Summary: | Allow borrowers to be members of additional categories | ||
---|---|---|---|
Product: | Koha | Reporter: | Martin Stenberg <martin> |
Component: | Circulation | Assignee: | Martin Stenberg <martin> |
Status: | RESOLVED WONTFIX | QA Contact: | Testopia <testopia> |
Severity: | enhancement | ||
Priority: | P5 - low | CC: | cfhong2000, dcook, gmcharlt, jonathan.druart, katrin.fischer, kyle.m.hall, viktor.sarge |
Version: | unspecified | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | All | ||
Change sponsored?: | --- | Patch complexity: | Small patch |
Documentation contact: | Documentation submission: | ||
Text to go in the release notes: | Version(s) released in: | ||
Attachments: | Bug 15174: Member of multiple categories |
Description
Martin Stenberg
2015-11-11 14:05:35 UTC
Created attachment 44762 [details] [review] Bug 15174: Member of multiple categories This patch makes it possible for borrowers to be members of more than one category. On checkout, librarian can choose which category to do checkout as. Test plan: 1. Apply this patch 2. Run updatedatabase.pl 3. Log in to staff client and modify a patron 4. Under "Library managenet" a new field "Additional categories" should be visible 5. Select one or more additional catogaries for the patron 6. Save 7. Make a checkout for the modified patron 8. A new dropdown box labled "Choose category for this checkout:" should be visible on the checkout page 9. Choose one of the additional categories in the dropdown box and checkout 10.Confirm that appropriet circulation rules for the category was applied to the checkout Sponsored-by: Halland County Library Hi Martin, I am not sure about this change - Koha uses the patron's home category in a lot of places. Can you describe the use case for this? Hi Katrin, thanks for the feedback. The primary/home category is left unchanged with this patch, so that shouldn't be a problem. One use case would be a teacher who wish to make a personal loan and a loan for his/her class during the same session. Hm, what about handling the overdues? Isn't the "chosen patron category" lost after checking out? So it would only be used for the loan period? Hm, yes, looking at the overdue code, that seem to be the case. That must also mean that if you change a patrons category, all loans made while the patron belonged to the old category will be overdue-ruled according to the new category. But perhaps this is a desired effect? > I am not sure about this change - Koha uses the patron's home category in a
> lot of places. Can you describe the use case for this?
We developed this one as a bit of a favor to Luleå who have been in need of this feature (though I think they will change their rules now instead). It's quite common for libraries here to have multiple accounts for the same patron depending on in which role they use the library. We have lots of integrated libraries that are both the school and community library at the same time. That means that the same library will serve the same patrons as both students/teachers and as ordinary child/adult accounts. One solution might be to switch library but that will mess up shelving since there's actually only one library and is also impractical when the public can access the library during school hours. This patch would mean that it's a bit easier to handle that type of problems without ugly hacks.
When discussing this development Martin did identify a whole lot of places expecting a single code (73 I think), but we suspect that checkout and overdue notices/fees may be enough for the scope of this problem. Before doing further development I think that we need to see that others would find this useful and that it has a fighting chance to get accepted.
Hi Viktor, currently the patron category would be only used at checkout time - so overdues/notices, renewals, etc. would still be those of the initial category as after the checkout there is no trace of the switched category. That's why I feel quite uncomfortable with the idea to be honest. The only thing it will work for is determining the initial loan period. > currently the patron category would be only used at checkout time - so
> overdues/notices, renewals, etc. would still be those of the initial
> category as after the checkout there is no trace of the switched category.
> That's why I feel quite uncomfortable with the idea to be honest. The only
> thing it will work for is determining the initial loan period.
I knew we would not be able to ignore all the other places the category is used :) You are quite right of course Katrin - renewals is another place that we would have to take into account to make this happen.
Since there is no desperate need for this patch and the scope is growing to include all those places we suspected I propose that we leave this in discussion for the time being. There´s other development that needs to happen, but if someone would find it highly useful we might pick it up again. I think the current patch is great for trying out the concept and get a feel of the proposed change if anyone would want to try the suggested workflow. I still think the idea is worthwhile, but the development cost is currently looking to high for us compared to the payoff.
Hi, Can this patch be applied to Koha 18.05? If so, how do I apply this patch? Thanks, Chee Sounds vaguely interesting but I could see this causing confusion/difficulties in reporting if nothing else... I think the idea of this to be able to apply different circulation rules for a short term loan or other means is still valid, but the proposed implementation left some unresolved questions. I am closing this WONTFIX for now, but please feel free to reopen! |