WorldShare Circulation release notes, November 2024

You can now begin to use Account Overview, the first part of our Next Generation Notifications project  

You can now send overviews of patron accounts manually, through email or network printing, from the Assist Patrons screen in the Staff UI.

Account Overview provides library users or other stakeholders with the details of their current bills, loans, requests, profile information, and general account status at any time. Your users will be able to view this information and take action on outstanding bills, overdue items, etc. 

Account Overview is an option under Contact patron in the upper, right corner of the Assist Patrons screen: 

All Circulation roles have been given the ability to email or print Account Overview notifications.  Staff UI users in Circulation groups are able to send Account Overview emails to any patron within the group as long as the patron's home institution has configured a template for the patron's patron type.

You can email or print Account Overview information for a patron once a patron template has been configured and is attached to the appropriate Patron Type Policy. 

You will choose from a variety of settings options and selections of information when configuring templates.   In Service Configuration, choose Next-Generation Notifications under WMS Circulation:

You can customize  Account Overview notifications via a combination of free-text entry, data inserts, and data field selection.  First, go to General Settings, where you can manage logo images, web links, reply-to addresses, field labels, and custom messages:

Manage reply to addresses is a required setting, while the other settings are optional. 

• Please see Next-Generation Notifications, General settings for information about these settings and how to use them.

After you have configured General settings, you will have the option to create many types of templates, based on patron type and the type of information you want included in each template.  Under Next-Generation Notifications, go into Patron Templates.

The required fields in the template are the Name and Subject.  The template will also need at least one repeatable block to serve as a useful notification and to be considered complete. 

Please see:

• Next-Generation Notifications, Templates for information about creating templates.
• Account Overview for specific information about the Account Overview notification. 

Once Account Overview templates have been configured, you will need to assign them to the appropriate patron type policies under Patron Type Policy in the WMS Circulation module of the OCLC Service Configuration:

Choose a Patron Type Policy and scroll down to the bottom of the screen where you will see the new Notifications section.  Here, you can attach an Account Overview Confirmation template to the patron policy, as well as, reply-to addresses.  

 Note: In addition to help documentation, instructional videos will be posted to the WMS Circulation section of the Community Center soon after this release.

Please also note:  Account Overview is not the appropriate way to send a form letter.  Instead, use Miscellaneous notification, the other option under Contact Paton on the Assist Patron screen.

Please note the following from the October 23, 2024 WorldCat Discovery release notes:

In WorldCat Discovery, when viewing a record for a physical item stored within a container, the Local Holding Record (LHR) fields will now display the container's information. The following fields will reflect the container’s details instead of the individual item's information:

•    Call number

This container information will display in the following areas:

•    Search results page
•    Item detail page
•    Place hold form
•    Course reserves

This enhancement makes finding and managing physical items stored within containers easier and more reliable.