Purchase Suggestions in the OPAC

Koha offers a great feature for your library to allow patrons to make purchase suggestions via the OPAC.  There are a few tools that you can use in conjunction with this feature that will help your library.  

Koha Purchase Suggestions

1. To allow your patrons to make  Purchase Suggestions:
   1. Go to your Global System Preference in the Administration Module search “Suggestion”
   2. Turn to this preference to “allow”
   3. If you have multiple branches, there is a system preference called “AllowPurchaseSuggestionBranchChoice”  – you can allow your patrons to select library when make the purchase suggestion.
2. Select your Mandatory Fields – this is very important to pick which fields that you would like your patron to be required to fill out when making this purchase suggestion.  This global system preference is called “OPACSuggestionMandatoryFields”
3. Selecting “Item Type” as a mandatory fields could be very helpful in determining what your patron really wants the library to order.  

4. Once you select your mandatory fields- these fields will be in red on the OPAC under Purchase Suggestion.  

5. If you would like your item types to display in a drop down menu like this picture- you can set them up in your authorized values under “SUGGEST_FORMAT”  
6.  Authorized values are found in the Administration module.  If the authorized value “SUGGEST_FORMAT” is not set up- you can create a new authorized value for this purpose.
7.  Once you create this authorized value “SUGGEST_FORMAT” you can add your item types are they are shown in your item types (also under Administration).  Below there is a picture of the  library’s item type codes.  These are the same codes you will enter into your authorized values under the “SUGGEST_FORMAT” category. When creating your Suggest Format codes, enter a Description and an OPAC description into this form.

***Some other purchase suggestion system preferences that you can customize to your library include :

• MaxOpenSuggestions– this is an open text box that you can assign a numeric value to the number of open suggestions a patron can make
• OPACViewOthersSuggestions– you can choose to allow or don’t allow to show purchase suggestions from other patrons on the OPAC.
• AnonSuggestions:  you can allow or don’t allow patrons that aren’t logged in to make purchase suggestions- this works with Anonymous Patron
• OpacSuggestionManagedBy: you can show or don’t show the name of the staff member who managed a suggestion in the OPAC

If you have any questions about OPAC Purchase Suggestions or anything else related to Koha, please feel free to contact us!

The post Purchase Suggestions in the OPAC by Kelly McElligott appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.