Koha Question of the Week: How Do Mandatory Patron Attributes work with OPAC Self-Registration?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Sep 27, 2024

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

Question: How Do Mandatory Patron Attributes work with OPAC Self-Registration?

Answer: Currently, if a library makes a patron attribute mandatory, that means that it is mandatory in both accounts created by staff in the OPAC as well as accounts created in the OPAC if the library enables self-registration.

This means that if a library has mandatory patron attributes and self-registration enabled, accounts will not be able to be created if the attribute is not visible and editable in the OPAC.

If the mandatory attribute is not visible and editable, when a would-be patron goes to submit the registration form, a 500 system error will appear.

There are enhancement requests in the Koha community to add granularity to this process with the understanding that libraries may want to require some information in in-person registration that do not need to be in the self-registration form, but currently, mandatory means mandatory across the board.

Additional Resources

Koha Question of the Week: How Do I Make a Patron Attribute Show in the OPAC (Or Not)?

Bug 35635: Expand patron attribute mandatory field