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
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.
Hi William, Is there a way to update messaging preferences for existing patrons from the backend via script or database? Regardsm Sandeep Patel
(In reply to Sandeep Patel from comment #3) > Is there a way to update messaging preferences for existing patrons from the > backend via script or database? I think you're looking for ./misc/maintenance/borrowers-force-messaging-defaults.pl
(In reply to George Williams (NEKLS) from comment #2) > 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. Yeah, I think you have a good point here, George. If EnhancedMessagingPreferencesOPAC is enabled, it doesn't really make sense for the library to be able to override patron settings. I think an argument could be made that it's even problematic with EnhancedMessagingPreferences because while you need EnhancedMessagingPreferences in order to set up messaging preferences at the patron level, it also means staff may have individualised someone's preferences, so it's tough to know if they should be overridden... -- Maybe the way to do it is to add a new system preference which toggles the visibility of a button on categories.pl which lets you push out the defaults to override any existing preferences. It would need to do it via a BackgroundJob. I think it's mostly useful shortly after an initial data migration, but there are times where it can be handy to do a mass add (for instance if a library adds SMS notifications for all users). I don't know. This is a tricky one. I mostly just use CLI tools to handle this scenario...