I am filing this bug after working with a library that is non-circulating, no patrons. It would be quite nice if we could shut off entire modules with an on/off switch. The idea would be, shut off patrons/members: -I would see no links to patrons/members pages. -The search bar at the top of each page would never show 'Search patrons' -System preferences related to patrons/members would not be shown unless the module was turned on. This is kind of pie in the sky type stuff but it would be nice.
Also, I think some libraries find Koha very daunting, complex, and intimidating because it is. I would be nice if you could hide some of of that complexity from libraries who don't need it.
I like the idea of shutting off modules completely (especially Acquisitions and Serials). I'm not sure that I understand shutting off Patrons/members though. Even if it's non-circulating and has no patrons, the library staff would still need to be managed via the Patrons module?
I also think this is a good idea. It would help with the use of Koha in less complex libraries with fewer resources and would also tie in with the concept of streamlining admin and system preferences which was discussed at the 2024 Marseille Hackfest.
(In reply to David Cook from comment #2) > I like the idea of shutting off modules completely (especially Acquisitions > and Serials). > > I'm not sure that I understand shutting off Patrons/members though. Even if > it's non-circulating and has no patrons, the library staff would still need > to be managed via the Patrons module? Yea, bad example. However I did file this after fighting with some jQuery/CSS to hide patron/member related things for a non-circulating library, like the stuff in the top search bar. Acquisitions/Serials would be a better example.
I really like this idea. Serials, acquisitions, authorities are all good cases for this sort of functionality.
In practical terms, what do we think this means? Does this mean that links to these modules don't appear on the Koha UI? Visiting URLs in those modules returns 404 or 403?
On Mattermost, I think Katrin may have said something about permissions already managing this? I'd argue that permissions in Koha are quite difficult to manage, because you have to manage the permissions for every single borrower account. Whereas with this we'd be able to just turn off the module for everyone. But it does make me wonder how many of our system preferences perhaps should be permissions...
I filed the most of the linked bugs for shutting off modules, I believe permissions are more a workaround here and a real switch would be the better solution. I think often it's an ON/OFF decision and should be treated as such. And then ideally we should mark related permissions or remove them from display when the switch was set to OFF.