WorldShare Circulation release notes, February 2019

Administrative actions

These items require immediate action or decisions.

New search options for Discover Items

Several collection searching improvements are now available in Circulation. Most of these features are already available in Record Manager and will help you to find items and sets of records more easily in Circulation.

Checkout screen retains column display preferences

Your preferences for column display on the checkout screen will now be retained for the next time you view a patron's account.

Preferences will only apply to your user account and will be available even when you log in from a different computer, browser, etc.

Check In messages display patron name

Staff with the following Circulation roles will now see the patron's name in messages at Check In when the item needs to be held or scheduled for a patron or when a hold has expired in transit to the pickup location:

• CIRCULATION_ADMIN
• CIRCULATION_DESK
• STUDENT_WORKER
• STUDENT_WORKER_CIRCULATION

To preserve patron privacy, staff with these roles will continue to see only the patron's barcode:

• CIRCULATION_DESK_PRIVACY
• STUDENT_WORKER_RESTRICTED

Resizable entry fields

Resizable input fields with vertical scrolling now make it easier to enter data into Circulation. When you see the resizing indicator, click and drag the bottom-right corner of the entry box to the desired width and height.

You may notice changes to the default field size and behavior of entry fields on the following screens:

• Create/edit a temporary or container item
• Create/edit a hold request
• Create/edit an item schedule
• Create/edit/resolve a bill

Better support for closing times after midnight

Short loan periods and overdue periodic bills calculated in minutes or hours now reflect when your library closes after midnight, e.g., if the library is open on Friday from 08:00 am until 02:00 am on Saturday.

 Tip:  Set the Accrue bills when closed? option to No in your Loan Policies to stop assessing bills or deducting time against a grace period during the time that your library is closed.

Hold shelf period can honor open hours

Use the new setting in Hold Fulfillment Policy to control if the hold shelf period should include time that the pickup location is closed. Prior to this release, hold shelf periods did not consider your library's open hours.

When Exclude closed hours is disabled (default setting), the hold shelf period will continue to include time that your library is closed. 

When enabled, the hold shelf period will only include time that the pickup location is open. The calculated hold shelf period will therefore not expire when your library is closed, and your patrons will have the configured amount of time to pickup their reserved items. 

 Note: The hold shelf period will continue to be limited to the unfulfilled hold's expiry date when the Limit to hold expiry date setting is enabled. Also, temporary items created via integration with WorldShare ILL or Tipasa will continue to have a hold shelf period limited to the ILL due date.

When Exclude closed hours is enabled, the following is true for a pickup location that is open 08:00 – 17:00 on Monday through Friday:

 Note: The open hours of the pickup branch are used if that branch's open hours are set to override your institution hours. Otherwise, your general institution hours will be used. Contact OCLC Customer Support if you have questions about branch vs. institution hours.

Edit the hold shelf expiry date

You can now edit the date and time when an item on the hold shelf will expire and appear on the Clear Hold Shelf Report, send a hold shelf expiry notification to the patron, etc.

To change the hold shelf expiry date, navigate to the patron Holds tab and click the Edit… link. Adjust the On Shelf date and click the Save Changes button.

To reduce confusion, the data displayed in the Edit Existing Hold Request dialog has been updated for holds on the hold shelf. The fulfill-from location(s) hold-from/until dates, and suspend-from/until dates are no longer visible because they are no longer used by the system.

 Note:   Changes to the shelf expiry date can be made only while the hold is still active. Once the expiry date has passed, you will not be able to extend the shelf period. Consider monitoring the Holds Ready for Pickup Report for holds that will expire soon.

Transaction History: Source and event branch improvements

New transaction sources will provide your library with more accurate activity reporting. Transaction source indicates the application or service that originated an event such as a checkout, renewal, etc.

If your library retains Transaction History for display in Circulation, you will notice new values for Source.

For example, item renewals done by a patron from WorldCat Discovery My Account or via automatic renewal previously displayed with a source of Other. As of this release, these renewals will be distinguishable with sources Patron / External Application and System, respectively.

In WorldShare Report Designer, analogous Event Transaction Source values will appear in the Circulation Events universe.

*Indicates a new value

In addition, an event branch will no longer be assigned to renewal and other loan events that did not take place at a specified branch, e.g., an automatic renewal. In WorldShare Reports and Report Designer, Event Branch Name in the Circulation Events universe and related reports (e.g., Circulation Dashboard, Monthly Circulation Statistics Report, etc.) will record N/A for the Event Branch Name instead.

 Note: Changes to transaction source and event branch assignment will be applied to events after this release. Pre-existing events will not reflect the changes in Circulation Transaction History or in Report Designer.

Title still held in WorldCat after last item is deleted via Discover Items

The holding flag for the WorldCat bibliographic record was not always removed after the last item was deleted in Discover Items or the WMS Collection Management API.

A fix was released on 9 January 2019 to prevent the title-level WorldCat holding from being orphaned in the future. However, the WorldCat holding flag was not removed from records that were already impacted. Please contact OCLC Customer Support for assistance identifying the removing these holdings.

Backdated check in impacts hold shelf period

Backdating a check-in action will no longer cause the hold shelf period to be calculated from the backdated date and time. As of this release, the hold shelf period will always be calculated from the actual date and time when the item was checked in to fulfill the hold. Overdue fee assessment, grace periods, etc. will continue to be calculated against the backdated date and time.

SIP2 Fee Paid message without fee identifier may circumvent Group Payment Policy

If your library participates in group circulation, patron payments done via SIP2 will now honor the applicable Group Payment Policy.

Hold shelf expiry date can be set beyond the ILL due date

If your library uses WorldShare ILL or Tipasa integration, you may notice that the hold shelf expiry date can be edited to be beyond the ILL due date. In a future release, overriding the ILL due date will no longer be allowed.

Hold shelf periods calculated in minutes or hours have an expiry time of 11:59 pm when 'Exclude open hours' is disabled

Hold shelf period calculations in minutes or hours were setting the shelf expiry timestamp to 11:59 pm even prior to this release. You may notice this issue now that the timestamp associated with the shelf period is displayed in the staff interface.

As of this release, enable the 'Exclude open hours' setting in Hold Fulfillment Policy to calculate hold shelf periods in minutes or hours when the pickup location is open.

In a future release, support will be added for minute/hour periods that disregard the library's open hours.

Post release sessions

No post release session is scheduled at this time.

Support website(s)

Support information for this product and related products can be found at:

• WorldShare Circulation
• Contact OCLC Support
• OCLC Community Center
• Browser compatibility chart