Clio System Overview
A top-level description of the pieces of the Clio System
System pieces
When you received your 'Welcome to Clio' email, you were provided with the URLs and login details of your two new Clio applications.
The first is a public-facing application. This is where people can submit their requests and follow their progress. You can use OpenURL links from your discovery service (or other search engines) to direct people to the request forms, with all the bibliographic information pre-filled. If you like, you can allow them to ask you for renewals of items on loan to them. You can also create forms where other libraries can submit requests to you.
The second is a staff-facing application. This is where library staff do the actual work of processing the ILL requests. The 'Borrowing' section of Clio holds the requests you place, wishing to borrow items from other libraries. The 'Lending' section of Clio holds the requests placed by other libraries, asking you to lend them your own items.
The third part of the system is the database that both the applications use. Your data is stored in its own database (no sharing with other Clio customers).
The database and the applications are hosted in Microsoft Azure's platform.
The first is a public-facing application. This is where people can submit their requests and follow their progress. You can use OpenURL links from your discovery service (or other search engines) to direct people to the request forms, with all the bibliographic information pre-filled. If you like, you can allow them to ask you for renewals of items on loan to them. You can also create forms where other libraries can submit requests to you.
The second is a staff-facing application. This is where library staff do the actual work of processing the ILL requests. The 'Borrowing' section of Clio holds the requests you place, wishing to borrow items from other libraries. The 'Lending' section of Clio holds the requests placed by other libraries, asking you to lend them your own items.
The third part of the system is the database that both the applications use. Your data is stored in its own database (no sharing with other Clio customers).
The database and the applications are hosted in Microsoft Azure's platform.
Do I need to use the public-facing site?
The public-facing site is not required, but it's strongly recommended. Having all requests created within Clio allows for more control and uniformity in the request information. This helps make statistics more useful, and ensures that patron records are correctly connected to their requests. You can create requests manually in the staff application, though this is not recommended as an everyday process - it's more time-consuming and prone to copy/paste errors.
If you have some people who really prefer to email or phone in their requests, that is certainly understandable. What we often recommend in such a situation is to provide the public application as an option, even if you don't require all requests to come in that way.
If you have some people who really prefer to email or phone in their requests, that is certainly understandable. What we often recommend in such a situation is to provide the public application as an option, even if you don't require all requests to come in that way.
Setup
Each application has setup controls.
Anything you want to change in the public application - how the request forms look, or which emails are sent in this application - is controlled in the Setup menu of the application. The initial login details you received will have access to the Setup menu.
Similarly, anything you want to change in the staff application - default settings and actions, emails sent in this application - are controlled in the Preferences menu of the application. Again, the initial login details you received will have access to the Preferences menu.
Anything you want to change in the public application - how the request forms look, or which emails are sent in this application - is controlled in the Setup menu of the application. The initial login details you received will have access to the Setup menu.
Similarly, anything you want to change in the staff application - default settings and actions, emails sent in this application - are controlled in the Preferences menu of the application. Again, the initial login details you received will have access to the Preferences menu.