Bug 40341

Summary: Patron Category Messaging Preferences Not Applied to Existing Patrons
Product: Koha Reporter: Sandeep Patel <samrocks1011>
Component: PatronsAssignee: Bugs List <koha-bugs>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact: Testopia <testopia>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: george, gmcharlt, kyle
Version: 25.05   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
GIT URL: Change sponsored?: ---
Patch complexity: --- Documentation contact:
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Description Sandeep Patel 2025-07-10 16:56:06 UTC

    
Comment 1 Sandeep Patel 2025-07-10 16:57:59 UTC
When messaging preferences (such as overdue or hold notices) are enabled or updated at the patron category level, these settings are only applied to new patrons created under that category.

However, existing patrons who belong to that category do not inherit or update to reflect the new messaging preferences, resulting in inconsistent notification behavior across the same patron type.

This breaks the expected behavior where patron category acts as a policy template, and makes large-scale policy updates difficult to manage without direct database manipulation.


regards,
Sandeep Patel
sandeep.patel@digiarc.in
Comment 2 George Williams (NEKLS) 2025-07-10 20:52:03 UTC
At our libraries we use the messaging preferences as defaults for new users and then allow patrons to modify their messaging preferences to meet their own needs.  We don't use the patron category controls to act as a policy template and I wouldn't want any changes I might make to the messaging preferences on categories.pl to affect any changes for our patrons that may have previously made to their messaging preferences.

Any changes to categories.pl that would cause it to act as a patron policy template should be designed to be optional.
Comment 3 Sandeep Patel 2025-07-11 10:23:38 UTC
Hi William,

Is there a way to update messaging preferences for existing patrons from the backend via script or database?

Regardsm
Sandeep Patel