Koha How-To

Koha 23.05 Notice Features and Enhancements

by Kelly McElligott on Nov 21, 2023

In Koha 23.05, a few new changes will occur with the Notices within Koha.

Using the Cart and List Email Tool will live within Notices and Slips

The Bug 3150: Move emails for sending cart and list contents into notices tool was designed to allow libraries to customize these emails that can be sent from both the Cart and List feature.

With this change, libraries can utilize the customization of notices to update, change, and edit what gets sent when these get emailed. The new notices, CART, and LIST, can be found in the Notices and Slips (in the Tools Module) and will be populated with a default email.

Here is what an email will look like if a cart is emailed:

Here is what an email will look like if a list is emailed:

Allow Koha to Send Expiration Notice via SMS

The bug 23773, now allows the ability for libraries to send expiration notices to patrons via SMS. For libraries utilizing the SMS feature within Koha, they can now send notifications to their patrons about their library card expiring via SMS. The notice, MEMBERSHIP_EXPIRY, can be edited to include language in the SMS tab. There is no default text here, if a library would like to use this new feature, they would need to add what information about be sent to the patron via SMS about their upcoming expiration date.

If a library is not currently sending expiration notices to their patrons and would like to, this does require the system preference: MembershipExipryDaysNotice to be turned on as well as the Membership Cron job.

If a library is already using this feature to send notifications to their patrons but would like to only send this SMS notice to a specific patron category or specific branch, that is possible.

A WHERE statement can be added in the membership_expiry.pl cron job to give libraries more control over who receives emails/SMS about soon-to-expire cards. In conjunction with the system preference MembershipExipryDaysNotice, Koha allows libraries to send patrons a notification when their accounts are close to expiration.

NOTE:

WHERE statements can be based on any field in the borrowers table. For instance, a consortium of six libraries where only two libraries want to send the notice could add a statement limiting patrons whose branchcode matches those two libraries. Or a library that wants to send the notice to all patron categories except self-registered patrons could exclude patrons with the categorycode 'SELF’.

If you would like to add a WHERE statement to the cron job, and you are a partner of ByWater, please send us a ticket and we would be happy to assist!

This feature was sponsored by Médiathèque de Montauban

BONUS:

If your library would like to send out these notifications in SMS but doesn't want to have patrons with email addresses get both an SMS notice and an email notice, add this to the SMS notice:

[%- IF ( !borrower.email ) %]
Your library card will expire on <<borrowers.dateexpiry>> And whatever other text you want to add. >
[%- END %]

Letter Codes Will Show in Overdue Notice Status and Triggers Tool

Bug 33203: Overdue notice/status triggers letter selection is ambiguous. This enhancement will show the letter code of the notice in the Overdue Notice Status and Triggers tool. Showing the letter code will help libraries identify which notice to pick easier. Prior to this bug, a library, when choosing what notice/letter to pick within the Overdue Notice Status and trigger Tool, could only see the name of the letter, which sometimes was similar or exactly the same for all types of Overdue. Now, a library will see the name as well as the code of the notice.

Here is an example of what the change will look like: