Date Calculation for Holds Awaiting Pickup

by Kelly McElligott on Oct 6, 2017

In this koha tutorial we will walk you through the system preference for date calculations for Holds Awaiting Pickup.

With the new 17.05 upgrade, there is a new system preference that will  take into consideration the library’s closed days when calculating the expiration date,Date Calculation for Holds Awaiting Pickup.

For example:  If your library had the system preference : ReservesMaxPickUpDelay  set to 7 days.  Once the hold is activated – the patron has 7 days to pick this hold up regardless of the days the library is closed.

Reminder: The system preference ReservesMaxPickUpDelay– will tell Koha how many days to keep the hold.  

With the new 17.05 enhancement, Koha can use the calendar (if set up) to only count number of days the patron can pick up that the library is actually open.  

New System Preferences:

ExcludeHolidaysFromMaxPickUpDelay– this preference will look at the library’s Koha calendar and not count the days the library is closed OR on a holiday in these 7 days.  

Global System Preference:  ExcludeHolidaysFromMaxPickUpDelay– Allow/Don’t allow closed days to be taken into account in reserves max pickup delay.  

Something to Note- the following system preferences may now come in handy to libraries with this new enhancement:

ExpiresReservesonHolidays–   Allow/Don’t allow expired holds to be canceled on days the library is closed.

ExpireReservesMaxPickUpDelay– Allow/Don’t Allow holds to expire automatically if they have not been picked by within the time period specified in ReservesMaxPickUpDelay.

These system preferences work with a cronjob.  If your library would like to have Koha automatically cancel holds, please submit a ticket for a cron job to be set up for this.

To learn all about Koha 17.05 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.