Koha Tutorial Videos
Monday Minutes: Flexibility with the Long Overdue Cron
by Kelly McElligott on Feb 22, 2021
Andrew joins Jessie and Kelly as they talk about the new flexibility with the Long Overdue Cron. This change will include a new system preference, DefaultLongOverdueSkipLostStatuses.
There are a few other moving pieces to this new change in the Long Overdue cron, that we would like to share those resources here - if you are not already familiar with them.
Lost Statuses
Jessie and Kelly discussed Lost Statuses in a previous Monday Minutes:
Claims Returned
Another part of this change came about with the introduction of Claims Returned. This is a "lost" status in Koha. For more information about this feature:
Long Overdue
Andrew mentioned and wrote this handy blog post about Long Overdue:
Long Overdue (Lost): How long is long?
MarkLostItemsAsReturned
A lot of what happens with the Long Overdue process depends on how your library handles Lost items. If a library has set their system preference, MarkLostItemsAsReturned, to return Lost items always- then this may not affect the library. When an item is not checked out to a patron but marked Lost, it will not be affected by the Long Overdue Cron. More about this system preference can be found here:
New Functionality with Lost Statuses in Koha
and this system preference recently got more options, which are talked about here:
New Options for Tracking Lost and Claims Returned Items
Putting it all together
When an item has been marked a value Lost, and still checked out to a patron (not returned), then these items are still subject to the long-overdue cron.
The long-overdue cron will find the items that are checked out and overdue by X days, and then mark that item with a Lost value, typically Long Lost (Overdue), and potentially charge the patron. These parameters are driven by other system preferences DefaultLongOverdueLostValue
DefaultLongOverdueDays, which we talk about in the Monday Minutes: Lost Values blog post, linked above.
Here is an example of that system preference filled out.
Note: Koha is looking for your Lost value to be numerical from the Authorized Values "Lost" category in the system preference above and the new system preference, DefaultLongOverdueSkipLostStatuses.
The example we talked about during our Monday Minutes, with the new claims returned feature, this long-overdue cron flexibility comes in handy.
In summary, if a library would like to exclude specific Lost values from being changed by the Long Overdue Cron, those Lost Values can be filled into the system preference, DefaultLongOverdueSkipLostStatuses.
For example, if your library had the Lost value set to '5' for Claims Returned, and wanted to exclude this value from the Longoverdue Cron, the value of 5 would be used in the system preference, DefaultLongOverdueSkipLostStatuses.
For ByWater partners, if your library does not have values in the system preferences, DefaultLongOverdueLostValue
DefaultLongOverdueDays- and your library wants to know if your Long Overdue Cron is running, please reach out and we can assist you.
Read more by Kelly McElligott