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Reservations alerts

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Learn how notices are used to inform staff and users about the current status of reservations in OLIB.

►Alerting> Notices

Email alerts notices can be sent to staff and/or users for a variety of reasons. Alerting is a feature utilised in many areas of OLIB. The following notices refer to the reservations that are placed in the circulation system.

Alerts about the status of reservations placed in the library can be sent to either library staff or directly to users depending on how you configure the email details in the Notices domain.

Example

This example is from the Res. Held Notification:

From: a.librarian@library.org    
To: A. Student         
Cc:
Subject: Reserved Item Available


This is to confirm that the following item previously reserved by you has been set aside for you and should be collected from the library:

Reservation Ref: 1599
Title: Guide to basic information sources in engineering
Copy barcode: 013650
Reserved On: 09-OCT-2018
Held On: 09-OCT-2018

Please collect it before 11-OCT-2018 otherwise the hold will be cancelled.

Thank you.

Reservation received notice

An email can be configured to be sent either to the user or more usually to a designated member of the library team to confirm that a reservation has been placed either in OLIBWeb or the OPAC. e.g:

A new reservation has just been received as follows: [User details] [Reservation Ref], [Title] [Reserved On]
Please go to the Reservations domain in WorldView to process it.

This could be valuable if your organisation allows reservations to be placed on items that have a status of Available. The email could alert a member of the library staff to retrieve the item from the shelf and issue to the user in the normal way.

A rota also can be set up to determine which Locations the notice is sent to and in what order.

Reservations confirmed notice

By default, reservations that are placed via the OPAC are unconfirmed. A member of the Library team normally confirms the reservation in OLIBWeb or WorldView.

Use this alert to notify the user that a reservation they placed has been confirmed.

 Note: it is possible to configure OLIB so that reservations placed in the OPAC are automatically confirmed. If this is the case, the above notice is redundant. 

Reservations held notice SMS

When a reserved item is passed through the issue desk, the item is given a status of Held. This notice allows you to send an alert to inform users and/or Library staff that an item is held and awaiting collection. The alert can be in the form of an email or a text message.

The notice can be configured to display the date the reservation was held. If a Hold Period was set on the Location record, the date the item will be held to will also be displayed. If a Collection Location was specified when the reservation was placed, this will also be shown on the notice.

OLIB applies a delay to this notice so that the user does not receive the email OR TEXT before the item has been received at the collection location. This is part of the In Transit Issues function.

Send On/Do By: in the Reservation Held alert, this is the date and time at which the alert will actually be sent.

Reservation Held notices can optionally include additional tags to help staff locate the items - Location, Sub-location, Shelf area, Shelfmark, Copy Category, as shown in Notice Text below.

Reservations soon to expire notice

An email can be sent to alert users and/or library staff that an item held is soon to expire.

Daystart will look at all held reservations, and if the expiry date is the day after tomorrow, the alert is sent.

Reservations cancelled notice

A notice can be sent to inform the user and/or Library staff that a reservation has been cancelled. A reservation can be cancelled either by

  • an action on the reservation record in OLIBWeb
  • or due to the Expiry Date of the reservation being reached; if the Auto Expire Held Res field on the Location record is set to Yes, an overnight process cancels the reservation.

Reservations to cancel notice

A notice can be sent to a designated member of the Library staff to notify them that the hold period for a reservation has expired and therefore the reservation should be cancelled and the item passed to the next user on the reservation list or returned to the shelves.

If the Auto Expire Held Res field on the Location record is set to No, an overnight process updates the item to a status of Held - should be cancelled.

 Tip: in the Reservations domain use a filtered search to identify those items that have the status of Held – should be cancelled.

Once the items have been identified cancel the reservation in the normal way.

Held reservation soon to be cancelled notice

An email is sent to notify the user that the hold period for a held item is due to expire in the next 2 days, after which it will be returned to the shelves, or made available to another user.  

 Note: the notice is normally emailed to the user, using the To User's Email Address Transmit Type; however you can set it for delivery to a nominated member of staff or a generic circulation desk email address (use the To To List Transmit Type).  

Held reservation to be cancelled notice

This email alert is to confirm that a hold should be cancelled. It should be used if you do not operate an automatic hold cancellation policy.

 Note: the notice is normally sent to a nominated member of staff or a generic circulation desk email address, using the To To List Transmit Type. However, it can be configured to be sent to the user if required, using the To User's Email Address Transmit Type.

Configure alerts

Configure the above alerts in the following way. Several example reservation notices are included as standard. You should copy these records to create your own notice as required.

  1. Select the Example notice and in Other Actions choose Create Close Copy.
  2. Click on the copy to display full details and modify record:
Field Instructions
Notice Type Set to match whichever of the above notices you require.
Location Choose a location so that only users registered there will receive this email. If Location is left blank the message will go to all users at all locations.
User Category Choose a so User Category that only users on this category will receive the email.
Notice Text

Change the contents to specify the text and punctuation you wish to include in the email to the users. This is using the same syntax as is used for configurable export formats to define the main body of the email. The OLSTF Tags table indicates which User, Copy and Reservations tags that are available for you to use in the Notice Text field. For example, to include data from a field in the user record, enter the User OLSTF tag surrounded by angle brackets. If you only want the text to be included if the field itself contains data, surround the OLSTF tag and associated text with the appropriate hash tag combination.

Remember to also complete librarian's name and position, and location name where indicated.

Additional/optional tags for reservation Held alerts
RES_HELDCLO Held copy's location key ID
RES_HELDCLOLD Held copy's location long description
RES_HELDCSLD Held copy's sub-location description
RES_HELDCSC  Held copy's shelf key ID
RES_HELDCSCLD Held copy's shelf long description
RES_HELDCSM  Held copy's shelfmark
RES_HELDCCC Held copy's copy category key ID
RES_HELDCCCLD Held copy's copy category long description
From Address Set to a valid email address, e.g. a generic address for your library, so that if the user clicks the Reply button, the reply email will be delivered to the appropriate member of staff.
Transmit Type Set to To user's email address sends the email to the email address in the user's record, or if this is empty, to the email address in the To List field. If you do not want to email the user directly set the Transmit Type - To To List. (The other types are not relevant to loan alerts).
To/CC/BCC List

Configure the recipients of the email:

To List: used to specify who the notice should be sent to if it is not to be sent to the user.
CC List: enter an email address to which a copy of the notice should be sent.
BCC List: enter an email address to which a blind copy of the notice should be sent.

 Note: in all three of the above fields, multiple email addresses can be entered. Multiple addresses should be separated with a semi-colon.
Subject Line Enter the text to be used as the subject line of the notice.
Enabled Set to Yes for OLIB to start sending loan reminder notices in daystart, using the above settings. If Enabled is set to No or is null, loan reminder notices will not be sent.
Mins After Hold Enter a number of minutes - the alert is sent this number of minutes after the item is held and is relevant to In Transit Issues. (If you do not set it, a default of 60 minutes is applied)
SMS Notice Text For the Reservation Held notice, if the alert is to be sent as a text message instead of, or as well as an email, enter the text.
SMS or Email? In the drop down, select from SMS, Email or Both.

 The SMTP server name for your organisation must also be configured for email alerting to work.

For SMS texting, the configuration details should be entered at the level of OLIB Defaults or your Users' Location record - If SMS Texting is to be used.