Contact patron

Miscellaneous

Send a custom email notification to a patron directly from the WorldShare Circulation staff interface. For example, you may want to send an email to a patron who left personal belongings in the library or to warn a patron that their account will be blocked.

The following staff roles allow you to send a miscellaneous email notification:

• Circulation Admin
• Circulation Desk
• Circulation Desk Privacy
• Student Worker
• Student Worker Circulation

The Student Worker Restricted role does not grant access to this feature.

From the patron account screen:

1. Select Contact patron > Miscellaneous.
2. The Miscellaneous email modal will then be displayed.
   • The system will attempt to select the best Recipient email address in the patron record.
   • You may select from other email addresses in the patron's record or type in a custom, one-time value.
   • You may send a miscellaneous email to one recipient only.
3. Provide a Reply to email address.
   • The email address that you provide will be the reply-to address as well as the recipient name in the message sent to the patron. Replies from the patron will not be processed by or visible in WorldShare; any additional communication will be managed by the reply-to address outside of WorldShare.
4. Provide a Subject line and text for the body of the message.
   • Some rich text editing options are available including text heading options, text formatting for bold, italic, subscript, and superscript, both numbered and unnumbered lists, and text highlighting. These formatting options are supported by most email clients and are intended to provide accessible content for all users. 
5. Click Send.

 Note:  Formatted text may not display in the same way in each email client software. We recommend reviewing test emails in each of your institution's supported email clients to better understand how formatting options will behave for your users.

If your institution has notification history enabled, then any miscellaneous emails that you send will be listed for auditing purposes, including the identity of the staff user that sent the message. 

Account Overview

The Account Overview notification option will appear if there is a template set up in the Notifications section of the Patron Type Policy. 

To set up the Account Overview template, navigate to the OCLC Service Configuration and select the Next-Generation Notifications section of the WMS Circulation module. Refer to Account Overview for information about setting up the notification template.

Once the template has been configured, refer to Patron Type Policy for information about setting the Account Overview notification per patron type. The Account Overview notification will not appear under Contact patron unless it has been assigned to the policy for the patron type in question. 

The Account Overview notification will include the patron's information and can be printed or emailed. If emailed, the notification will appear in the Notifications history. 

From the patron account screen:

1. Select Contact patron > Account Overview.
2. From the Channel drop-down, select either Email or Network Print.
3. The Account Overview modal will then be displayed.
   • The system will attempt to select the best Recipient email address in the patron record.
   • You may select from other email addresses in the patron's record or type in a custom, one-time value.
4. The Reply to email address will default to that configured in the Notifications section of the Patron Type Policy. You can use the drop-down to select additional general email addresses as configured in the Manage reply to addresses in the General Settings section of the Next Generation Notifications module in the OCLC Service Configuration. 
   • The email address that you provide will be the reply to address as well as the recipient name in the message sent to the patron. Replies from the patron will not be processed by or visible in WorldShare; any additional communication will be managed by the reply to address outside of WorldShare.
5. Click Send.