ByWater Question of the Week: Will Koha Update Due Dates or Waiting Hold Expiration Dates Retroactively if a Holiday is Added to a Calendar?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Jan 24, 2025

Each Friday, we will bring you a new ByWater Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: Will Koha Update Due Dates or Waiting Hold Expiration Dates Retroactively if a Holiday is Added to a Calendar?

Answer: A variety of system preferences and circulation rules interact with Koha's calendar of closures, frequently set to bump out due dates and hold expiration dates to an open day. However, this works best when the holidays or closures are on the calendar before checkouts or holds would be marked waiting because Koha will not retroactively re-calculate these dates. To this end, many libraries prepare for a new year well in advance by adding known closures to the calendar.

In the event that a holiday is forgotten or a sudden closure pops up and materials were already checked out or holds trapped with a date that the library is closed, librarians will need to do some management of dates. For due dates, the Batch extend due dates tool in the Tools module can extend due dates. Koha doesn't currently have the functionality to batch extend hold pickup dates, so that still needs to be a ticket with a support provider, though, until an enhancement makes that possible, particularly if a library is automatically canceling expired holds.

Additional Resources

Bug 36135: Add tool to batch modify holds

Koha Question of the Week: How Can a Waiting Hold be Extended?

Monday Minutes: Bulk Edit Due Dates