LINK 2.0 Koha

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.

Receipt or No Receipt - that is the question ...

Not everybody wants a due date receipt and to save us from having to ask so often we started adding Messages to patrons' Check Out screens. 

• Click on the "Add a new message" hyperlink.
• Don't choose a pre-defined heading.
• Based on the patron preference, enter either "NO RECEIPT" or "PLEASE PRINT RECEIPT".  

It's a quick to add and easy to see if you use capital letters.  The two word phrase vs the three word phrase helps to differentiate between the two messages as well.

--submitted by E. Kersten/PIN

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.

New Problem Item Reports for Technical Services

There are three new problem item reports available today:

1. On Order Greater than 6 Months (On Order >6 mo.)
2. Fast Add Report
3. Problem Items: Not for Loan Status (PI: Not for loan)

Each of these reports concerns items that have some kind of status that needs to be addressed. All of them will be run and posted to the Reports Calendar on the second Thursday of each month.

The first report, On Order Greater than 6 Months, captures items that have had a status of On Order ACQ, On Order Non-ACQ, or Received ACQ and have not been updated in some way for greater than six months’ time. This report gives you the opportunity to check on the status of your order or item and decide whether or not to cancel the order or place a claim with the vendor. Please follow the workflow on the Reports page to resolve these items.

The second report, Fast Adds, captures bibs and items more than two months old that were added using the Fast Add framework. If the item is not re-linked to a bib record by the date that the next report is run, it will be deleted from the system along with the fast add bib record. Please follow the workflow provided on the Reports page to resolve these fast add items.

The third report, Problem Items: Not for Loan Status, captures items that have a status in the Not for Loan category and where the item has not been updated for more than six months. Please follow the workflow to resolve any problems with these items. This is especially important for those items marked In Processing and for magazines that have a status of Current Issue/No CKO, since those items cannot be trapped to fill patrons’ holds. We do not have a set schedule for a deletion process or other remediation for those items left unresolved. Also, in order for this report to print on a standard-sized sheet of paper, we have hidden a column with subtitle information. If you wish to unhide it, you can do so using Excel by going to the Home tab, Format Cells > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Columns. A screenshot of the menu selection is at the bottom of this post.

All of these reports are easily manipulated in Excel to change font size, etc. for easier viewing. We have formatted them to fit onto a single sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper. For more advice on using Excel, please see Brian and Greg’s excellent posts on TechBits with Excel tricks of the trade.

We will run and post these three item reports on a monthly basis. Other database clean-up reports will appear more infrequently. For example, we will post reports of items with no ITYPE or no collection code assigned. All of these reports are designed to assist with database clean-up and to keep your collection information current.

Thank you for your assistance in this important work to keep items available to our patrons at SCLS.

Excel Unhide Column:

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.

Public Note field bug; Item Detail screen.

Do not use the Public note field in the History section of the Item Detail screen. Using this field for an item with a Lost status strips the patron information from the Checkout status line. If the item is Claims Returned or Lost + Charge, it will also be removed from the patron's Lost Items list, but the charging entry will remain in the patron's Account screen. Use the Non-Public Note in the full Item record if you must add a note to the item record. (SCLS Support ticket 44076)