2018-10-01 Reporting SIG notes

Duke University

To provide context for a discussion on Patron Notices, Developer Darcy Branchini will provide a presentation/demo of the Patron Notices and Print Slips app for FOLIO

-two areas of functionality for Patron Notices and Print Slips: templating (what the notice or slip will say) and the logic (what are the triggering events and conditions, policies, scheduling)

-patron notices feature in the app have related policies; staff slips do not yet, although they may in the future

-staff slips (hold slip and transit slip) are built out in Folio snapshot stable; patron notices are not yet built out

-some institutions prefer to do Call Slips as reports

-patron notice examples include:

(Start from 13 minutes in...)

-hold slip and transit slip built

-loan policy may develop into a way to specify multiple policies, e.g., fees/fines

-2 types: overdue types, lost policy; events vary by policy areas

-the latest thinking is that we will develop a separate "notice" policy for all different kinds of notices

-notice policy within a nested

-RA would prefer to do notices inside the ILS

Harry would like to discuss Patron Notices with the Reporting SIG. Here are some sample questions:

• How do you generate your batch form letters today? In app? Reporting tool? Mail merge type operation of both?

Cornell: batch jobs are run automatically for notices for circulation; each notice has a customized input file for the notice

TAMU:

Chicago: patrons can specify how they want to receive their notices

-Harry interested in what creates and formats the output (the template)

-Darcy has thought about offering templates in GitHub as a possible solution

-Duke: running OLAF; templates and settings on the server for the notices; print daemon (virtual machine) at each circ desk to process the xml files; you can only run notices just for that machine; templates compiled on the server and then are pushed out to each machine; each circ desk has set up the configuration file as they wish; they run the jobs to create the XML files on the server; data output and templates in XML that use Internet Explorer

• How often are they run?

• How are they automated? Does the reporting tool provide the scheduler? Is another tool used?

• If done via reporting, how often do these need to be changed?

Nassib: If done in the reporting data warehouse, the data will be updated overnight

• How problematic is it to make these changes?

• What are the types of complaints you regularly receive from the circ desk relating to this?

Topics for Future Meetings

Review and update Topics for Future Reporting SIG Meetings