Koha-US SIG - Acquisitions Special Interest Group, 18 Jan 2022

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From YouTube: Acquisitions Special Interest Group - 1/18/2022

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Chat logs:
00:07:46 Rhonda Kuiper: Bug 29612
00:07:54 Jason Robb (SEKLS): https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29612
00:16:14 Victoria: Can an item be claim returned when it has a "lost" status?
00:25:07 Barbara Johnson: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8179
00:34:45 Barbara Johnson: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29570
00:49:21 Barbara Johnson: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&component=Acquisitions&list_id=398427&order=changeddate%20DESC%2Ccomponent%2Cbug_status%2Cpriority%2Cassigned_to%2Cbug_id&query_format=advanced
00:53:03 Daphne Hoolahan: Thanks everyone
00:53:11 Amanda Campbell: Thanks@

A

Okay, I think we're right at 11 o'clock. So how is everybody doing.

A

That's good, that's good um what I was um planning on doing like I, I told people I was out all last week, um sick. So I am here, that's a plus right there, so this may be a shorter meeting, but we, I still want to make sure we meet because we missed in december too. um So the first thing I wanted to report back on was we at at our november meeting um we had talked about.

A

Let's see, let me pull this up. um The new link, that's on the acquisitions page, that is, orders by fund and.

A

And if you click on that, um I was finding that what I was seeing on the orders by fund and what I was seeing on the acquisition home page were different. Like the numbers were different and I did a little bit of digging around and discovered that the problem was um in the orders by fund they weren't using the actual cost.

A

When so everything was great when something was on order, because that was you know, we gave it our best guess of what it was actually going to cost. You know with especially with um ingram and midwest tape.

A

um You know there isn't like a standard deduction for everything you know, so we just kind of in our acquisitions just put in a generic, oh 25 offers you know 30 off and then, when the items actually come in, you get the actual cost to us, so what they were doing, what what they were doing in the orders by fund thing was always using that ordered price. Whatever that ordered price was and not using the actual um price to calculate the um orders by fund stuff.

A

So um there's a bug out there I should have had I've been more prepared. I would have um looked that up, but I can do that real quick. So there there is, you know um you know for orders for for vendors, like amazon, where we put in the actual price, and then it comes in at that price. You know that all works fine, but if you have vendors, where you kind of give it your best guess when you order it, then it the orders by.

A

By fund will not be accurate once ah here, it is.

B

A

Oh, they just didn't. Okay, it's two, nine six, one two! um I can put that in here.

A

Oh two, nine six, one two is the bug in in bugzilla, that's related to this problem and um it's still in new status, um so they haven't started working on that, but that's just an update on on what what I found out about that problem.

A

So how does does anybody have any that's sort of the old business kind of stuff? um Does anybody have any questions or things that they've been running up against that they'd like to talk about.

C

Well, I have a question on say you have um a title and you ordered it, maybe in regular print and you ordered it in large print and in last year's budget you received say the large print, but it was really the regular print that you've got so you received it on the wrong order.

C

But you closed your budget so now you're in a new budget here and when you go to receive the other one. You realize I've done it wrong.

C

So what's the best way to handle that.

A

Well, I can, I can tell you, I mean I'm sure, there's lots of wisdom out there. um I can. I can tell you what we have done in similar situations. I I'm not going to claim that it's the best way, but it's a way to do this. um So what we did was we reopened the old year, the old budget and and then went through all the gymnastics of unreceiving it and then receiving you know I mean it was. It was not.

A

Easy you know whatever, but but when and then clo you know, receive the correct item and then close the budget up again and then go back and then you're all set for the new year. That's that was all I could think of to to get it right. um I don't know if there's a slicker way to do that, but that was the only thing we could come up with.

A

Does anybody else run into a problem like that?

A

C

I think what I think we've done, various things we've we've done what you said and I think we also.

C

Just received the new one in the new year and adjusted the pricing and acted as if it was the thing that was in our hand and a thing in our hand, matched the record. But it kind of you know we just kind of said. Oh fudge just.

A

You know yep. That was the other idea going rattling around in my head too. You know it's like how how accurate do you want your.

B

Records you know.

A

And this is like one record out of an entire year: you know so you just kind of gotta. Is it a problem.

D

Sorry is there a problem with your budgeting, your finance department? If the money is slightly different or is it just, do you want to have the correct invoice linked to the correct bib.

C

Nobody's really looking at our you know, so the city's not coming back and saying. Oh, these things don't match. So I'm not really worried about that. I just want to reflect the you know the correct amount of money spent, so I know that you know that part's correct and what I have remaining is correct.

C

So we just kind of you know.

C

Turned you know, adjusted the prices, even though those prices didn't really go. I guess with the thing we had at hand, and it was like rhonda said you know it was like one thing, so we didn't really want to go to town on just you know it's like. What's the quick easiest way.

D

Yeah, because one of the things you could have considered was transferring the order to a different biblio so that, just afterwards, if you're searching for a biblio and you click on the acquisitions tab at least you're, linking to the correct order now it might mean that the money came out of a different budget year. But if that doesn't matter, then at least the item will be on the correct biblio and the price will be related to that. So, if you were ever charging, you know a replacement cost for somebody who lost it.

D

You'd have it that way. Now the only thing then I could suggest is you just put a note in there in case any the auditor ever came back and said this money is a little bit um a little bit different yeah and.

C

I think we did put you know. Just a quick explanatory note of like received wrong item. Cost should have been, or I don't know something like that, but yeah transferring it. Okay.

D

Yeah and that's good- and it's always like I always say to all our users- remember: koa, isn't your accounting system, it's a fund tracking system and often things are slightly different anyway, because you order it at one price and it comes in at a different price.

D

So uh but it can be awkward if you have different budgets for your large print as opposed to your normal print or.

D

But that being able to move to transfer an order from one biblio to another. That's a handy feature just to to remember. If you make a mistake thanks just the suggestion.

A

So I have an intern that I need to talk with real quick, um so I'm gonna just scoot out for a minute, but if you guys can just talk amongst yourself, I I hopefully will be back in like 15 minutes, um but um I got this is all called. Everything happens when the first day you're back after being out. So I will be back.

C

Well, I have a non-acquisition.

C

Pitch- and that is that I am this year's kaha u.s president, and if you have not yet joined koha us, you should do that.

C

It's a great organization, as you all know, you're already here in the special interest group, um but be sure and join, invite your friends to join um and let us know anything that you want to see koha us doing. How can we help you more? What can we do to be relevant um to you and your own library.

C

So there's my pitch.

E

Hey barbara, why might someone want to join within the next month or so, especially.

C

Someone, let's see someone might want to join in the next month or so because kohai us is planning its upcoming conference and we will be putting out a vote for the site uh location of where the conference will take place. And if you are a cohan member, you get to vote on that location and have a say in where the conference actually takes place. So that's why you should always join at the beginning of a calendar year.

E

It looks like victoria has a question in the chat. Can an item be claimed returned when it has a loss status? I have no. um I have very little like acquisitions experience and we don't use claims returned either, but I'll toss that out to the the room. Does anybody know.

D

I think normally, when you mark something lost, you're sort of blaming the patron and you're charging them, so you might want to sort of pretend to check it in so that you could then claim um claim returned now. If you haven't charged the lost charge, that probably doesn't matter, um but the functionality for claimed returned is all based on the assumption that at the time it's claimed returned, it has been checked out to the borrower and then you're going to go straight and unmark it as claimed returned.

D

So they get no charge.

B

Okay, thank you. It's just that when it becomes long overdue, it goes into the lost status and we had had a couple of times that the patron says that they returned it, but it has been more than uh three months per se. So the item is no longer in checkup. It's in the lost status.

D

Yeah and that's you can change that if you want to um and obviously change you know at which stage it gets marked as lost when, if you're happy with the settings that you have except for these people who claim it returned, um I would test it on. If you have a record yourself, you know check something out to yourself, mark it as lost and then go and change it to claimed return.

D

Just so you can see how it looks and that you are happy with that, because then, presumably, once it's claimed returned, you have some sort of a process. You go through to search the shelves to see if you can locate it in the library.

B

Okay, yeah, I tried actually doing that and from what I can see is like I said if it's still checked out just in the checkout, not long overdue. Yet it allows me to it has the claim to turn uh button, but once it becomes long overdue that disappears.

B

D

Well, I think you might have to check it pretend you're checking it in and then check it back out again into the same.

B

Thank you. Okay,.

D

And maybe just have a note on it um so that you understand the dates are different to say. You know that it really was originally checked out on that particular date. Yeah.

B

Put in the note would definitely be helpful. All righty.

E

E

Well, I I do have a question, I guess for the acquisitions group, so um this came up in the this week. I guess um so. The only thing that we use acquisitions for really is purchase suggestions and we are a consortium. So we were excited with this new feature where it kind of breaks out how many purchase suggestions are pending um by branch. So I can, I can show my screen because that'll probably make more sense.

E

So um before it just gave you a suggestion, spending for the whole consortium here now it breaks out by library. So I will look at seven. All libraries have 70 and I can click on either one to get to the pending suggestion area, but that disappears on libraries that don't have any and that's thrown off some of my libraries, because even though they don't have any pending, they still use that link to get to the suggestions area to manage the ones that they're working on.

E

So I know that there's a menu item for suggestions here now and that's kind of where I've been directing people, but I'm wondering if it should totally disappear if there's stuff that still needs worked, um I'm trying to decide if I just want to add that back with a with um jquery or something or if it.

E

If that's like an actual, is it a feature, not bug or bug, not feature? I guess that's the question I wanted to toss out there. um I think it's an improved view for sure when there are pending suggestions, but it has caused some confusion when there aren't.

C

We're a single library, so we don't run into that, but it it does seem like you ought to be able to quickly get to the suggestions that it shouldn't. Just all of a sudden. You know be gone if your library doesn't have any.

E

Yeah- and I was looking through the book to get a little bit where they introduced that feature, and I it doesn't sound like that scenario was tested in the plan. So I don't know that it was a intended or not to completely kill the link um when there aren't any pending suggestions. So I guess I could put a bug out there and just see what other people think.

D

Yeah because I think if you, if it was back in it would say pending suggestion zero and then would people expect that they would click on that link to find things.

E

Right, I'm that's kind of why I'm kind of teetering on. I guess it's kind of a a good thing and I could just re-add a link back to manage suggestions um just for myself.

D

I see what you mean, because otherwise people might forget about the suggestions that have a different status.

E

Yeah and for years that's been where they click to get there so like now, now that it's gone, it's causing some confusion, which is a training issue.

D

um You know they appear as well as soon as you click into the button that says acquisitions.

E

Right and since we don't really use acquisitions, my people don't associate that, um but I could change the label on the acquisitions to purchase suggestions too. That's.

D

What I was going to say, if you just had that label now, you'll need to go in and make sure I can't picture exactly what else comes up, but I think if you change that label it might.

E

D

Nicer solution for you.

E

Yeah yeah, it goes to the home page. So then you have to click again, but I could redirect it so that it just goes directly to the suggestions. Page, that's a good idea awesome. Thank you.

C

I put a link in there to bug 8179. It's one. We've looked at in this group before about receiving multiple order lines um at once and we did go through. I don't know it's been a while we kind of went through trying to test it as a group.

C

And I got a notification the other day of the latest activity on it, and this was andrew from bywater and uh just some some additional notes um on things that don't seem to be working with the test plan, um because the last update was in like may of 21 until andrew commented on it uh recently.

C

So I just thought I'd draw attention to the latest thing on that particular one.

B

Question barbara, so what do we need to do then? Just comment on it, so it would go to the next uh stage or because that's something that I was really looking forward.

C

To um I think you can go in there and, and just say that kind of thing, like you know this would be you know really great for our library would love to see. You know work continue on this. I think what I've heard from other people is that the more you make comments on mugs about you know this would work for us, or this would seriously negatively impact our workflow. You know, depending on what it is.

C

All of that is good information for the developers to to take into account. um You know with how popular something is how detrimental something might be. um That's what I feel I've gained in learning about being bold enough to go into bugzilla and actually comment on something.

B

Okay, I will make sure to leave a comment. Thank you.

F

Hi I'll be brave and ask a question: okay, so I'm wondering if anyone else keeps up with gift or memorial information in quahog either for the staff member to know which book plate goes to which book when it comes in or for patrons later on, to say: hey I'd like to know I'd like to check out the book that was ordered in memory of my grandmother. That kind of thing we wanted to add the information we wanted to have the selectors put the information in a non-public note when they ordered it.

F

But then, when the item records come in later, that gets replaced. So I'm wondering if anyone has a good workflow for that or if you just don't bother keeping up with that in coho.

C

We don't really keep up with it. um I do go like we'll get hardcover copies of you know like old patterson book and we'll replace our really awful one with you know, one that came through donations and we just add a donation note in the non-public note on the item record, but we're not doing anything as far as you know, coordinating um book plate memorials and that kind of thing we don't get an awful lot of those either so.

D

I'm sorry did you say you considered putting the details in the public um note, because that can display on the opac.

F

Yes, I think we have tried that out, but it's still something that we can't really put in when it's ordered, because then that information gets replaced. When the item record comes in.

D

Do you create the item records when you're ordering or when you're receiving.

F

We get them from the vendor.

D

And I wonder, could you put it on the vendor note and ask them to send it back in when they're creating the item because you're using edi, then are you yes? Yes, so.

F

That's a great idea, thank you.

D

Yeah now there is a little bit of discussion, so you'll need to talk to them because there isn't an official rule for exchange of information um when you send it out as fender. It goes in the ftx or something I can't remember the detail of it, but it's worth discussing that with them yay. Thank you. So much.

E

Who else has questions? Can we extend it? um It doesn't look like rhonda's back yet I see just a blurry picture of her chair. um Are there other bugs? You guys want to talk about issues I see barbara mike, so I will remake.

C

I'm looking in bugzilla to see, if there's anything interesting, it seems like it'd, be kind of rotten for us all to be gone by the time. Rhonda gets back.

E

Run but also kind of funny if she comes back to an empty zoom room, that's just recording.

B

I have a question: has anybody uh been surprised with or actually positive, surprise about being able to close more than one invoice at a time.

B

We now have two separate tabs that open in the close one and you can close multiple ones, but you still have to check individual ones and then say close selected invoices.

E

It sounds like a good feature, it's something that we don't use, but it sounds exciting.

B

That's right, you don't use acquisitions right, that's right! Yeah! It is I'm very excited because it's actually something that we paid for. We funded it out today. In that day so- and I know there was another couple of uh people that were excited about it, so I'm just wondering how that was working out for everybody.

E

I guess that that could be a good question. Is anybody else working on um acquisitions related developments? Have you funded anything or are you thinking about funding anything? um Are there things you want to collaborate on other people in the group.

E

I can say that we're not because we don't use acquisitions. um There have been some purchase, suggestion related things that we've been in on, but I think I don't think we have any outstanding on that end of things.

C

I was going to bring attention to bug 29570 and it is.

C

Hard to explain from the title, but the title is unable to sort the pending orders table on parcel pl by summary column, and this happened after the 2105 upgrade.

C

So if you are in a pending, if you're, I think it's when you're paying invoices so you're searching for titles that are on your invoice, that you're going to pay, there's a description column that contains the top. I guess it's the title, the author and some probably the isbn, I'm not sure, and we used to be able to sort by that column, and you can't do that anymore.

C

It's if you look at the code, it's now an unsortable column and there's some related bug that also had to be fixed along with this, and I guess this one is still being worked on um and I don't do the day-to-day acquisition stuff. But immediately after we upgraded my assistant came to me and said I can't. I can't sort this alpha order by title anymore. That's a problem for me! So um that's what that one is.

E

All right, what else do we have.

E

Everything in acquisitions works perfectly for everyone.

E

Margaret says, yes, so must be true.

C

Well, margaret, do you have a sense of the kinds of tickets that come in to buy water of the problems? People have unique problems or anything that would be interesting to us as a group.

G

What would be interesting um often enough what I'm seeing in acquisitions related support tickets when it isn't a matter of how does this feature work um and a technical explanation? It's uh we run into some data issues of maybe bibs got deleted, um but the order was persisting and now cohort doesn't want to.

G

Let you um get rid of this item in the basket um or kind of things like that, uh where something's just gone a little bit off and now the order, the basket um the invoice the receiving is not quite right, so we'll fix those up.

G

I wouldn't say that's tied to particular bugs just kind of what happens in production environments.

G

G

Edi um edi is always the big one, um the setup uh and troubleshooting. If um orders receivings, um the ui notices, aren't working quite right, um I'll see those tickets uh not as infrequently as I'd like and those take a little bit of digging into with our education and systems team to troubleshoot those down.

G

um I think it accounts for most of the acquisitions related tickets. I see- or at least you know, the top five hits so uh always start early on edi and be prepared for a journey, um and we maybe technical services, should check with cataloging before there's any big batch deletes of bibliographic records.

C

So like we haven't set up edi yet I know we've talked about it in this sig and I can't remember so like once you want to do that. Do you start with buy water first and say I'm thinking about starting the edi process, or do you get with your vendor first and say I think I'm wanting to do this. What do I need from my ils support vendor? How does what's the first step.

G

I'd say the first step is contact both at the same time and cc us along with the vendor. Some vendors are, I feel, like we work with them very closely: um first name basis, other vendors, maybe it's down to their support structure. It can take a real long time to get correspondence back and forth or to make changes on the mapping. The user interface over at the vendor side compared to coho.

G

There's difference um edi plug-in for all the major u.s vendors um and I'd love for daphne to jump in here and say how much easier it is in europe, because here it's a lot easier in here, but we'll get the plug-in specific to the vendor you're working with um installed on quahog, we'll go through a testing period where there's that back and forth of okay, let's adjust this mark field order.

G

Let's adjust this mapping profile, let's make sure that the import records are coming in cleanly and that's where you know having a test site's nice doing. All of those steps in a non-production environment gives you that added level of confidence that you can do some really weird things and try all the permutations and not inadvertently, screw up your accounting and acquisitions, um even if you should probably have a bookkeeping software outside of it.

G

It's still nice when the two things line up but start early or as early as you can and get the bywater support team talking with your vendor at the same time.

G

So if you want to get this set up in two months start today, um if you want to get it set up in one month, start today and stay on top of all the communications and like have a clear vision in mind of what you want to get working on and yeah it's a little bit.

G

Sometimes it works a little bit easier than others, and we try to make it as smooth and give you everything we can from the plug-in to configuration suggestions and that troubleshooting as soon as we can. But since there's three parties and all those moving pieces, just the earlier, you can start on at the better and patience and explaining exactly what you want along the way. That's all. I can really recommend for having a good edi eye implementation.

D

I don't know if anybody is using the gobi api because they had a new version to go with release 2011 um and they now have a um like a dummy patron record, that's required and if you don't have it set up and specified in the configuration file, it doesn't work, um but it was never mandatory before so they don't tell you so it took us ages to work out what the problem was.

C

And I guess with edi: if you're able to do it on a test server, then you don't really have to worry about timing regarding fiscal years or anything like that on your production server. So that's nice to know that you can do it on the test side.

G

I'd say if um you can and can uh get that squared away with the vendor you're working with saying we have test server. We have our production server, we'd like to be able to um test new things out on the test server and you know not get charged for fake test books. um Do that if you can, and the added bonus to that is, whenever cohort does get upgraded, uh 2105 to 2011 and so on.

G

um If you can, you know without adding to costs, and things maintain a test connection for edi. If there are changes and enhancements to cohas edi, you can check them out on your test. Server make sure they're working as you expect before you upgrade your production server, and I know that will save some hair pulling upgrades.

E

What else anything else should we abandon the room while ronda's away.

D

Don't you have a party piece jason where you can sing or dance or tell.

E

You I really should prepare one, but no, I don't have anything like that.

E

um Let's see uh we can. I guess we could talk about the koa us website a little bit. um The education committee has been in discussion on um in discussions about kind of refreshing it a little bit. So if there's anything in regards to the acquisitions area, you'd like to see that that would be good input to give us.

E

um I think what we're thinking is that we might rearrange the learn from page a little bit, so it's easier to navigate, uh add more navigation to the the top menu, so it's easier to get where you're going.

E

um What's we we're working on organizing conference content, we'd also talked about maybe taking tidbits from meetings like this and creating short little videos, where somebody showed something um that we could then post up on the acquisitions page of our website. So if you have ideas for things you'd like to see or if you want to help generate resources, that's always good too. um If you're an expert in some area of acquisition, like you wanna, you wanna, write down all your knowledge about edi or something and then put that into like a print reference guide.

E

We would be happy to host that on our website so that everyone can access it.

E

I'm rambling but yeah we're happy we're happy to accept any resources that you guys want to put out there to help us kind of freshen up the website and help us be a good resource for other libraries interested in acquisitions.

E

That may not be using it or could be using it better. That sort of thing.

E

Also, if this group wants to collaborate on something you guys want to like put together some sort of workshop, we're happy to um entertain that host it um stream it to youtube.

E

We, um if there's a topic that you think would be good in in a sort of webinar format. um That'd, be great great addition to our collection of resources.

C

And the link I put in is basically a: I did, a search in bugzilla just for the acquisitions module for new.

C

Bugs basically ones that haven't you know, gone to completion, and you know you might find something in there you'd like to comment on and say you know, just like we talked before just go in there and say you know this would really help my library out or you know, if it's something that caused problems, and you can also vote on a bug when you go into it.

C

There is a somewhere yeah, there's a little boat um link um on the page, and um so you can vote on it and say how important it is to you- and you can also add yourself as a cc to the list so that you get bug updates and that I think that kind of also gives an indication of how interested how many people are kind of interested in that particular functionality.

C

So there's multiple different ways: you can sort of let your voice be heard um regarding bugs.

E

Yeah, anytime, that you copy yourself on a bug. It sends an email to everybody else, that's copied on the bug, including the person working on it. So that's an instant notification to them that more interested has been added, and that's like the absolute easiest thing you can do in bugzilla is uh subscribe, because all you have to do is pull up the ticket and, if you're logged in, if you hit save it, it sees you to the bug.

E

So, um even if you don't want to make a comment uh or vote uh see, seeing yourself is very easy and then it also kind of collects that stuff in your own bugzilla account. So when you log in on the home page, you can see what you're cc to and easily track what you're following.

E

So I would second encouraging the the using bugs a little more because that gets things done.

C

Well, do we think we've exhausted everything we can possibly talk about by this point? She won't be uh surprised that we're not here if she ends up coming back.

E

Yeah I'd say so: unless anybody else has any parting questions or comments with them, you'd like to share with the group, um we can probably call this one a wrap.

E

Next acquisitions meeting is scheduled for february 15th day after valentine's day, so bring some chocolate to snack on or something, um and if you have questions in the meantime, of course, we have a listserv um for communication or you can email rhonda and she can add it to the agenda for next month. So there's nothing else. We will call this one we'll put a pin in it thanks everybody thanks for sharing coming.

B

Thank you thanks.