Using Offline Backup Circulation

Voyager Upgrade: Using Voyager’s Offline Backup Circ [OBC]

Revised June 9, 2009

When to use it

Use OBC when your circ desk is open, but Voyager is down or you cannot connect to it.
Only for charges or renewals
Only for YOUR items
Onsite reciprocal charges—UB Charges work fine. Remember: YOUR items/YOUR circ desk.

Can’t use it to discharge.
Can’t do certain UB transactions:
Can’t charge other libraries’ items. E.g., items on your Hold Shelf for your patrons that came from a remote library.
Don’t use it for Short Loan/Reserves.
Don’t use it when the patron’s library ID is not in an institutionally identifiable format—e.g., does not have a unique barcode prefix.

As long as it’s YOUR item at YOUR Circ Desk, using OBC to check out works fine. You can check out your items to other I-Share library patrons, providing they present a valid ID card. The OBC files will upload successfully and create stub records for these transactions.
Keep items that belong to other libraries on your Hold Shelf; don’t check them out to your patrons. Before prolonged downtimes, extend the “Hold Shelf Life” parameter in SysAdmin to cover the period that the system will be down. Note: the upgrade to 7.1 will happen within a short timeframe. This precaution will not be necessary.
You can’t do any circulation activities that would require a discharge transaction.
You can’t upload OBC charges of OTHER libraries’ items. Don’t send items around the state during system downtime. Since the upgrade to 7 will happen within a short timeframe, you need not be concerned about this. You won’t have access to the Call Slip Daemon during the upgrade anyway.

OBC option displays when the connection to Voyager is not available.
Capture files are not version specific. Files from one version of the software are interoperable with other versions of the software.
Error checking of patron or item barcodes is not available in OBC. Offline Charge Mode will accept any barcode that is scanned or typed in.
Details on using OBC are found in Voyager 6.5 Circulation User’s Guide, pg. . 6-27 to 6-35 or pg. 6-28 to 6-36 in the Voyager 7 Circulation User’s Guide.
REMEMBER: Copy any OBC files you have created from:
c:\voyager\circulation\offline to a folder that will not be overwritten by a new client installation! This is particularly important if you don’t use the update checker to download new clients. The Update Checker will move the entire 6.5.3 Voyager directories into the BAK folder when it downloads the new software to the PC

After upgrade, move the captured offline files into the 7.1…Circulation\Offline folder.
At first login to 7.1 Circulation, the system will tell you that you have charge transactions from previous offline sessions.
Before you do anything else in Circ, follow the instructions to upload the OBC files.
For each capture file you created, a report will be generated. Check for errors.