Koha Question of the Week: What are Item Circulation Alerts?

by Kelly McElligott on Jun 17, 2022

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: What are Item Circulation Alerts?

Answer: Item Circulation Alerts can be found in the Administration Module. Here is where an individual library or all libraries can activate item circulation notice alerts for specific item types and specific patron categories. These notices are check-in and checkout notices.

An individual's Patron Messaging Preferences will be the over-arching rule when sending or not sending notices. For example, if a patron does not want check-in/checkout notices and they do not have this marked notice to receive, these item circulation alerts do not come into play for them.

But if patrons do opt-in to receive check-in/checkout notices, these item circulation alerts will be respected.

Setting Up Item Circulation Alerts

By default, all item types and all patrons are notified of check-ins and check-outs. To change this, click on the item/patron type combo that you would like to stop notices for. This means, that when viewing the chart, all spaces will be green.

This grid has all patron categories and item types listed. There is a "key" to explain which color means what and also a dropdown for which library you are applying this circulation alert.

For example, if the East Branch did not want check-in messages to go out to ILL patrons when they are returning museum passes, staff would mark the box in the ILL patron category and the museum pass item type:

The flexibility of this feature is super helpful to all types of libraries, special, academic, public and more!

Additional Resources