Monday Minutes: Creating Saved Searches

by Kelly McElligott on Jun 5, 2023

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie show how staff can create saved searches to be used on the staff interface, the OPAC, or both!

System Preference

To allow for staff (with the correct permissions) to create Saved Searches, the system preference, SavedSearchFilters, must be set to enabled. This will not be turned on by default.

Once this has been turned on, staff with the correct permissions can perform a search and then save this search. A search can be made in the top search bar or through the advanced search.

The advanced search choice would allow staff to really dig down into the most specific search, for example, a search for all Large Print Item Type books published in the last 2 years. Once that search has been performed, there will be an option to "Save Search as Filter"

Once this has been clicked, Koha will give staff a few options in a pop-up modal box:

Options include allowing this search to be used only on the staff interface or the OPAC. Also, a search can be created from this pop-up or an existing search can be replaced with a new search filter.

Permission

For staff to be able to create Saved Searches as a FIlter, they will need the permission, manage_search_filters, under the Administration section of permissions.

Search Filters

Any saved searches created will live in Search Filters. This option can be found in the Administration module.

The options within the Search Filters, a search can be edited, a filter can be edited and the saved search itself can be deleted. For example, if a search was originally created for the OPAC, but then a library wanted to include the staff interface for this search, this can be done through the 'edit filter' option. If a search itself needs to be changed, this can be done via the 'edit search' option.

Few Ideas

During the tutorial video, we talked about where we can include these search filters. In the OPAC, we can use the HTML customizations through the Tools module to add these searches to the OPAC main page. Alternatively, staff can include the staff dedicated searches to the main staff page, a newly created web page, or on the top of the static bar!

There are so many great options where to put these new saved searches, but most importantly, these saved searches are going to be a great time saver for some librarians!

22.11 Additional Resources

Check out all the resources for the upcoming 22.11 Upgrade:

Koha 22.11: Upgrades Hub