Information on CAIASoft Item States and Item Flags

Owned by (OLD ACCOUNT) Erin Nettifee
Last updated: Aug 06, 2020

CAIASoft has two relevant item information pieces for circulation purposes - item state and item flags. 

The flags are actually more relevant for circulation behavior - I was getting them confused in my head. Anyway, I'll put information on this page from Duke's implementation of CAIASoft this past spring.

Item State

There are 5 basic item states represented in CaiaSoft:

  • IN (in)
  • PYR (out on physical retrieval)
  • ERT (pulled for e-retrieval)
  • SHP (out for S-H-I-P service)
  • DEA (deaccessioned)


The middle 3 states are all "OUT", but each status reflects the type of job they are out on. 

So you could probably model this as Checked In, Checked Out, and DeAccessioned, if the middle types don't matter specifically.

Item Flags


Item flags are configurable for each installation of CAIASoft. They allow for alerts on circulation (within CAIASoft); restrictions on circulation; and a delay on completing a CAIASoft job. This is what it looks like in the CAIASoft interface to add a flag:



At Duke so far we appear to have mainly used these for reporting purposes, but we're early on and I know that we want to be able to use the Restrict Circulation option. In other words, if we mark an item as Restrict Circulation for PYR, ERT, SHP jobs, it should not be able to be pulled for a FOLIO circulation request. 

I don't know enough about Delay Job Completion workflow to know if it's something that FOLIO would need to interact with or if it could all be handled by CAIASoft.

Please, others who know more about CAIASoft (or even Laura Beatham,) they should also review this to make sure what I am saying is correct.