Muse Release 2.8.0.0

We are pleased to announce the latest release of The Muse Platform, version 2.8.0.0. Our team has been working quite hard for the last few years on developing brand new products and extending with new features the existing ones. Our goal continues to provide a world class digital library platform and information management to enjoy the best possible user experience.

Some of the highlights of the new version are presented below, including a description of the new products and the detailed list of changes is available in Muse Release Notes PDF Document.

New Products

 

  • Discover Search

    The Discover Search is our pure index search application, introduced under the Muse Search Application starting with version 8.2. The content searched by Discover is provided by Muse Central Index, which contains article and title metadata harvested from various publishers.

    The Discover Search comes with all powerful features of the index search such as faceting and full result set availability. And many post-search functions that are also available in the Federated Search (now labeled as OneSearch), like viewing and saving the selected records in various formats.

    The Muse Search application is fully configurable, allowing both the Federated Search and Discover Search, or just Federated Search or just Discover Search pages. Enabling, disabling the search features are done through the Muse Console for Applications Administration (MCAA).

  • Muse LinkResolver, version 1.1.0.0

    This is our standalone link resolver application, implementing the OpenURL standard version 0.1. The content on which the links resolver relies is provided by Muse Central Index, the metadata received in the OpenURL request is searched in Muse Central Index and the results are displayed. Some of the features available in the current version are:

    • Support for displaying third party links to external specialized providers, passing the OpenURL parameters received by the linkresolver. Examples: Google Scholar, Clarivate JCR, EigenFactor, etc.  Links to other linkresolvers can be created as well.
    • The Muse LinkResolver user interface theme is preserving the same Muse Search Application theme, for a smooth user experience.
    • Extended the user authentication methods by implementing IP authentication. Thus the end user authentication for Muse LinkResolver can be done based on the browser's IP address. Anonymous authentication can be configured as well, by allowing access from any IP address.

    The complete release notes are available in the Muse LinkResolver Release Notes.pdf document.

  • The Muse Identity Manager, version 2.1.0.7

    Muse Identity Manager (Muse IDM) is our new web based application with processes for identifying, authenticating and authorizing individuals or groups of people to access configured applications by associating user rights and restrictions with established identities.

    • Various registration workflows can be configured for user registration:
      • allow direct registration with or without email validation;
      • allow registration only from specific predefine domains;
      • allow registration after email validation and administrator approval.
    • Custom fields can be defined for the users registration form. Each custom field defined can have predefined values and validation rules. For example, validation rules can be specified for a Telephone number, to allow phone numbers from a specific country, operator. Mandatory custom fields can be specified.
    • An administration interface for centralized users management is available with many features like user searching and filtering, bulk updates, sending emails, export as CSV, import from CSV file, login history and user statistics.
    • A payment workflow care be enabled in the registration process, the following vendors were successfully tested: Stripe, Paystack and Verifone Payment Platforms.
    • The following authentication protocols are supported:
      • SAML 2.0. SAML integrations come with the following features: SAML 2.0 based Single Logout (SLO), metadata profile and SAML attributes filtering.
      • OAuth 2.0. Muse IDM can be configured as Authorization Server and offers support to manage OAuth2 clients through the Administrator Console. This feature was successfully tested with Muse Proxy, miniOrange(an OAuth2 client for WordPress) and Moodle version 3.7.1
      • HMAC. Integrations with Muse Search and Muse Proxy applications through HMAC authentication protocol.

    The complete release notes are available in the Muse Identity Manager Release Notes.pdf document.

New Features and Enhancements

 

  • Muse Search Application, version 8.4
    • Extended the results display in the Search Results page to include the link for Muse LinkResolver, which will open in a new browser tab, receiving citation details in OpenURL format.
      The Muse LinkResolver does not replace the existing external Link Resolver, it is an add-on. The availability of link resolvers for the Muse results is fully configurable, both Muse LinkResolver and another external link resolver can be available at the same time, or either one of them or none.
    • Added text translation for the results metadata (e.g. Title, Description, Subject, Notes, etc.) in any of the 12 languages in which the interface is available: Arabic, Greek, Spanish, Romanian, Latin American Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified. Thus, in the footer section of each result, a dropdown with the Language icon is available, from which the end user can select the translation language. The translated texts are displayed inline under the original text.
      The Muse translation module uses Microsoft's Translator API.
    • The following libraries used in the application were updated to their latest versions available: AngularJS, JQuery, Microsoft Cognitive Services Speech, Virtual Keyboard, Twitter Typeahead.
  • Muse Proxy, version 5.4.0.2

    The complete release notes are available in the Muse Proxy Release Notes.pdf document

  • Muse Core and Modules
    • Introduced a new core service for query spell-checking. Multiple implementations are available: spellcheck against the collection of queries used by the end users in a Muse system, against imported dictionaries, against a third-party service.
    • Created the structure and module for integrating with Document Delivery service workflows.
    • Implemented core support for validating and normalizing the standard identifiers such as ISBN, ISSN and DOI. These operations are automatically done when the Muse records are being formed.
    • Implemented query suggestions feature using the embedded Solr service starting from the indexed queries used by the end users in a Muse system. The entire set of tools was created to deal with queries extraction and indexing on a daily basis. In a multitenant system with end users from different domains (legal, medical, engineering, etc.) it is possible to make available only the queries used in a specific application.
    • Created an API for connectors for gRPC (google's Remote Procedure Calls) - https://grpc.io/
  • Muse Administrator Console (MCAA)
    • Added support for Syntax Highlight when raw editing any configuration file (for example of login modules, of Source Packages, etc.).
    • Extended the HTTPS Certificates section to display the validity status (e.g. expired/valid) for each certificate. The about to expire certificates are highlighted.
    • In the MCAA console, "Information" section, the administrator can configure the email settings to be used for the Send Records by Email functionality from within the application. It is now possible to check the edited email settings. To perform this test an email will be sent using email parameters specified in ${APPLICATION_HOME}/profiles/SendMail.xml.
    • The sources group names and descriptions can now be edited and set per language, hence it is possible to have now the sources group names translated in all interface available languages.
  • Muse Control Center
    • Changing the way task files are displayed in case their number is large in the web interface. A dropdown selector is used when number of loaded files exceeds a specified number.
    • Extended the download log file mechanism present in Ant, FTP, Log tasks in order to allow downloading all the associated log files (e.g. FTPUpload.log, FTPUpload.log.1, ...,FTPUpload.log.n) as an archive.
    • To improve the administrator's experience, the following were implemented: allow tasks listing in the default order after a sort operation by Name, Type, Status took place; display an indicator to show the sorting direction after being applied.
    • Extended the existing FTP task in order to upload/download file on SFTP servers using key authentication.
    • The tasks in a taskfile can now be visually arranged more quickly by drag-n-drop.
    • Multiple tasks from within a taskfile can be selected and deleted in one action.
    • Added filtering capabilities to narrow down the list of tasks in a task file, to quickly locate a task or set of tasks. The filtering is done by Name, Description, Task Type and Status.
    • New features were implemented for managing the task files: The "Save as" action allows now choosing the destination folder where the *.tsk file is saved; The "Load" action provides a file browser feature to locate and load the *.tsk file; The "New" action provides the same file browser to create the new task file.
    • Improved the editing of an Ant task by adding a raw edit feature for its XML configuration files.
    • Added support to view in the Muse Control Center interface the log files associated with Ant and FTP and Log tasks.
  • Muse Central Index
    • Extended the Muse Central Index to allow more flexibility when running in multitenant implementations, to be able to specify lists of source identifiers to act as filters for the searches. Thus it is possible now in a multitenant Muse system to have a single index for all tenants and specify lists of source IDs to search for.
    • Started the work of harvesting publisher metadata to grow the Muse Central Index. We started with getting the titles metadata which are provided by each vendor in different ways, mostly by KBART standard.
    • Implemented support for ingesting data from the JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite) format.
    • Created a new data model for the database where the records are stored, to be used more efficiently by the new Discover application. Also, to allow support for filtering on various criteria (like source, created at date, etc.).
    • Ingesting ZIP archives that contain XML files is now possible.
    • Added support for re-indexing updated records in the database. For implementing such a feature, it was needed to add timestamp values for each record in the database, like createdDate and lastModifiedDate.
  • Muse Statistics Platform
    • The Muse Statistics Platform is our service for customers and partners for offering usage statistical information. Muse log files are uploaded on daily basis from customers and partners Muse installations and used for generating rich statistical information. Each customer, partner has access details to view the statistics.
    • Statistics are generated for both Muse Search and Muse Proxy, the following dashboards are available:
      Muse Search
      • Application Logins. Showing statistical information on Muse Search user logins and sessions per various criteria (by date, by user identifier, by application identifier, by user country and by server), in the selected period of time. The statistics information is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • Application Searches. Showing statistical information on user searches per various criteria (by date, by user identifier, by application identifier, by user country, by server, by resource), in the selected period of time. The most searched terms can also be seen. The statistics information is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • Expert Statistics. Showing expert statistical information that can be used by administrators to troubleshoot a Muse Search installation from sources point of view (connectors), such as download speed, time consumed on records processing versus the time spent on network for download and unsupported queries. The statistics information is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • Java Virtual Machine. Statistical information on the heap, runtime and used memory and number of threads used by Muse Search. The statistics information is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • Security. Showing the users accessing from different, multiple geographies. The user IDs present in this information could be from compromised accounts, a more thorough analysis is recommended before taking any actions to disable them.
      • Sessions per Server (in case of load balanced implementation with more than one servers). Showing statistical information on active client sessions per server. The statistics information is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • User Activity. Showing statistical information for an individual user selected from the list or entered manually. The statistics information is about the logins, total time spent, searches, and it is based on the content of the ICECoreStatistics.log files.
      • User-Agent Information. Statistical information about user device, browser engine and operating system. The statistics information is based on the content of the Muse Embedded Tomcat access log files.
      Muse Proxy
      • General Usage Statistics: Application Logins. Showing statistical information on the user logins into Muse Proxy Applications per various criteria (by date, by user identifier, by application identifier, by user country and by server), in the selected period of time. The statistics information is based on the content of the MuseProxyStatistics.log files.
      • General Usage Statistics: Client Sessions. Showing the user active sessions in the selected period of time as maximum, minimum and average values. The statistics information is based on the content of the MuseProxyStatistics.log files.
      • General Usage Statistics: Source Accesses. Showing the number of accesses per each Target (Muse Proxy Source Profile). A Muse Proxy Source Profile is a configuration file which stores the necessary code and credentials to access the Target Data Source. The statistics information is based on the content of the MuseProxyStatistics.log files.
      • Publisher Content Access Statistics. Access statistical information to see how users make use of the subscribed electronic resources. The information presented contains details on the accessed resources, from the name of the platform to type and format of the resource accessed and user details such as the country. Where a publisher knowledge base is available, the information is enriched with additional metadata such as the publisher name, publication title, print and online identifiers and DOI. The statistics information is based on the analysis of the Muse Proxy access.log files.
      • Security. Showing the users accessing from different, multiple geographies. The user IDs present in this information could be from compromised accounts, a more thorough analysis is recommended before taking any actions to disable them.
      • User Activity. Showing statistical information on active client sessions per server. Showing statistical information for an individual user selected from the list or entered manually. The statistics information is about the logins, total time spent, accessed resources, and it is based on the content of the MuseProxyStatistics.log and Muse Proxy access.log files.
      • User-Agent and Referer Information. Statistical information about user device, browser engine, operating system and referer URL. The statistics information is based on the content of the access.log files.

We offer a Free 30 Day Trial period to fully evaluate the latest version of the Muse Search Application. You can obtain the access by simply filling in the trial form.