Monday Minutes: Using Patron Clubs

by Kelly McElligott on Jun 14, 2021

Jessie and Kelly talk about the feature, Patron Clubs! This is a feature that has been around for a while in Koha and was recently enhanced in 19.11 when Patron Club holds were introduced.

Patron Clubs

This feature adds the ability to create clubs that patrons may be enrolled in. It is particularly useful for tracking summer reading programs, book clubs, and other such clubs.

Under the tools menu, click the “Patron clubs” link. There are two parts to creating a Patron Club, a template and the Club itself. When creating a new Club template, you can create a structure and build clubs off of this template.

A couple of key areas to point out, there is the ability to ‘allow public enrollment’- if this is clicked, then the patron will be allowed to enroll in this club from the OPAC. The other important one is ‘require an email address, if this box is checked only patrons with a valid email address can enroll. So they will need an email address to enroll.

The library drop-down gives you the flexibility to enroll patrons from specific branches. If you let it set to blank, all branches will be able to enroll.

Club Fields: these fields will be used when creating a club based on this template you can connect authorized values here.

Enrollment Fields: you can add any additional fields you want to have filled out by your patrons as you can also connect authorized values to this field.

Creating a Club with Template

Name and description will be used to describe the club to your patrons. The start and end date will depict when this club runs. Once the club expires, it will be removed from the OPAC for users to enroll if that option is selected.

Here you also have a library drop-down which gives you the flexibility to enroll patrons from specific branches. If you let it set to blank, all branches will be able to enroll.

Enrolling Patron from Staff Interface

When you are on a patron account screen, there will now be a new tab for Clubs. Clicking on that tab will display all clubs that are open to enroll in. Click ‘enroll’ to enroll the patron in that club. There is also a “Cancel Enrollment” option.

OPAC Enrollments

A patron can enroll in a club from the OPAC if this club is allowing public enrollment. Once they have logged into their account, the same "Club" tab will appear (as it does in the Staff Interface)- and they will be able to pick the club to enroll in.

Placing Holds

During the tutorial video, we mentioned that a library can do Patron Club holds - here is the blog post with further information on how libraries can do this:

Patron Clubs Hold Feature

Reporting

Also during our tutorial, we mentioned we would share a report that would be useful to find out what patrons are filling out in the club enrollments and also possibly doing Email notices to these patrons using the Patron Emailer.

Monday Minutes: Emailing Customized Patron Notices

Here is the SQL report we showed during our tutorial:

SELECT borrowernumber, surname, firstname, email, club_id, clubs.name, club_template_enrollment_fields.name, club_enrollment_fields.value
FROM club_enrollment_fields
LEFT JOIN club_enrollments ON (club_enrollment_fields.club_enrollment_id=club_enrollments.id)
LEFT JOIN borrowers USING (borrowernumber)
LEFT JOIN clubs ON (club_enrollments.club_id=clubs.id)
LEFT JOIN club_template_enrollment_fields ON (club_enrollment_fields.club_template_enrollment_field_id=club_template_enrollment_fields.id)
WHERE clubs.id=<<Enter club ID number>> AND club_enrollments.date_canceled IS NULL