FAQs

Note this information from the Alma-L:

From: Alma on behalf of Jim Adamson via Alma
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 10:28 AM
To: Ex Libris user community discussion list for Alma
Cc: Jim Adamson
Subject: Re: [ALMA-L] Printing problem with Thunderbird Email Client

Hi Yongming,

We hit the same problem last week. Thunderbird had auto updated itself to v68. This version drops support for legacy extensions, hence FiltaQuilla and PrintingTools had been automatically disabled.

The fix was to downgrade to TB version 60.9.1 (which in itself was only released on Nov 5 2019) and then disable Thunderbird automatic updates.

As there is no way to get Thunderbird to roll back its updates, downgrading involved downloading v 60.9.1 and running the installer, installing over the top of the version 68.

After relaunching TB go to Options > Advanced button > Update tab > Choose "Never check for updates" to disable automatic updates.

You'll probably need to go into Tools > Add-ons to re-enable the extensions.

Turning off updates may be a security risk, but IMHO, in this context it's a small one. And it's only a temporary thing until the adopters of the Filtaquilla extension fixes the issue. Not sure about when PrintingTools will be fixed though.

Re. minimize-to-tray. We use a different solution for this, which isn't a TB extension, but rather a small Windows app called Trayconizer. Basically you set up a custom desktop shortcut whose Target is:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe"

This shortcut can be added to the shell:startup folder. Unfortunately there's no "start minimized" option, but we can live with that.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, Jim

On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 14:11, Wang, Yongming via Alma wrote:

Dear all,

We have been using Thunderbird Email Client as a proxy between Alma and our default printer since going live in June 2019. We followed Marc Bayer's instruction to install and setup Thunderbird. It's been working fine until now. Two extensions of Thunderbird stop working.

1. auto-printing: That is, when Thunderbird receives a printing email from Alma it will automatically send it to the default printing to print.

2. minimize-to-tray: Thunderbird will minimize and run in the background automatically after the computer and Thunderbird starts every morning.

I searched Thunderbird extension website and found that the two add-ons for auto printing (FiltaQuilla and PrintingTools) and one add-on for minimize-to-tray (MinimizeToTray) are all out-of-date and not compatible with our current Thunderbird version (v. 68). That's why they stopped working. The add-on's authors haven't updated them.

Are any libraries running into the same issues? How did you fix them? I'm less care about the minimize feature than the auto-printing one.

I'm attaching Marc Bayer's instruction pdf.

Thanks very much for any help and guidance.

Yongming

Could this FAQ be updated? Documentation from ExLibris is now saying an email is no longer necessary to set up printing.