As we upgrade our partners to Koha 3.18 I have had a few folks wanting to know how to turn off the “auto renew” option. As many of you may have discovered there is not a system preference for this.

Never fear, I have a couple of simple jQuery lines that will help out. Place the following code into Koha’s intranetuserjs system preference and you will not have to worry about a staff member accidentally checking the checkbox.

// Hides the Auto-renew feature
$(document).ready(function(){
$("div.date-select label[for='auto_renew']").remove();
$("div.date-select input[id='auto_renew']").remove();
});

Also, it’s important to remember that even if you check the box, nothing will happen if you haven’t turned on the automatic renewals cron job in your Koha system.

The post Afraid of Koha’s Auto-Renew? by Ed Veal appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Can’t print due dates on your Koha slips? You’re not alone! Here’s what you can do now to cure this!

Several partners have reported that after being upgraded to Koha 3.18.6 their slips are no longer showing due dates. Unfortunately, this is a bug:
http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14150

However, there IS a work-around for this that you can use in the meantime!

If you edit your email template to use “<<items.onloan>>”  instead of “<<issues.date_due>>” (no quotation marks) the dates will print!

You can modify this by going to your Koha staff client and looking under Tools and then Notices & Slips. Look for the notice ISSUESLIP, expand the Email template section, and edit it. DO NOT USE THE QUOTATION MARKS. You can also edit the ISSUESQSLIP in the same way.

If you need additional help with this issue please let us know!

The post Can’t Print Due Dates on Your Koha Slips? Here’s a Cure! by Amy Kearns appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

In this tutorial video I’ll introduce you to the basics of patron management in Koha 3.18.

To learn all about Koha 3.18 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post Basic Patron Management in Koha 3.18 by Carmen Hernandez appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Today’s guest post comes from Christopher Brannon at Cooperative Information Network (CIN).

The following JQuery enhances the expiration date on the Koha patron details screen. Staff have always disliked the fact that it didn’t stand out on that screen. The value in line 8 (+30) should reflect the same value you have set for NotifyBorrowerDeparture preference (in the example that’s 30 days).

The end result will look like this:

Expiring Soon

Expired

The code is:

//Enhance expiration date on patron details page

$("#patron-library-details li:contains('Expiration date: ')").attr('id','patronExpiration');
   var ed=new Date();
   var edat=( '0' + (ed.getDate()) ).slice( -2 );
   var emon=( '0' + (ed.getMonth()+1) ).slice( -2 );
   var eyear=ed.getFullYear();
   var todaysDate=eyear+'-'+emon+'-'+edat;

   ed.setDate(ed.getDate()+30);
   edat=( '0' + (ed.getDate()) ).slice( -2 );
   emon=( '0' + (ed.getMonth()+1) ).slice( -2 );
   eyear=ed.getFullYear();

   var expireSoon=eyear+'-'+emon+'-'+edat;

   ed=new Date($("#patronExpiration").text().match(/\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}/g));
   edat=( '0' + (ed.getDate()) ).slice( -2 );
   emon=( '0' + (ed.getMonth()+1) ).slice( -2 );
   eyear=ed.getFullYear();

   var expireDate=eyear+'-'+emon+'-'+edat;

   if(expireDate >= todaysDate && expireDate < expireSoon){

      $("#patronExpiration").attr('style','color: red;').append(' <b><i>(Expires soon!)</i>');

   }

   if(expireDate < todaysDate){

      $("#patronExpiration").attr('style','color: red;').append(' <b><i>(EXPIRED!)</i>');
   
   };

//End enhance expiration date

The post Styling Koha Patron Expiration Dates with JQuery by ByWater Partners appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

A Concrete Example of Why Including the URL in the Support Ticket Helps

I had a ticket that came in a bit ago with the description ‘Search Information not being Transferred to z39.50 window from “Cataloging Search.”‘

This is a very good title for a support ticket: It tells me where the problem occurs (“Cataloging Search”), and what’s going wrong (‘Search Information not being Transferred to z39.50 window’).

Had I been paying close attention, it would have taken me five minutes to replicate the problem, and five minutes later I would have had the answer, because Kyle Hall already had a fix written. Alas, I saw the phrase ‘Cataloging Search’, and confused it with ‘Search the Catalog’ on the Main screen of Koha… and what do you know, a) These are different and b) ‘Search the Catalog’ transfers its data into the Z39.50 search like clockwork… and that started an email conversation, which of course takes time.

Lessons Learned

1. Being excruciatingly correct with terminology matters. There is a difference between ‘Cataloging Search’ and ‘Search the Catalog’. If you happen to know that two things have names that are close, it never hurts to point out the distinction.
2. You can paste URLs into the ticket to avoid ambiguity: The phrase ‘Search the catalog’ appears on the Koha main page: http://intranet.bywatersolutions.com/ , whereas the phrase ‘Cataloging search’ is found on the cataloging page: http://intranet.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/cataloguing/addbooks.pl

The post Notes From the Koha Support Desk by Barton Chittenden appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

This tutorial video will give a detailed introduction to setting up and adding patrons in Koha 3.18.

To learn all about Koha 3.18 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post Patron Management in Koha 3.18 by Carmen Hernandez appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Koha has an canned overdue report that many libraries don’t use because they’d rather have a custom report, but the canned overdue report in Koha can search a lot of patron and item fields so it’s worth a look. This tutorial video will walk you through searching the overdues using the canned overdue report in the Koha staff client.

If you have an idea for a tutorial video for Koha just let us know and we’ll add it to our list.

The post Running the Overdue Report in Koha by Carmen Hernandez appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Want to show your patrons what they saved by using your library? This handy tutorial will walk you through the steps.

First you want to log in to your Koha staff client and go to Tools > Notices & Slips.

Next, you’ll want to find your ISSUESLIP or ISSUEQSLIP (or both).

Now, add this to your <checkedout> block on your slip:

<span class="price" style="display: none;"><<items.price>></span>

items.replacementprice could also be used instead of items.price

Next, add this somewhere on the slip:

Cost of buying these items:<br/>
$<span id="price"></span><br/>
Cost of using the library:<br/>
Priceless!<br/>

Lastly, add this to the bottom of your slip:

<script type="text/javascript">
var x = document.getElementsByClassName("price");
var i;
var total = 0;
for (i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
   var cost = parseFloat( x[i].innerHTML );
   if ( ! isNaN( cost ) ) {
       total += cost;
    }
}
document.getElementById("price").innerHTML = total.toFixed(2);
</script>

The result in Koha will be something like this:

The post Show Library Cost Savings on your Koha Receipt by Kyle Hall appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Today’s video will show you how to use Koha’s inventory tool in Koha 3.20

The post Inventory in Koha 3.20 by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Reports have always been one of my favorite parts of Koha. The unfettered access to all of the tables and data in the system was a refreshing change from proprietary ILSes I had worked with in the past. From day one I was writing reports to track everything in the system: when to rotate new books, when to purge patrons, what books belonging to other libraries were on our shelves. It was a long time though before I learned another trick: reports will process HTML and, through that, CSS!

Actions:
The Koha reports library has many examples of using links in reports, you can concat biblionumber with an html link as below to generate an active link in your report results directly to a biblio:

CONCAT('<a href="/cgi-bin/koha/catalogue/detail.pl?biblionumber=',biblionumber,'">',title,'</a>') AS Title

but did you know you can do more than just link? (Almost) all link in koha are static links. The impact of this may not be immediately celar, bit what it means is: you can perform actions by creating links! Want to check in a patron’s item from a report:

SELECT CONCAT('<a href="/cgi-bin/koha/circ/returns.pl?barcode=',barcode,'">Checkin</a>') AS "Check-in link", biblio.title, CONCAT(surname,',',firstname) as Patron
FROM issues
LEFT JOIN items USING (itemnumber)
LEFT JOIN biblio USING (biblionumber)
LEFT JOIN borrowers USING (borrowernumber)

Yields results like:

And clicking the link gives you:

Styling:
Let’s say you want to see a list of items that are lost or damaged, you want them in shelf order, but you want to easily see which are lost and which are damaged, let’s add color:

SELECT IF(itemlost,'<p style="background-color:red">lost</p>',IF(damaged,'<p style="background-color:green">damaged</p>',"")) AS indicator, barcode, itemcallnumber, damaged, itemlost
FROM items
WHERE damaged OR itemlost

You can even add classes to take advantage of existing styles in koha:

SELECT IF(itemlost,'<p style="background-color:red">lost</p>',IF(damaged,'<p style="background-color:green">damaged</p>',"")) AS indicator, barcode, itemcallnumber, damaged, itemlost
FROM items
WHERE damaged OR itemlost

or add your own unique class name and corresponding code in intranetusercss:
REPORT:

SELECT IF(itemlost,'<span class="report-color">lost</span>',IF(damaged,'<p style="background-color:green">damaged</p>',"")) AS indicator, barcode, itemcallnumber, damaged, itemlost
FROM items
WHERE damaged OR itemlost

IntranetUserCSS:

.report-color {
font-weight: bold;
text-transform: uppercase;
color:DeepPink;
}

Gives you:

One last tidbit, you can add links in report descriptions. Let’s say you are building a new report from an existing one, and it’s not quite ready yet. You can include a link back to the good report in the Notes field:

This is a work in progress report based on <a href="/cgi-bin/koha/reports/guided_reports.pl?reports=4&amp;phase=Show%20SQL">this report</a> Please do not run this report, but use the link above to run the original report

Hopefully these examples give a you a good start for exploring the possibilities. Let us know what amazing things you do with your reports!

The post Koha reports and HTML by Nick Clemens appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

In a ticket recently, a partner and I worked together on a MARC file to get it ready for importing into Koha. One of the things we wanted to accomplish was to copy over URLs in the 856$u to the 952$u. However, we only wanted to keep links meeting certain criteria, and each record contained more than one 856 field!

Using MarcEdit, you can copy fields into others based on a string of text. That means that the data gets copied *only* if the pattern you entered is found.

To do this, we did the following:

1. double-click on the file, check the box next to Translate to UTF8, click on the Execute button, then on Edit Records (once the file has processed)
2. select Tools from the top bar, and Swap Field Data from the drop-down
3. to follow our example:
   • Original Data -> Field: 856, Subfields: u, Find: <enter your text here>
   • Modified Data -> Field: 952, Subfields: u
   • click on these boxes:
     • Copy Source
     • Add to existing/create new
     • Sort Modified Field
   • click on the Process button, verify your count, then click OK

From here, we added the mandatory items fields Koha needs:

1. go to Edit Subfield Data in the same box
2. enter
   • Field: 952, Subfield: a, Replace with: <your home branch>
   • click on these boxes:
     • New subfield only
     • Match case
   • click on the Replace Text button, click Yes, view your count, and click OK

You’ll want to repeat this step 2 to add your Koha holding branch in the 952$b and your item type in the 952$y.

And remember, what’s needed in these fields are codes, *not* descriptions. For example, if your Koha itype code is EBOOK and the itype description is Electronic Resources, you’d enter EBOOK.

Once you’ve made all of your changes, recompile the file by going to File in the top bar and selecting Compile File into MARC. Choose your filename, and select “UTF-8 MARC file” as the type.

Here’s a short video of the steps in MarcEdit:  

We welcome you to share any MarcEdit tips you may have! Enjoy!

The post Using MarcEdit to Create Koha Items by Rocio Jordan appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

We recently gave a town hall for our partners on how to sign off on Koha patches using the Koha Sandboxes. Many folks thought it would be great if we shared this information publicly, so I have put together a tutorial video for your all of the process of signing off on patches for Koha using the sandboxes.

The post Using Koha Sandboxes to Sign off on Patches by Nicole C. Engard appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

<item> </item>, wherefore art thou, item?

One of the issues that I see occurring on a regular basis are Koha advanced notices that show up with missing and garbled item detail.

The reason for this (not a particularly good reason, but a reason none-the-less) is that Koha advanced notices use a different syntax for specifying the item detail than overdue notices.

With overdue notices, the item detail is specified using opening and closing <item> tags like this:

<item>"<<biblio.title>>" by <<biblio.author>>, <<issues.date_due>>, Barcode: <<items.barcode>> </item>

Which might display in the overdue notice like this:

"Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett, 01/29/2016 23:59:59, Barcode: 31415926

The same code, when put into advanced notices, will show up like this:

<item>"" by , , Barcode: </item>

Instead, in advanced notices — which have the letter codes DUE, DUEDGST, PREDUE and PREDUEDGST, you must instead use

<<items.content>>

Which will expand to date, title, author, barcode — e.g.

01/29/2016 23:59:59, Small Gods, Terry Pratchett, 31415926

For a full list of the markup available in Koha Notices and Slips, see The notices and slips page on the Koha Wiki

The post Proper Koha Notice Syntax by Barton Chittenden appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

So you have a list of Koha item types all worked out based on your circulation rules. However, you have discovered that there are some item types that are showing to the patrons and you would prefer that they don’t. There are three new enhancements arriving with Koha 3.22 to help manage the way your item types display to patrons. First, is the ability to set a specific item type as hidden from the advanced search page in the public catalog. Second, is the ability to customize the item types that are visible to the patrons in the public catalog when placing a purchase suggestion.
Hiding an Item type

Hiding a specific item type form the advanced search no longer requires custom jQuery. Each item type now has a checkbox entitled “Hide in opac”. This will hide the item type from the advanced search page only. Items with the specified item type can still be found if the item type is not listed in the OpacHiddenItems systems preference.

Item Types and Purchase Suggestions

Now lets say you want to provide your patrons with a customized list of item types for them on the purchase suggestion screen. There is a new authorized value “SUGGEST_FORMAT” that will be populated with all your item types. You can delete Item types from this list and they will then be removed from the dropdown that is displayed on the purchase suggestion page.

There is one significant warning I must pass on. If you delete an item type from this list and at some point in the future you want that item type to re-appear in the list you will need to manually re-add it. When doing this you will need to verify that you are using the item type code as the Koha authorized value. If you create a new authorized value that does not have a matching item type the item type will appear in the dropdown but will actually connect to any item type. The authorized value must match the item type code.

Combining Item Types into a single search group

Now lets say you have a number of item types that are all similar but need to be broken down for some specific reason such as hourly reserve circulation. However, you want also want patrons to search for them as a group rather than individual item types.

There is a new Authorized Value category called item “ITEMTYPECAT”. First you will need to add a value to this category then move to the item types and there is a dropdown within each item type edit screen listing the categories. You will simply select the appropriate category and then the item type will no longer show individually but will so when searching the with the category selected.

The post New in Koha 3.22: Advanced Item Type Management by Ed Veal appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

From time to time the developers at ByWater will give each other guided tours of various sub-systems in Koha: Circulation, patrons, search, etc. Last week, we talked about holds, and as a side comment, Kyle mentioned the importance of biblio-level item types for holds: “If the biblio records don’t contain an item type, we won’t be determining the availability correctly”.

Here’s why:

Holds use circulation rules to determine whether a title is available for hold. Circulation rules are based on

1. Branch Code
2. Patron Category
3. Item type

These may use the wild card ‘*’ — I.e. All Branches, all patron categories or all item types, or you can specify a Branch code, patron category or item type.

For the purposes of circulation, this works perfectly — a borrower brings an item to the circ desk or self check-out machine, and it is immediately obvious which branch the patron belongs to, the item’s home branch, the patron category, and the item’s item type.

Holds are not so simple — in particular, with biblio level holds, items aren’t associated with the hold record until the hold is filled. This means, for the purposes of determining how many of a given item type that a patron can check out, Koha must check the biblio level item type… and if those are not set, or aren’t set consistently across the collection, you may see errors in the number of items that a patron can put on hold.

The post Biblio Level Item Types in Koha by Barton Chittenden appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

This recorded webinar will cover new features and enhancements in the 3.22 Koha upgrade for tools, reports, administration and system preferences. Koha 3.22 can take advantage of Plack to run faster than ever, here is link to read more. Some of the highlights from this session include custom sound notifications and batch modifying records.

To learn all about Koha 3.22 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post Tools, Reports, and Administration in Koha 3.22 by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

This recorded webinar will cover new features and enhancements in the 3.22 Koha upgrade for cataloging, acquisitions and serials. A new enhancement has been added to the cataloging module, the professional cataloger’s interface. Some highlights from the video include linking patrons to an order in the acquisitions module, allowing staff to only claim serial issues of their own branch, and usability enhancement for z39.50 search.

To learn all about Koha 3.22 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Serials in Koha 3.22 by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

This recorded webinar will cover new features and enhancements in the 3.22 Koha upgrade for the OPAC and public services. Some highlights from the video include grouping item types together into one search option, using filters to search lists, and viewing serial enumeration in a users account when browsing their own holds.

To learn all about Koha 3.22 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post OPAC and Public Services in Koha 3.22 by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

This recorded webinar will cover new features and enhancements in the 3.22 Koha upgrade for Circulation and Patrons. Some highlights from the video include the ability to pay all fees at once from circulation screen, new additions to the circulation and fine rules and membership expiry reminder notices.

To learn all about Koha 3.22 view the other videos in this series and make sure to review the manual and the release notes.

The post Circulation and Patrons in Koha 3.22 by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

Working on a project recently, I found myself needing to automate an extensive set of edits in a specific order in MarcEdit. After some poking around, I found the amazing tool I was needing!

In the toolbar, click on “Tools” and select “Manage Tasks” in the dropdown. Here is where you can create and edit task lists that will do the heavy lifting in your marc files for you.

Yes, Koha has all kinds of nifty tools to perform edits for you – surf around some of our recent blog posts and check out the manual for more info. For my particular project, I need to be able to heavily manipulate the marc data before it is in Koha.

Let’s say you receive files in the same format over and over from a vendor, and you want to be able to flip a switch and get them ready for import. This is the scenario I used in the following video. The tasks are:

1. copy the 856$u to the 952$u
2. add the homebranch,holdingbranch, and itype codes
3. add the 942$c bibliographic item type

And voila! Just another way you can make your life a little easier, if you choose to go the route of editing before importing. Enjoy!

The post Using task lists in MarcEdit to automate edits by Rocio Jordan appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.