LINK 2.0 Koha

What to do if you don't charge overdue fines for "Check in/Check out" transactions.

Occasionally you may encounter this pop-up when checking out items to a patron: 
There are a variety of reasons why this can happen but you have to make a decision; click "Yes, Check Out" to the current patron or "No, Don't Check Out" and leave the item checked out to the previous patron.

IF you choose to check out to the current patron and IF the item was overdue on the previous patron's record, this "Check in/Check out" does not credit the previous patron's overdue fines.

If it is your library's policy to credit the previous patron's overdue fines, follow these steps:

1. Click the "NO, Don't Check Out " button.
2. Open Koha in a new tab.
3. Select the Check in function on the main page.
4. Select the “Forgive overdue charges” Check in option.
5. Check in the item.
6. Un-select the “Forgive overdue charges” checkbox and click the Submit button to clear that check in option.
7. Go back to the original Koha tab and continue checking out the item to the new patron. 

 

Submitted by E. Kersten/Pinney Branch, Madison Public Library

Printing reports after the Firefox 20 upgrade

Some libraries have reported problems printing both the Hold Shelf Action report as well as the Holds Queue report after this recent Firefox upgrade.  We recommend that you access Koha through a different browser to generate and print these reports.  Here are the 2 best options:

Option 1:

• Open a Chrome web browser (if you do not have this installed already you can install it yourself)
• Log into Koha http://scls-staff.kohalibrary.com
• Generate your Holds Queue Report  
• Hide the Patron column
• Select Print from the Control icon at the far right of the Address field.
• Confirm your Printer and then click Print.
• Log out and CLOSE CHROME.
• Resume Koha work in Firefox.

Option 2:

• Open an Internet Explorer (IE) web browser
• Log into Koha http://scls-staff.kohalibrary.com
• Generate your Holds Queue Report
  • IMPORTANT:  If you have IE8, you will not be able to hide any columns on the report.  If you have Windows 7/IE9, you will be able to hide columns in the report.
• Log out and CLOSE IE
• Resume Koha work in Firefox.
  • If you were unable to hide columns when printing this report, you should shred the report when you are finished. 

We are working on finding a better resolution to this problem and will update you as soon as we can.

 

What else needs to be done after changing a patron's barcode?

When you have to change a patron’s barcode (Card number field), here's a list of other tasks you may have to do if the patron uses the following library resources:

 LINKcat

• Enter the new patron barcode in the patrons’ OPAC login field.
  • NOTE: If the patron has a custom OPAC login (something other than their barcode, then do not enter the new barcode in this field). The patron will be able to use either their custom login OR their new barcode to log in.
• Access: patron will be able use the new barcode to log into LINKcat immediately. 

OverDrive  

• Library staff must contact OverDrive with the old barcode and the new barcode and request that Overdrive staff merge the two accounts.  As soon as OverDrive staff receive the request via a Support form, they merge the accounts and patrons will be able to access their OverDrive holds and transactions using their new barcode. 
  • Using their OverDrive Content Reserve account, staff will login and fill out the Support form. 
  • If your library does not have an OverDrive Content Reserve account, you should read the Tech Bits blog on how to “Sign up for an OverDrive Support account”.  Please confirm that your library does not already have an account before registering.
• Access: patron will need to wait until the next day for the new card number to work (overnight authentication required).

Library Online

• Access: patron will need to wait until the next day for the new card number to work (overnight authentication required).

 Databases

• Access: patron will need to wait until the next day for the new card number to work (overnight authentication required).

Contributors include E. Harkins, WAU and SCLS staff.

Reporting Koha response time problems

If your library is experiencing ongoing Koha response time issues, please continue to record and report these problems to ILS staff. Response time problems have a variety of causes. Sometimes there are hardware issues at LibLime. Sometimes there may be a broader issue with the Amazon hosting service. Problems that originate at LibLime and the Amazon hosting service will cause response time problems for all computers and all libraries. Sometimes these problems start small and build up over the course of a few hours.

At other times response time problems are limited to one library or are intermittent. These problems could be caused by heavy network traffic at that library or in that region, or other hardware problems with library computers.

If you do experience a response time problem, check the SCLS Status Wiki to see if there is a widespread outage or slowness problem. If there is nothing on the Status Wiki, then try logging out of Koha and clearing your browser’s cache. If, after logging back in, Koha is still slow, then record the problem and report it to ILS staff. It can be difficult to report these ongoing or intermittent response time problems on the Koha problems and questions form. To record these types of response time problems you could keep a log of problems in a notebook at the circulation or reference desk. In the log, please record the following information:

• Date and time of day
• PC# (or note that it affected all staff and/or patron PCs)
• What you were doing (e.g. checking in, searching for an item, be as specific as possible)
• How long pages are taking to load*
• How long the problem lasted (e.g. 5 minutes, 15 minutes)
• Any action you took (e.g. logged out of Koha, cleared cache, etc.)

After you have accumulated a few pages of logs, please send the log to the ILS Help Desk via Delivery. The log will help us to see patterns in the response time problems so we can better understand the causes of these problems. 

Koha response time problems can be very frustrating in a busy library. We are working to gather as much information as possible in order to address these problems.

*You can install a Firefox extension that will show you the page loading time. Here are a couple of choices: Lori (life of request info) and Extended Statusbar.

Circulation documentation: a constant evolution.

Over the last 11 months, the Circulation Services Committee has been working hard on updating Sections of the Circulation Manual;  updating and streamlining the Problem Items forms and revising and developing other procedures and guidelines.  They are still working on a variety of projects and we post revisions practically every month. Please check out the updated documentation on the following web pages:

Circulation Manual

Circulation Workflows

and review the recently re-recorded Circulation Tutorials we wrote about in the 2/22/13 LINK 2.0 blog post.

 

 

 

Reminder: do not use the Manual Credit button.

Here's an updated reminder for you to share with your staff and co-workers:

When staff use the Manual Credit button to create a credit on a patron's account, the patron's balance is credited.  However, we are unable to apply the credit to a specific debit amount in order to resolve the account, which leaves both the original debit and the new credit as amounts Outstanding in the patron's record.  Both amounts also display in the patron's PAC account and on the patron's Check Out page.  In May 2012 the CSC recommended and the ILS approved banning the use of the Manual Credit button. 

If you have a question on how to resolve a debit amount without using the Manual Credit, please contact Heidi O. and she will assist you.  If you have patron records with manual credits and debits that you would like to see "resolved", email the patron barcode and the specific line numbers in the patron's Account screen to Heidi O. with a request to clear the Amounts Outstanding.

Newly revised Circulation tutorials

Jean A. has completed recording 4 more of the revised Circulation Tutorials: How to make items Claims Returned, Renewing items, Applying Payments,and Applying Write-offs. They have been posted to Koha Circulation Tutorials, listed under the Koha Tutorials section on the ILS Support/Training page.

In order to shorten the length of the tutorials, we made them very task-specific.  Some of these topics lead naturally into other areas and tasks, but we were trying to keep length under 3 minutes.  Every tutorial refers to the specific section of the Circulation Manual where staff can find more information on each subject.

The next three scheduled for recording are Holds, Creating Manual Invoices and Searching for patrons.  If you have a topic or task that you would like to see made into a short tutorial, please send the information to Heidi Oliversen, hjo@scls.lib.wi.us.

Requesting reports - a chapter in reorganization

You may have noticed some changes to the face of the Reports page recently.  Most notably, we now have specific forms for the different types of Custom Reports that you can request.

The reason for the new forms is because there has been some behind-the-scenes reorganization.  In November 2012, Joanna, Michelle and Heidi attended SQL training in Milwaukee as part of a larger report transitions plan.  As of Feb.18, Michelle will be running the Daily, Monthly and Weeding reports. Joanna will be handling the Custom Item Report and Serials report requests. Heidi will be handling the Custom Patron Report requests.  There will also be cross training so that anyone can run the routine reports and the custom reports.  Cindy and Amy will continue to help with complex reports, back-up and SQL expertise.

Global Messaging Preference change: Hold Canceled notice

In November 2012, the Hold Canceled notice was removed as a default notice type for all Patron Categories and the CSC discussed having this option removed from all patron records.

At their January 2013 meeting, the ILS approved the recommendation from the CSC to remove the hold canceled Messaging Preference from all patron accounts retroactively.

As of Feb. 5, 2013, all patron records have had the Hold Canceled notice unchecked in their Messaging Preferences.

If you have a patron that wants to receive a notice when a hold is canceled, please re-check that Messaging Preference in their patron account.

Printing the Holds Queue report (pick list) after the Firefox 18 upgrade.

If your HQ report is under 200 items, you should have no problems printing the report using Firefox:

• Generate the report from a regular instance of Koha, not when logged in using your Koha Receipts icon.
• Hide the Patron column
• Select File in the Firefox toolbar
• Select Print then click OK.

 If your HQ report is over 200 items we have workaround options in order to help you print the entire report at once.

Option 1:

• Generate the report from a regular instance of Koha, not from your Koha Receipts icon.
• Hide the Patron column (hide more columns as needed)
• Select File in the Firefox toolbar
• Select Print Preview
• Adjust the Scale until the highest number of pages are generated. 
• Click Print.  Confirm that the last printed page corresponds to the last page generated on the screen.

Option 2:

• Open an Internet Explorer (IE) web browser
• Log into Koha http://scls-staff.kohalibrary.com
• Generate your Holds Queue Report
  • IMPORTANT:  If you have IE8, you will not be able to hide any columns on the report.  If you have Windows 7/IE9, you will be able to hide columns in the report.
• Log out and CLOSE IE
• Resume Koha work in Firefox.
  • If you were unable to hide columns when printing this report, you should shred the report when you are finished. 

Option 3:

• Open a Chrome web browser (if you do not have this installed already you can install it yourself)
• Log into Koha http://scls-staff.kohalibrary.com
• Generate your Holds Queue Report  
• Hide the Patron column
• Select Print from the Control icon at the far right of the Address field.
• Confirm your Printer and then click Print.
• Log out and CLOSE CHROME.
• Resume Koha work in Firefox.