.17) the conversion was complete - now for the testing.

 

As a MLS hosted customer, you get your own URL which is essentially Uxxxxxx.microlibrarian.net (xxxxxx is your customer code 001234 for example). They give you two logins, one an administrator account and the other the librarian account. I will be adding this URL to my external DNS as a CNAME and point it to our MLS URL. - Cannot have a CNAME pointer as the Azure Web App won't allow this. We get a Web APP not found when we do this.

 

We run a smoothwall box onsite so have allowed all microlibrarian.net and readcloud.net traffic and set the HTTPS inspection to Do Not Inspect certificate which should improve the speed of the site.

 

On the evening of 18.12.17 at 23:30, i tested MLS Eclipse Online via my home connection and via the work connection and both performed the same. From logging in at the reading cloud site, it took ~7 seconds for us to login and then 8 seconds for the Management Page to display. From clicking on Circulate to it showing the circulate content on the page, took about 8 seconds too. I've just tried it again whilst the network is in use and the results are the same.

 

19.12.17 - I tested access our MLS management system online via a tethered laptop running windows 7 and my mobile data connection at H+ and i got the following:

- Time to load the Reading Cloud Page: 7 Seconds

- Time to authenticate login: 11 Seconds

- Time to load and show content on Management System: 20 Seconds

 

Comparing OnPrem silverlight version to MLS Eclipse Online, yes, it's a little slower to load the management page but it's nothing to write home about and it's barable - i've used slower systems. I guess you have to think that before the conversion it was locally hosted do speed with obviously be quicker. Yes the hosted version could be a little quicker however we don't know what speed their cloud servers are.

 

The only issue we have at the moment is trying to get notifications from MLS through to Office365. We are getting a message about needing a secure connection even though we are using port 587 or whatever it is - i haven't got it to hand at the moment - if someone knows how to fix this, i would be greatly appreciative of the answer (this as been solved later in this post)

 

During tests however, i have found something that doesn't work!

 

- We run LTSB2016 on the network and IE, FF, Chrome all work fine trying to access the Management side of the library system.

 

What doesn't work is when you run 1703 (this is installed on my office machine) and then IE doesn't load the Management system, instead MLS takes you back to the Reading Cloud site and Safari doesn't work either - infact, Safari doesn't load the login page but Chrome, FF and Edge all work fine!

20.12.17 - Been on a support call about this and the dam thing worked fine after clearing cookies and temporary files and all browsing history.

 

- Schedule Reminders to email addresses don't work as it will not save the schedule settings - as the START DATE includes a time too which is partially hidden, a time in the future needs to be set too and then also set a START TIME! What a backwards bit of scheduling!!!

20.12.17 - The scheduling of reminders has been logged as a bug that they are looking into.

 

The librarian is using the system as we speak so i need to speak to MLS about the identikit as we have biometric registrations. Phoned up on 19.12.17 at 10:15 and got through to someone at 10:56.

 

- After a long support call regarding the MLS Eclipse Biometrics (we don't integrate with BioStore) i'm waiting for 2nd line to come back to me regarding the issue with circulate and the UareU fingerprint reader. I know the fingerprint reader is working as we've tested BioStore on this laptop we are using for MLS testing. We get a message on both Library Management and circulate tab with a lot of 0s. This apparently shouldn't happen. We've added Added *.microlib.net | *.microlbrarian.net | *.readingcloud.co.uk to the trusted sites in IE too.

 

The first complaint from the librarian, checking in books via circulate is slower than it used to be.

 

Day 2 (20.12.17) of using MLS Eclipse Hosted - the system is starting to feel "clunky". The schedule system for notification seems to have a mind of it's own and doesn't do what i want it to do. Also, no emails are delivered to student email addresses or even mine as i've temporarally changed a student's email address to mine to see if email is being delivered - it's not.

 

Support call went straight through to an agent and yep there is a bug in the email scheduling and the setting applied for email delivery haven't worked.

 

Email test worked from our notification address to the MLS employee email address however when putting in my email address it doesn't work (via the schedule reminder) howerver the manaul reminder from the right of the management screen works!! - it would appear that we need to have different reminders to be sent out for the schedule to work as we now have it working.

 

The "Just to so know" box doesn't disable if you tick it to not show any more - this is a bug that is being ironed out.

 

I'm having issues with the AD Link integration - emailed support on 20.12.17, waiting to hear back from them.

 

Will continue to update this thread until we get to a point where we are happy with our system.

[jemal]

oh wow, thanks for this. very interesting. Currently on OnPrem as well, kind of desperate to find a new system but as you said everyone seems to be using MLS, plus the competition seems just as bad from what I've read. Not made any decisions yet but I would add that listening to their terrible on-hold music for 30+ mins is pure torture. Especially as our 'reports' stopped working a month ago, and for the last 2 weeks the ticket has been sent to escalation team with not a single update despite chasing up from both me and the 1st line guy.

[timbo343]

Managed to get the AD SSO working .

 

After a quick call to Peter at MLS support he ran through the following:

- Deploy MLS.AD.MSI to all machines

- Make sure NetFrameWork 4.5.x and 4.6 are installed and enabled (on windows 10 they are enabled as default)

- Make sure the 3rd part extensions are enabled on the library management machine

- IE Options > Advanced > Enhanced Protected Mode - disbaled

- IE Trusted Sites > add *.microlib.net | *.microlibrarian.net | *.readingcloud.net. These can be configured in Group Policy under Coomputer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page. Look for policy Site to Zone Assignment List.

- IE Trusted Sites level to be set to LOW and set the option Automatic Logon with current username and password under User Authentication > Logon. This too can be set via group policy.

 

If all these are set, then students (and staff) should be able to log on to the reading cloud with SSO. The reading cloud will take a little longer to load.

[timbo343]

After testing out the APP and replicated a scenario of a student away from the network or on a machine that isn't on a machine that has the SSO msi installed here's what i found.

 

I browsed to the Readingcloud.net and proceeded to login with the test student's network details. This failed and after speaking to Josh at MLS he showed me that we have to do the following:

 

Login to the management interface > Click on Security from the top menu > Password Manager > Global Update > Select a Tutor Group > Drop the Logon Name to current login and select a password option.

 

This will allow students to login to the APP and on to a machine that doesn't have the MLS.AD.MSI installed.

[timbo343]

Thought i'd check to see if our Hosted system is still live... Ooops, looks like someone has borked our site and the log in via readingcloud.net doesn't work either.

 

Thank god we aren't back until 8th Jan!

[timbo343]

Just to update this as we still haven't fully settled down with MLS hosted yet.

 

We had a Second Line support engineer login to our system the other day to sort out our biometrics (the one that uses the DAT) file. It turns out there is a newer version of the software (identikit) that we weren't using on the librarian PC. We finally got the biometric reader to show some data in a text file to prove it was working.

 

Now that everything is working with the biometrics and the DAT file that is now sat on the librarian machine rather than the server - for now, we have run in to another little issue which MLS are aware about but aren't going to fix as they've stopped supporting it, and that is the IDENTIFICATION button that was in circulate. It's now been removed from the hosted version of Eclipse - bravo!! Now the librarian cannot edit or add fingerprints to borrowers. I have spoken to SecondLine MLS support about this and they said to create a shortcut to the MLS BIOSTORE.CONFIG program listed in C:\Program Files\Microlibrarian Solutions..... and put this shortcut on the desktop.

 

I created the shortcut and tested with the librarian - doesn't work. Maybe the application requires administrator rights to run the program - set the option on the program to Run As Administrator for All Users - Doesn't work. Next thing to test, give the librarian full permissions to the Micro Librarian Solutions folder in programs files - doesn't work. The only thing that works is to give the librarian LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR access. Giving the librarian POWER USER access won't allow the user to run the application.

 

Now the next issue which MLS second line support sorted but i'm still unsure how it actually works and what to do if it goes wrong and that is the AD sync. I know that i can use the MLS Biometric Config application to see and sync the AD users to MLS but im not sure now often this needs to be ran.

 

All in all so far, the system seems to be cobbled together now it's hosted. I feel that the librarian and myself will need to sit down and seriously consider looking else where unless MLS can sort these issues out. Why do i get the feeling that MLS Eclipse is slowly becoming more like SIMS where systems don't actually talk to each other correctly?

[BOOT]

I'm not using AD sync until they fix it.

Currently it displays the password in plain text ​for all to see in the status bar.

[timbo343]

I'm not using AD sync until they fix it.

Currently it displays the password in plain text ​for all to see in the status bar.

 

Does it? I've tried it on our machines with users logged in status bar showing and doesn't show the password in plain text.

[CamelMan]

Thanks for this info Timo343 - MLS having been doing the hard sell on us to go Hosted (keep calling up,not getting anywhere with me so calling other people in the school, offering discounts etc) and reading this gives me a proper view of the system (which apparently "works well in all but a handful of school - and that was their network"). From this thread and others it appears that the Hosted system has some issues, MLS had support problems and it appears they are more interested in flogging a troubled system that fixing or supporting it. Think I'll hold off until the support runs out or they fix hosted properly! Be interested to see how you go with them or if you decide to jump elsewhere...

[timbo343]

So i thought i'd update this as the issues with Eclipse hosted seem f*****g terrible now!!

 

When we moved over in december, things were ok but now! Jesus!! I've spent the whole day trying to get things to work on the s****y software that fails to show records and fails to show information.

 

I've been trying to help the librarian, every year is the same but this year now we are on hosted is worst than ever! I've imported the CSV and it's missed out some users, when i've tried to import the missing users they have failed to be shown in the intake screen. Only after hours of trying have i got it to work and i've done nothing different!!

 

Those that say the system is slow - my god it's f*****g slow now and i know that we will NOT be re-newing when our contact is up for renewal.

 

I've been trying to mass update records with student email addresses - it seems this cannot be done unless you know exactly what BORROWER_ID means. What do you mean you cannot find BORROWER-LOGONNAME, BORROWER_PASSWORD, BORROWER_BARCODE. There are there in the CSV i'm trying to upload so i can update borrower records on mass.

 

If i were to export the data from Eclipse the headings don't even marry up with what needs to be uploaded back to the system.

 

The help guides.. HA! The help guides are so basic and so unhelpful.

[Davit2005]

Can you export users in a csv and see what format this is in, headers, commas, quotes etc? Edited September 11, 2018 by Davit2005

[timbo343]

Can you export users in a csv and see what format this is in, headers, commas, quotes etc?

 

I have exported the data however it all depends on what view is shown in eclipse as to what is downloaded. When it comes to uploading the data why does date of birth have 2 column headings such as DOB and Date Of Birth?

 

If we were doing a mass update what do we actually need to have in the CSV for it to work as im seriously losing my patience with the software! I'm trying to get the email field to populate via CSV rather than do them one by one!