Suspending Holds

by Kelly McElligott on Aug 4, 2021

Here is a short tutorial and blog post to demonstrate how Staff can suspend and also resume a suspended hold.

Staff Side - Suspending Holds

In Koha, Staff members can suspend holds for patrons. The ability to suspend a hold is permission in Koha, so a staff member would need the option to 'modify holds' to have this functionality option.

First, we can either find the existing hold through a patron search or a title search within Koha. Alternatively, a staff member could use the barcode if they knew specifically which copy the patron had on hold.

Once we have found either the patron or the title, click the Hold tab on the left or the Hold text within the Record:

If a staff member went to the Patron's account to find the hold, they would choose the Holds Tab:

Either way the hold is accessed, the hold screen will look like this:

From this screen, a staff member can either choose the "Suspend" button which will Suspend (Freeze) the hold indefinitely. Alternatively, a staff member can add a date for when the hold will be un-suspended as of a specific date. If no date is assigned, there will need to be staff intervention to "unsuspend" this hold in the future.

If a date is set up in the Hold to be "unsuspended" by, this is driven by a system preference.

System Preference

There is a system preference, AutoResumeSuspendedHolds, which can be enabled to have Koha automatically unsuspend the holds based on the date that has been entered.

NOTE: This system preference requires the misc/cronjobs/holds/auto_unsuspend_holds.pl cronjob. If you are a partner, send us a ticket to turn on this cron for you!

Staff Side - Un-suspending Holds

For staff to unsuspend holds manually, they can click the button that is "UnSuspend". Staff can 'unsuspend' that has a date associated with it or ones that do not, either way, the hold will get unsuspended and the date (if existed) will clear. Once the button is clicked, this will change the button to then say, "Suspend"