Monday Minutes: Tracking Vendor Issues in Acquisitions

by Kelly McElligott on May 6, 2024

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie talk about a new feature coming with upgrades in August. This feature will allow libraries to track problems with specific vendors. A library will be able to attach any issues with a specific vendor with dates and detailed notes.

Vendor Issues

Koha has the ability for libraries to track issues with their vendors. This option will be useful to libraries using the Koha ERM Module, or any library providing electronic services. If a library experiences issues with logging into an eResource, service interruptions, or patrons experience bad links, this can now be documented with the specific vendor record within Koha. This is important as evidence when submitting contract negotiations and judging vendor performance against existing contracts.

Process to Set Up:

1. In the Administration Module > Authorized Values, a new category, VENDOR_ISSUE_TYPE will have two options to use within the Vendor Issue, MAINTENANCE and OUTAGE.
2. A library can edit these existing values or add more to use.
3. Once this has been set up, go into an existing Vendor (within Acquisitions)
4. Vendor Issues can be found on the left-hand side menu.
5. Choose a new Issue and create a new issues
6. Once saved, this issue will be saved within the issues tab and searched within the table.

Permissions: To utilize this option within the Vendor record, a staff member must have the new permission acquisition.issue_manage.

Vendor Issues Reporting

The data from the Vendor Issues will be stored in a separate table called aqbookseller_issues which is linked to the aqbooksellers table.

The Koha Schema can be found here.