Setting Up Mana

by Kelly McElligott on Oct 31, 2019

What is Mana?

With the release of Koha 19.05, the knowledge base, Mana, is getting introduced! From the Koha Documentation, it is described as, “Mana-kb is a global knowledge base for library-centric data. It has been designed initially to interact with Koha, the Open Source ILS, but can be used by any other software.” [17047]

The idea behind Mana-kb, is that the Koha community can begin sharing knowledge such as Serial Prediction Patterns and Reports! This means a library can set up their Koha to integrate with Mana-kb and search for Serial patterns within Mana-kb, Community Reports and also share their own patterns/reports with the community.

How exciting is this?!

Activating Mana

By default, Mana will not be activated on your Koha system. To activate it, the library will need to go to the system preference, Mana. This system preference will need to be set to Enable.

The next step would be to get a token to authenticate your Koha site with the Mana-kb. In the Administration module, under Additional Parameters, there is an option for “Share Content for Mana Kb

To receive a token, the library will need to add a name and valid email address for this token to be emailed to. Once this has been entered, this email will be sent the token with a link to the Mana-kb website

In the email, there will be a link to continue the activation has occurred, and the token will automatically populate into your Koha site in two places. The token will be added to the “Share Content for Mana kb” page and also added to the system preference: Manatoken.

There is an option for Auto Sharing to occur, so the library doesn’t have to manually share a subscription, this can be done when a new subscription is created. This option is found on “Share Content for Mana kb” page. In addition to this Auto Share option, there is a system preference called AutoShareWithMana. Currently, those options on this system preferences are ALL or Subscriptions. If subscriptions are selected, when a new serial subscription is added, this pattern will be added to Mana without any extra effort on the part of the library.

More Resources!

Using Mana for Serial Subscriptions

Using Mana to Import Reports into Koha

Monday Minutes : Introducing Mana