To enable Aspen LiDA for your library, head to the Aspen LiDA module within Aspen Administration and click Location Settings. Then, click Add New.

1. Give the app setting a name. This will not appear anywhere in the app and is only for internal use.
2. Check the box for Display location(s) in Aspen LiDA.
3. Switch the Release Channel from Beta (Testing) to Production (Public)
4. Check all locations you'd like to show within LiDA.
5. Save your changes.

Once enabled, your library locations will appear in Aspen LiDA shortly. 

Note: there is currently no way for libraries to use LiDA in a test environment.

For certain library barcode lengths, it may be necessary to enable automatic rotation on the library card screen to flip to landscape mode.

To enable this, go to Aspen Administration > Aspen LiDA > General Settings > check Automatically rotate the library card screen to landscape > apply to Libraries

Settings within these Aspen LiDA General Settings area apply at the Library System level.

Address, Phone, and Location Email

Aspen LiDA pulls this information from Aspen Administration > Primary Configuration → Locations. 

1. Make sure the location's address, phone number, and email address are filled out on this page.
2. Do not complete the latitude and longitude fields, save them as blank and the Google Maps API will load in the correct values for you. If for any reason you change the library’s address, please blank these values before you save the new address so they can be reset.

Location Image

To add a location image, head to Aspen Administration > Primary Configuration → Locations. 

This image will appear in LiDA on the contact information screen for the library. This can be accessed by clicking on the More tab, then clicking the location name/hours at the top of the screen.

Aspen LiDA pulls from your library contact information in Aspen Administration > Primary Configuration → Library Systems → Contact Links → General Email Address.

You can either provide email addresses specific to the locations (as mentioned in the previous section) or you can specify a general contact email within the systems settings. If a location email is provided, LiDA will use that. If a location email is not provided, LiDA will use the general contact email. If a general contact email is not provided, LiDA will not display an email link on the contact screen.

Theme & Layout → Themes

The logo that shows in the "Find Your Library" menu will pull from the Favicon icon in the Theme since it is a smaller image file that will render much quicker.

For the logo that shows in the patron account drawer, it will check the "Logo for Aspen LiDA". If there is not a logo uploaded here, Aspen will look to see if there is a Favicon icon to use instead. The image should be square with a 512 x 512 pixel maximum. 

If the Favicon is loaded but the Logo for Aspen LiDA is not loaded, the Favicon will be used to display in both areas.

If a Favicon is not loaded, no image will show in "Find Your Library".

If neither a Favicon nor Aspen LiDA image is uploaded, for the patron account, Aspen will look to the logo uploaded in Aspen LiDA > Branded App Settings for the branded app. If no logo is loaded there either, it will default to the Aspen LiDA general logo. In the community app, it will also default to the Aspen LiDA general logo. 

The same rules apply for the logo on the digital library card.

For best practices, you can upload both the Favicon and the Logo for Aspen LiDA. Or, just the Favicon if they are going to be the same logo.

For Aspen LiDA logos, since they are a smaller size, it might be best to crop out words where possible and just use a recognizable image from the logo to clearly brand the library system/location.

Set Up SIP in ILS and Add Credentials to Aspen

To use the Scan & Go self checkout, you'll need a SIP connection set up in your ILS.

Once set up in the ILS, you'll need to add these credentials to Aspen in Aspen Administration > Primary Configuration > Account Profiles > ILS Connection Configuration > SIP 2 Information (optional).

Fill in the:

• SIP 2 Host
• SIP 2 Port
• SIP 2 User
• SIP 2 Password and Confirm Password

Enable Permissions

To access the Self-Checkout settings make sure you have the following permission: Administer Aspen LiDA Self-Check Settings

Create Self-Check Settings and Apply to Locations

Once the permissions are added, go to Aspen Administration > Aspen LiDA > Self-Check Settings > Add New > Give your settings a name > check Enable Self-Check > Check all the Locations that Self-Check is enabled for > Save. 

Apply Checkouts To

As of the 24.04 release, libraries can now select how the self-checkouts in LiDA get assigned in the ILS. The options are:

• Current Location User is Logged Into
• User Home Location
• Item Location (Koha 23.11+ Only)

Add Supported Styles of Barcodes that LiDA Can Scan

Click Add New and add the barcode styles that LiDA should be able to scan:

• Aztec
• Codabar
• Code 39
• Code 93
• Code 128
• Data Matrix
• EAN 13
• EAN 8
• ITF-14
• PDF417
• UPC E
• UPC A (Android Only)
• UPC/EAN (Android Only)
• QR

Instead of adding all options, you might want to add only the item barcodes you know you need to scan for performance and battery optimization.

RFID

Scan & Go will not disable RFID tags at this time. The SIP connection is purely to allow checkouts via your ILS.

Test

Test using Scan & Go. As we roll this out and use this on a variety of ILSes, please be sure to test and let Aspen support know if you have any questions/issues!

To learn more about System Messages, visit our System Message Help Center page.

Create a system message

When setting up a System Message in LiDA, you are using the same Aspen Discovery System Message module but you can have the messages set to show in both places or one or the other.

1. Visit Aspen Administration > Local Catalog Enrichment > System Messages and click Add New.
2. Give your system message a title. This is not shown anywhere publicly, it is for your internal identification purposes only.
3. Type and format your message in the Message to show text area. You can change the font, color, size of font, add hyperlinks or even upload images here. If uploading images, keep in mind the size (smaller images might be better)
4. Check Display in Aspen LiDA if you want the message to show in Aspen LiDA
5. If showing in Aspen LiDA, add the message you want to show here. LiDA only supports text-only messages so you may want to modify/reduce what you have in your Discovery message.
6. Click the Show On dropdown to change where the system message displays, if desired. The message will show on All Pages by default (top of header placement), but you can also target messages based on whether users are logged in, or display on specific account pages.
7. Select a Message Style to help your message stand out with background colors. See below for examples.
8. Select a Start Date to Show and End Date to Show for your message if you only want the message to show during a specific time period.
9. Check Dismissable to allow logged in patrons to be able to hide a message if they have already seen it. All Aspen LiDA messages are dismissable by default.
10. Select the Libraries and Locations the system message applies to. If no libraries or locations are selected, the system message will not appear.
    1. When selecting Libraries, this is publishing to the Aspen Discovery catalogs that you want this to show on
    2. When selecting Locations, this is publishing to the Aspen LiDA interfaces that you want this to show on
11. Save your changes.

Display of System Message in Aspen LiDA

The message will show in Aspen LiDA at the top of the screen and be dismissable by default. Note the smaller amount of space on a phone versus a computer when setting up system messages.

Message Style Examples

From top to bottom, in the example photo below, the message styles are:

• Danger (red)
• Success (green)
• Info (blue)
• Warning (yellow)
• none

Note: We don't suggest that you set multiple system messages like this, this is only for example purposes :) 

To set up Menu Links, go to Aspen Administration > Primary Configuration > Library Systems > click into the system you want to update > scroll to the bottom to the Menu Links table.

By default, menu links will show on your Aspen Discovery catalog only. You can choose whether a link appears in both Discovery and LiDA, or in LiDA only.

Menu links that are added to LiDA will show up in the "More" section of the app menu bar at the bottom of the screen.

Note that FontAwesome icons do not carry over to the display in LiDA, only the link text.

When clicked, menu links will open up in a new browser window on the mobile device.

There are two default messages that show when loading Aspen LiDA. They are:

• The oldest library in the world dates from the seventh century BC.
• One of the most overdue library books in the world was returned after 122 years.

These messages can be translated via Aspen Administration > Languages and Translations > Translations

If you are using one of Aspen's event integrations, there is nothing additional you need to do to set up events in LiDA - the functionality will automatically work.

Learn more on Aspen's event integrations.

• See how Events searching works in LiDA
• See how Events display in the patron account
• Customize Event Registration Information Text in LiDA

To manage notifications:

1. Aspen Administration > Aspen LiDA > Notification Settings > Add New
2. Enter a name for the setting.
3. Send In-App Notifications To: by default, notifications are set to None (disabled). Switch to All Users to enable notifications for everyone. Selecting Only Staff Users will enable notifications only for users who have administrative permissions within Aspen. This is primarily to allow staff to see and test notifications before enabling them for all users.
4. Notification Types: Check to enable your desired notifications:
   • Saved Searches - When a new title (added within the last 7 days) is added to a user's saved search, they will receive a notification
   • Custom Alerts - Custom Alerts can be set in Aspen Administration > Aspen LiDA > LiDA Notifications and click Add New.
   • Account Alerts - Alerts related to Linked Accounts
5. Libraries: Check to enable for the desired library system(s).
6. Save your changes.

To begin, go to Aspen Administration > Aspen LiDA > LiDA Notifications and click Add New.

Add a Title. This will be the bolded part of the Notification.

Next, enter the body of the Message. Here you can even add emojis.

Note: the suggested character guidelines under the Message box.

Character limits before being truncated

• iOS: 178 characters (includes both title and message)
• Android (if collapsed, default): 43 characters for message, 39 characters for title
• Android (if expanded): 504 characters for message, 79 characters for title

Sends On - Here you set up the date and time the notice should go out. The time zone is set to the same time as your Aspen server. Aspen will check every 15 minutes for a notice and if it sees one that is past, then it will start the process of sending the notice if it finds one within that window that has not been sent yet.

Expires On - Here you set the length of time before the notice will disappear from a patron's notifications. If left blank, notifications will clear 7 days after the send time.

Exactly when will my notification be sent out?

We have a cron setup to look for notifications to send every 15 minutes. For example, if you create a notification at 1:20pm to go out right away, the cron will pick it up and send off the requests to APNs and FCM (the push notification services: Apple Push Notifications “APNs'' and Firebase Cloud Messaging “FCM”), which then relay to the devices. Please note, that depending on the current server load for push notification services, it might take several minutes to start receiving notifications on devices.

You also have access to a report for notifications that have been sent to APNs and FCM. Every hour, there’s a different cron that’s checking for a receipt from the push notification services to let us know when a notification was successfully received by a device, or not (and why). This report will tell you the date/time that Aspen sent the request to the push notification services, what type of notification (i.e. saved search or custom) it was, the recipient's name, card number, home library, and device model (i.e. Google Pixel 5 or iPhone 12). If a user has notifications setup on multiple devices, they will receive one for each device and will be seen as two separate notifications in the report.

If selecting "An external website" from the "On tap, send user to" dropdown menu, an External URL box will appear. In this text field, specify the URL for your event, list, or other page where the notification should direct your users.

If selecting "A specific screen in the app" from the "On tap, send user to" dropdown menu, a new dropdown menu will appear. This menu shows options for all areas within the Aspen LiDA app to which you can direct users upon tapping the notification -- for example, a specific author or browse category you may be highlighting.

Depending on which one of these in-app options you choose, another box may pop up asking for the specific corresponding term or ID. For example, if selecting Search: Specific term, you would fill in the Search Term keyword for the search to which the user should be directed.

Next, you can specify which Libraries and Locations this notification should go out to. This is helpful if the notice is related to a specific library system or location's program for example.

Another way to target specific groups of users with custom notices is by Patron Types. Aspen will pull in your patron types and you can specify which patron types should receive this notification. For example, a notice you'd want to only go to staff.

At the bottom there is Notification Sent checkbox. This will automatically check after the notice is sent.

Important: If you uncheck this box, the notice will be sent again.

When you are searching in LiDA for the library name, there are two names that show for each Location.

The top name, in the first example below, Bookmobile, is the location name set in Aspen Administration > Locations > Display Name. 

The bottom name, in the first example below, Alpha (ByWater), is the location name we have set up in the server that connects Discovery and LiDA. If you would like changes made to this naming convention, please reach out to your Aspen support team.

When setting up LiDA for the first time and/or turning on new locations, it is expected to take about 24 hours for changes to show.

For other changes between Discovery and LiDA they follow this schedule:

General:
- Browse categories - 15 minutes
- Pickup locations - 30 minutes

User data:
- Holds - 15 minutes
- Checkouts - 15 minutes
- Lists - 15 minutes
- Profile - 15 minutes
- Linked accounts - 15 minutes
- ILS messages - 5 minutes
- Saved searches - 5 minutes
- Reading history - 30 minutes
- User-specific browse categories (i.e. what’s hidden or not) - 15 minutes

Aspen LiDA does not have its own usage dashboard at this time. 

If you're looking for something to report on, take a look at the Aspen API Usage dashboard under System Reports. The API calls in this section are used exclusively by LiDA unless you have another developer using the Aspen APIs.

For information about sessions, search the page for loginToLiDA -- this number tracks the number of new sessions initiated when users log into their account on LiDA.

Here is a sample Aspen LiDA testing plan you might want to run through prior to launching the app to the public.

Access the document. Make a copy of the document in order to check the boxes.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please submit a ticket.

When helping a user troubleshoot an issue or reporting an issue related to Aspen LiDA, there is a handy tool within Aspen LiDA.

You can find this in More > Preferences > Support

When you click on > Support, the screen gives insight into the user's device and the version of Aspen LiDA they are running to better help troubleshoot issues.

This screen can be screenshot and used when reporting Aspen LiDA issues.

If there is a new version of Aspen LiDA available, users will see a message on this screen indicating they should download the latest version.

Clicking Update Now will redirect users to their app store to update and then they can re-launch the app.

For the most up to date resources on Aspen LiDA, check out our Marketing page.