Configure reservations received notifications and rotas

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Discover how to set up notifications and location rotas in OLIB.

►Alerting> Notices
►Circulation Reference Data> Locations: Circ Details: Reservations/Recall Parameters

If you have several locations in OLIB working together on reservations, you can set up a rota system for receiving the reservation received notices.

This information shows how you can set up a rota to determine what Locations should receive the Reservation Received notification and in what order. There is also background information About reservations received notifications and rotas.

Configure in the order shown below:

Create the Reservation Received notice for each Location
Create the actual rota in each Location record

Create reservation received notices

You will need to create one of these notices for each OLIB Location which is to receive reservations:

Go to Alerting> Notices.
Make a copy of the Example Reservation Received Notification. This will be needed for each of your Locations.
In your copied notice record, select the Location from the Location drop down on the Notices layout.
You can also include the location name in the Brief Description field for clarity.
If you want to use the reservation notification as a picklist to retrieve reserved copies from the shelves you can add information from the copy records of the reserved copies. There are three alternative hash tag sets to enable this:

#ITEM# - all reserved copies
#ITEML# - reserved copies at the location specified in the notice’s location field
#ITEMX# - reserved copies at locations other than the location specified in the notice’s location field

In Notice Text you can include any tag from the copies tag set. The most likely tags will be Location, Sub - location, Shelf, Shelfmark and Barcode (depending on which fields you need to find the items). This example uses the #ITEML# tag set to list the copies which have been reserved at the notice’s location.

<body><basefont size="3" color="blue" face="Arial"/>
A new reservation has just been received as follows:
 
 User: <NAMESDISP2>
 Barcode: <BAR>
 Reservation Ref: <RES_RESNO>
 Title: <TI>
 Reserved On: <RES_DATE>
 The following copies at this location have been identified to honour it:
 <TABLE>#ITEM#<TR><TD VALIGN="TOP"><CP_LOLD></TD><TD VALIGN="TOP">
<CP_BC></TD><TD VALIGN>="TOP"><CP_SM></TD></TR>
#ITEML#</TABLE> 
 Please go to the Reservations domain to process it.
</body>

Set Transmit Type to To To List and enter the email address of the relevant member of staff at that location who is to receive and process the Reservation Received notifications.
It may also be helpful to include the Location name in the Subject Line, e.g. Location A Reservation Received.
Set Enabled=Yes.

Set up the rota

Set up the notice rota for each Location that will process reservations:

Go to User Management> Locations and retrieve the Location record that you want to set up a Rota for, e.g. Location A.
In Circ Details: Reservation/Recall Parameters switch to modify and use the Copy Location drop down to select e.g. Location A. (In this case, the notice will be sent first of all to your own Location).
In Priority enter e.g. 1. If you leave Priority blank, OLIB will prioritise each entry based on the order you enter them.
Optionally select a Copy Category / Copy Status / Loan Status as shown below.
To add this line to the rota, click the >> button .
OLIB displays the first Location on the rota in the field below.
Repeat for all the other Locations you would like on the rota and save the details, e.g. Locations B,C,D with priority 2.

Copy Category / Copy Status / Loan Status

You can also refine the rota order by these values. For example to set Available "21-day loan" copies higher up the rota than Available "14-day loan" copies or On Loan copies. They can be used with or without Priority - if you leave Priority blank, OLIB inserts the priority number based on the order you create each setting:

Res Rec'd Notice Rota

Copy Location	Copy Status	Priority
City Library	21 DY	1
City Library	14DY	2
Brincliffe	7DY	3

Using Priority and one or more of Copy Category / Copy Status / Loan Status together you can refine even further:

Copy Location	Copy Status	Priority
Location A	21 DY	1
Location B	21DY	2
Location C	21DY	2
Location A	7DY	3
Location B	7DY	4

In this example, if a reservation is placed by a user at Location A for an item that has 21DY copies at Location A, Location B and Location C, the notice rota will include Location A at the top.

Second priority for the rota, are reserved copies at Location B and Location C also with Category 21DY. Locations B,C share the load based on number of Res Rec’d alerts sent to each of these locations previously from Location A.

Third priority are reserved copies at Location A but with Category 7DY.

Fourth priority are reserved copies at Location B also with Category 7DY.

Delete from the rota

If you make a mistake building the rota or you need to subsequently alter the rota, it is easy to remove an entry:

Click the check box next to the line you wish to delete.
Select Delete Rota Item(s) from the Actions box.

OLIB removes that entry in the rota.

Place a reservation

When a user places a reservation, and the reservation becomes confirmed, the rota is visible in the reservation details layout. There is a Notices section displayed (this requires the system manager to use Layout Manager to add these fields).

The Notice Rota field lists the locations that are on the reservation’s rota. They are sorted in priority order, with any locations that have an equal priority sorted by location long description. Reservation Received notices will be sent to the various locations in the order they are listed here, except for locations that have an equal priority. Notices that are sent to these locations will be load-balanced and randomised so that each location ultimately receives an equal number of notices.