This is a collection of neat tricks and configurations that might be nice for your library.

A successful initial configuration

  1. Go to Admin → Library settings. Set the character set to utf8.

Adding a link to your system documentation

You can configure the "Help" link in OpenBiblio’s menu to link to any URL you would like. This defaults to the official OpenBiblio documentation, but you may wish to replace it with some help that is customized for users at your library.

Note
 You will need access to the SQL database to do this; it has not yet been added to the end-user interface.

  1. Open up the SQL database using the interface of your choice (be it PhpMyAdmin, a command-line interface, or any other tool you prefer).

  2. Type UPDATE settings SET value='https://myLibraryDocs.example.com' WHERE name='help_link' (using your own URL instead of https://myLibraryDocs.example.com).

  3. Refresh the OpenBiblio interface in your browser. When you click on the help link, it should pop up a new window with your custom documentation.

Changing the timeout length on HMAC requests

OpenBiblio encrypts certain requests that might expose confidential member data. Every time a user opens or refreshes a *Forms.php page that might expose such data, the clock starts ticking and they must make their requests before a certain number of minutes elapse. This is to make sure that if the request falls into the wrong hands, the intruder will not have access to these data for very long.

You can set the number of minutes before sensitive requests time out to the value that works best for your library, based on factors like your workflow and security concerns.

  1. Open up the SQL database using the interface of your choice (be it PhpMyAdmin, a command-line interface, or any other tool you prefer).

  2. Type UPDATE settings SET value='5' WHERE name='hmac_timeout' where 5 is the number of minutes before sensitive requests become invalid.

Tip
 If you would like to "turn off" this timeout feature (technically setting the expire time to 28 days), set the value to 0.