Because the required upgrades and architectural changes were necessarily disruptive, we decided to wait until summer, when the work would cause the least damage. Those upgrades went about as well as expected, though admittedly not as well as hoped, but the heavy lifting is behind us now1 and we're ready to move forward again. Unfortunately, we have no "I survived the LibraryH3lp upgrade and didn't even get a lousy T-shirt" T-shirts to give you. But we hope that you'll find the coming new features a worthy consolation prize. (We'll talk a bit about new features in a future post.) But enough history. Let's talk sign-ups.
We're now ready resume accepting new signups. One of the benefits of the upgrade is that we now have three regional servers available. To get started, simply choose the server physically closest to you:
- USA: Please email us at support@libraryh3lp.com to request a free trial. Please include your affiliation and preferred admin username.
- Europe: https://eu.libraryh3lp.com/signup
- Asia: https://sg.libraryh3lp.com/signup
(Just a note, the Europe and Asia servers are currently running with self-signed HTTPS certificates. This is only temporary. We just needed a quick way to ensure that the signup process was encrypted.)
Screencasts for new admins. Here are a few screencasts we created to give new admins a leg up:
Users/queues:
http://screencast.com/t/
Widget designer part 1:
http://screencast.com/t/
Widget designer part 2:
http://screencast.com/t/
Widget designer part 3:
http://screencast.com/t/
Existing users that want to move to a regional server. If you're an existing user and would like to move to one of the regional servers, this is the process:
- Sign up for a trial account on the regional server closest to you, just to satisfy yourself that it will be worth the hassle of moving. Don't get too invested in your trial, as this is not your real account.
- Let us know that you'd like to move. (Thanks much to those of you who have already declared a desire to move!) We'll migrate your users and queues to the new server.
- You'll need to start logging into the new server via your chat clients and work on updating your web pages to point to the new URL. You may want to monitor both systems during this transitional period.
- Once your web pages are updated, we can move your gateways, existing chat data, and transcripts.
- You can finally stop logging into the old server.
If you begin your move to a new server before the end of August, it's free to move. After that, there is a $100 fee, because we may need to resolve conflicts between your users and queues and those of an existing user on your new server, and this is a tedious manual process. Oh, and of course you can also choose to move between LibraryH3lp and My Customer Cloud for free during this period.
Regards,
Eric
1 We're very much aware that there are still some user-visible features missing, but they'll be added soon. The hardest work really is behind us.
2 comments:
Hi Eric, Is there an advantage to moving to a regional server? We're an existing customer. Also, could you tell me when the reports tab will be available again? It's annual report time, and I've been asked to provide usage stats for the service. Thanks! Debbie Herman (Central CT State University)
Hi Debbie,
In your case, you're already on the geographically optimal server. The main server is in Virginia, so you're good to go.
Reports are probably still a couple of weeks off; we're currently working on a big time-sensitive feature. However, you can get a simple count (total or by queue) from the Calendar Page, which is linked on the Monitor Activity tab. That's about as close as we have to reports right now.
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