Koha-US SIG - System Admin Special Interest Group, 9 Mar 2021

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From YouTube: System Admin Special Interest Group - 3/9/2021

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00:27:43 Jason Robb: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=24786
00:28:29 Lisette Scheer: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=27845
00:40:05 Jason Robb: https://will1410.github.io/notebook/presentations/itemdashboard.html
00:40:28 Jason Robb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY-oGqIQXGA
00:42:01 Jason Robb: http://koha-us.org/bugs/
00:44:58 Rebecca Coert: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=18631https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=27841
00:50:40 Rhonda Kuiper: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=27367

A

Okay, officially, we start february koha u.s system administration, sig meeting um the agenda is in the chat, um so everyone should be updated to 2005.. Now, early adopters, like jason, mentioned a few minutes ago, did get an earlier point update. So there are some things that we might not have yet because we haven't been, I think, we'll be getting updated next time everybody gets a point update. um So anything you know daniel.

A

You said when, before we got started that you had been finding lots of little things, anything you want to talk about or share, or anyone else from 2005 updates.

B

Well, I was just going to mention that edi um we've gotten a weird one where it was the invoices or the yeah. The invoices would come in and no items would be attached and that recently started showing up after we went to 2005 and I'm not sure if anybody else is using edi has seen this. But it's just kind of a weird thing that we've seen it's the biggest one biggest issue we're having so far.

A

Libraries, this is the edi order and emergency portion, but I am meeting with them later today, I'll see if they're having any trouble.

C

Rhonda you, you do edi right, do you have any.

D

Yeah daniel was that a specific vendor that you're having a problem with or is it just kind of across the board? It's.

B

Across the board.

D

Because we had a couple things with ingram, where we weren't no.

E

That was different.

D

That was a different. We were trying to do too much.

D

um That was a different situation. We haven't had a trouble with it which, which vendors do you have.

B

uh Baker and taylor, brodart ingram and midwest tape.

D

Okay, we have ingram and midwest tape. We haven't had any trouble with midwest tape at all.

B

Wow, I feel special now mm-hmm.

D

Isn't that neat.

E

Can I ask, do you create your items at the invoice stage or earlier in the ordering ronda, I wonder, does that affect it.

D

We create our items on.

E

D

When they're ordered.

A

That's what our library does to the one that.

D

Uses because I think you have to have the the item attached to the record before people can put holds on it and we want people to put holds on it before it arrives.

E

Yeah, I'm sorry this is daphna. I missed who said they're not coming in on the invoices. Is that the case in your library.

B

E

Oh sorry, daniel.

B

E

Are you creating your items at ordering as well.

B

From how I understand it, it's when the items are created once the the order has been shipped and we received that invoice back.

E

So I wonder, is that why you're having the problem, everyone else is: creating the orders earlier, sorry creating the items earlier, so the items are not actually coming in from with the invoice.

E

Now you probably don't want to change your workflow.

B

Yeah, the catalog is probably tar and feather me if I asked him to do that.

E

Just a thought, um I don't know of anyone in in ireland, we start off with the quotes and it works much better if you actually create the items right at the very beginning. um So that's why we now we're not on 25 yet, but that's probably why we want to well, I'm hoping we won't do problems.

B

I'll write this down and mention it to the catalogers and see what they say so creating the items before the the order is sent out.

B

I have a feeling that we do and people are allowed to place, holds on them, but the the exact number is populated when the invoice comes in, but I'll double check.

E

Well, if it is a problem we'd like to fix before we start using it, so thank you.

A

I just did a quick, bookzilla search and I didn't see anything come on, uh which doesn't mean it's not a bug, but there doesn't. It doesn't seem to be a known bug yet at least.

B

Yeah I set up the edi and everything by myself, so that might be it, but uh it's it has worked so far. So that's why I'm kind of wondering if there's something else on the back end, that kind of got hosed so.

F

I think I remember a conversation in slack where marcy from mckinney maybe had a problem like that.

B

I'll take a look, I I did a quick search in slack and didn't find anything, but I might have been looking at it. They might have been early adopters. So that's why I I didn't pick it up, but um she's. Actually, the person that I got most of our settings or how to configure the the plug-ins from so I'll go back and take another look.

A

I wonder if there's a plug-in mismatch if your plug-in needs to be updated.

A

If there's a newer version.

A

I don't know what the most recent version is, since we don't use that, but it might be worth checking to see if it's on the most recent version, jason looks like he had an idea.

C

A

C

I was searching slack for that. um I I did find a conversation from. I don't know. That's a long time ago, though, from marcy about things getting edi ordering was messed up, but it was because they had things locked up on the back end while they were working on something, but I I agree that maybe checking um the plug-in version uh you can. You can see when it was most recently updated on the github pages. For those I think um there might be something out of date. There that's causing the.

C

A

A

um Any other 2005 changes people want to talk about.

C

Is anybody using the cash register functionality that got added yet no I've had interest from some of my libraries, I'm just I haven't had time to play with it yet to see if it's viable and viable in a consortium setting. So I just wondered.

A

uh I think christopher put in some bugs about trying to make it work better in a consortium setting like being able to set like a default cash register if you're to a user, because I think they have a setup like ours where they have. You know like a we have like a moscow circlogen.

A

um Let me see if I can find that one.

A

Real quick, so I think he's at least been playing around with it. I haven't.

A

Yet played around with it.

A

C

C

Oh, I found one that says: allow a cash register for a login session and configuring library default cash registers and that one was pushed in 2011..

C

So maybe that can be my stall tactic to say that it it'll work better, although it yeah it says it won't, be backported to 2005.. So that might be the one I can put that link in the chat.

A

uh I think this is thinking of cash management needs default register set in um for the user to yeah, so adding a drop down set in for the user to select their default register.

A

um Oh wait default by branch.

A

They have different registers for different boxes, different.

A

A

I will add that to the chat as.

A

A

A

A

Any other 2005 update follow-ups.

A

Okay, anyone working on any exciting reports.

A

We've been trying to make paypal reports work better for a consortium uh because we recently turned that on and it sort of works. um The biggest problem we have right now is apparently there's some problems. If he, if say, someone pays for multiple items in the same transaction that the report doesn't know very well how to handle that, because we're trying to say um basically how our consortium works is lost and damaged, item payments go to the owning library.

A

um Only one library is doing fines. So if those get paid they'd go to that library, if they get paid online and then nothing else should be so, it should all be. Hopefully um something where we could say you know give us all the all the payments that were made from via paypal and tell me how much each branch should be getting, but if someone's paying for like three lost books from different branches, um that gets weird.

A

Basically, um it hasn't happened yet, but according to andrew, it sounds like it might um say that each library needs the total amount of that transaction instead of the amount of the item.

A

So I've been playing around with that some, but also since we don't have any paypal payments yet that cover that it's hard to actually test it, um although actually going through all my emails this morning it looks like we might have got one either. Someone was paying for like a kit that was lost or or a very expensive book or multiple books. So I'm hoping it's multiple books from different libraries and I can do better testing now, um oh- and I wanted to thank jason for that cover image report from january.

A

It was very helpful because we've needed to do a bunch of isbn stuff since then, where we had to have uh normal normalized isbns, because we got a novelist select and they needed a list of all our isbns um and they said they preferred if it was either in all 10 or all 13 isbns and not mixed, and I was like. Luckily, I have a report that makes that really easy um and also the cover flow plug-in that we're using on our new wordpress site that we're building works a little bit better.

A

If it's normalized isbns it, it can work with both 10 and 13s, but it works better.

A

Just for my testing, it seemed to work better if they were all the same. So thanks jason for that.

C

I totally didn't even think about that um for for using it for novelists, because my my workflow on that is to download a report of all of our isbns and then run a bunch of formulas in excel to like strip things and stuff like that. So yeah.

A

I just did it in the in the report itself, since we had that level. I.

C

Would say, save me time using my own code, so.

A

Do you have to export that like regularly for them.

C

I I had been doing it monthly before the world ended. I haven't been doing it as frequently but yeah like to keep it up to date. I it was a monthly update thing where.

A

Is that something where you could, even just uh if the report did everything you needed, you could just send it up to cron job sent to novelist yeah, because that's.

F

What we set up that way.

G

Yeah, I was just about to say we're just in the process of I've been doing it manually month by month. uh For a long time- and I was looking to say, we just went to koha and buy water in june. I was like hey.

G

I wonder if there's a better way to do this and um they said yeah, there's a there's, a query: they run that they automate it and do the export so we're in the process of getting that uh switched over right now to to do it automatically uh on a monthly schedule for us. So.

C

I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that.

F

Question about that, because we have that set up and I used to get um an email from novelist all the time. You know just kind of uh we got your upload and I no longer get those and it's kind of made me wonder if you know they just stop sending those or if there's something wrong on.

D

Our end, I was told that I had to notify them every time bywater sent in a uh upload. I had to notify them being a novelist, so I've got a thing on my calendar that I don't know it's the second monday or so I don't remember what it is, but you know it just says: send this note and I've got this canned email that I.

C

D

Every time and I've been getting the confirmations that you know, they've received my um stuff, but they told me they don't go out. Novelist, doesn't go out and look and see what's on the server, they only process your stuff, if you let them know that that they're out there. So I.

F

Was either never told that or I used to do it and I've forgotten so I'll have to go back and check on that.

D

Yeah it it's just a um you have to put in your let's see if I can find my.

G

Yeah, it's got like your account number and it's a very specific subject line. You have to use right, yeah.

A

And if you're worried about it not getting sent out the other thing you can do- and I might have missed this because my internet went out briefly again is uh they can set up those crown jobs to email to multiple email addresses?

A

So you could also have it sent to yourself, so you could see that it was going through and then, if you did, need to um bother ebsco about it, you could be. You could know that it had gone through, so you could just send out an email like it should have come through this morning. Please confirm or something.

F

Yeah because I used to get the emails and then it stopped so I'll just have to go back and look.

A

Well- and I know when we updated not to 2005., we all.

A

Letting it work and then there was a update effect, dirty issue with that, and so all our jobs broke until they've took an extra comma one. um So if you don't, you have other reports that you're getting you know those coming through, probably fine, but yeah. We had a problem with a bunch of crown jobs like notices and stuff.

A

Interesting any other reports or system.

F

Oh yeah, I tried out george's every other tuesday item dashboard finale report that he put together and I've got it partially working um he's got some extra like authorized values in one of his reports that he refers to that we don't have so. I'm gonna have to figure that out, but it's um he did a really great job on that and it's basically you scan in a barcode, and it gives you all this information about. The item very nicely formatted and it's information for multiple reports, and it has.

F

The final report is like 350 lines or something, and it has lots of joins and lots of unions and coalesce and concat. And if statements- and I mean it's, it is really involved, but um it gives you this nice little um report on your item with then links out to the borrower and the bid and action logs, and it's really interesting. I just need to solve the the part where he's got some authorized values that we don't use.

A

Yeah, that's one thing that we've uh he's got some other reports that are on a smaller scale kind of similar, um where you can like set set a bunch of different options, but he also has a bunch of like custom authorized values set up for that that, because of how his consortium is set up versus ours, don't necessarily work like for them all their all. Their library groups have codes.

A

That start with the same thing and like we just have three digit codes for our libraries, but if we had thought about the reports, the way that they're like, if I was setting up valnet now on cohan, knowing what I know, I'd probably set up like seven dig up to three to seven digit library codes, where the groups could have their group uh like lcld for my group and then our three letter codes, so that we could uh use some of those those same reports that he has set up.

A

Let's see anyone have any other sis admin stuff to talk about this week, or is it going to be a a short meeting? I mean.

G

I guess yeah uh that report you mentioned that george wrote. It is that out somewhere on, like uh a repository somewhere to grab or.

A

Yes, I'm trying to find the link to put into the agenda and probably also a link to the videos. Oh.

G

Look like jason's already sent it. Thank you.

C

Yeah, that's the link to george's notes, um which includes the code and all of his notes. The video is I'm just pulling this off the kois website.

A

C

Linked up on our learn page there, but there's the youtube direct youtube link to the final video.

F

And, as I went through his code, he's got some reports that you have to refer to that the final report uses and he's got them on github. I guess, and the links don't work.

F

um What I recall is that the link ends with like dot sql, but it if you put it dot txt you can get to the actual text of his report for those sub reports that took me a little bit to figure out before picking cannot email him directly, but I figured it out.

A

H

I'm sorry go ahead.

A

388 lines on that final report, plus it links to other reports. So there's a lot going on yeah rebecca. What's up.

H

Oh, I had a question about um bugs and do we have a place where we can sort of ask each other for help for promoting or commenting on bugs to get them pushed up a little faster.

A

A lot of times we'll talk about those at the general meeting and then they end up on the general meeting where, on the koha us bug, we have like a bug account so that we can keep track of stuff. That's been talked about at meetings um and I believe we try to jason. Do we talk like if we talk about a bug in a sick? Do those also get added.

C

Not by me, I'm not sure who who all has the access to that account anymore.

A

I think george might be the only person who has access. Then, if you don't.

C

I don't so we haven't been keeping up with that as well, but um we do have a an organizational um bugzilla account where we keep track of. We try to keep track of all the bugs that we talk about, um but it yeah it. It could use more attention, probably.

H

Okay, um but I wasn't sure if it was something that, like the sysadmin group was like hey, I need help getting this bug pushed up. You know or commented on. um I had a couple open this week um that were like brand new and one from like 2017, so I.

C

Think that was maybe for that for, like specific to the group type stuff, the mailing list might be the best place to to do that. um That way, everybody in this assignment group is is getting eyes on your specific bugs, um instead of getting like mixed in with the whole.

B

C

Load of what we're following.

F

And I've I've tried bringing up certain ones and some of the cigs just to highlight them so that maybe somebody else will go in there and you know add their name to it. To show that they're interested in it and a couple of times I've gone in and just like added another comment, or um I don't know if I've really asked questions, but you know added another comment because then it kind of will pop to the top of the recently updated and then someone else may look at it and do something with it.

A

Or maybe someone else put themselves on copied themselves on it a while ago and when there's a new comment, they go. Oh yeah, that's a problem for me too, that I now can better articulate in a bug comment or whatever or I'd forgotten. This was a problem for me because I'd figured out how to cope with it.

A

um Or like I spend a lot of time, looking at the new bugs just to see what what people are reporting and so then, also if people comment on things, I um I can like link ones together if there's something new, that's relevant, but I'd forgotten about this other bug that I'm copied on things like that.

A

um Do you have any bugs in particular, you wanted to talk about, since we have some time.

H

Oh uh sure, let me pull them up. Sorry, um I can just put them in the chat. If that's okay.

H

There's two specifically, um I was running a holds report from july and was unaware that the action logs were wiped out after a certain period of time, so my column was showing up as empty um so there. These are basically about the action logs um and I didn't realize that they got wiped out. So one of them is from 2017 the 18 631.

A

But it looks like most of the comments have been from this month, so um yeah, that's something that it would be nice if that was modular, because some some logs are going to be easier to keep longer than others.

H

And, as jeff said, you know we're in the same system and we're new to cohab. So we didn't even know that this was a thing um to the extent like what data is kept and where we know mostly what what's kept. Where we didn't know, the action lines were wiped out.

A

Yeah and the thing about the action logs too, is that it does seem to be, I mean for our consortium, it's between two and three months, but it's not consistent, um because I think if it gets too big it'll start deleting the older stuff. So if we have like a really busy month, it might only keep two months worth of stuff seems seems to be the case.

A

I'm not sure if that's 100 accurate, but I remember there have been a couple times when I've definitely run reports on things three months back and had it work and then run the same report on other things or at a different time. Three months back and only got stuff for two months so being able to know how long that was actually kept would be helpful.

A

Oh yeah and that add unique action. Types to action logs for holds it's hard to write reports for the action logs, especially.

A

Especially for hold.

H

Stuff yeah today we're reopening two new locations or no they're, not new, but two locations. We only have one central hole, pickup, and so these two new branches are the express library, 15 minutes in and out pick up, your holds browse with shelves, you know, and uh so we're trying to track all basically everything we could possibly think of to see how you know how much, how much use is it getting how many people are coming there? Where are they coming from that kind of stuff?

H

So a lot of these reports in preparation for these reopenings. This is where some of this was coming up.

A

Yeah that makes sense.

A

I'm trying to think of yeah, I'm not sure, there's really any other places. I mean that's something that the education committee and the officers have talked about uh opening up the slack to members. So maybe we could have like a bugs channel where people could put bugs once we've got that figured out.

A

um So if people just had a bug that they wanted to get more eyes on, they could.

A

I will add that to my list.

A

To talk about with the education committee.

A

Okay, let's see.

A

A

Sis admin questions, comments.

D

I was curious if anybody uses the.

F

D

Bound uh function in koha.

C

A

C

At it, but we don't- I mean we have. We already had an established workflow for our our homebound patrons so.

B

C

We ended up not using the houseman module when it was added, so I can't remember exactly why we decided not to um okay.

D

A

I don't think there were any problems with it.

A

We also had a workflow the libraries in our consortium that um would have used it had a workflow that was working for them already, but I also feel like there were some bugs at the time that, like there were going to be some changes made that we said well, maybe once these get pushed and then we never went back and looked at them to see if they got pushed just to like make it flow a little bit better, because I feel like there were a lot of clicks getting it set up for like setting up a patron as a either a housebound person or a picker picker-upper for a housebound patron felt like a lot of clicks, and I think there were some bugs that were supposed to make that a little bit streamlined.

D

uh One that the bug that I just put in the chat is says house bound and previous check out our check previous checkout. um That one would help with the housebound. You know, as far as finding things that they haven't previously checked out, but I'm thinking it's also broader.

D

um You know it might be helpful because, basically, what they're doing is currently the system preference of check. Previous checkouts is an everyone or no one setting.

D

So this would separate out and you could um have it apply to just specific situations so that you know the people at the checkout desk aren't watching all this. You know extra information. um You know like, for instance, only for a specific patron category. You know, like house, bound patrons. When you go to check something out, then it will pop up that or you know, there's probably other uses where it would be helpful in different settings.

D

So that's the one I wanted to highlight because we're just now looking at getting housebound set up, we got we've got a van now and we're looking at getting that set up so.

C

D

Thought if anybody's.

C

D

It would be great so.

A

Let me just we have the check previous checkout set to allow if the settings allow but like the patron has to go in and turn it on.

A

I think, oh, but on the staff side you can say yes if the settings allow it.

A

But let's see you don't have to oh that's weird!

A

Well, here's a fun new bug that I was not happening. Last week my patreon messaging preferences cell provider and text number are showing under patron restrictions and patreon messaging.

A

Preferences, that's weird.

A

Okay I'll look into that later, um but I wonder I don't remember how the housebound module works. Do you have to edit the patron to turn it on for them, or do you just have.

D

Don't think you have to edit the patron. um It's been a couple weeks since I looked at it, but um you in the house file module, you can select pickers and and receivers.

F

D

I don't know if you actually have to go in and modify it donna showed us how it worked.

D

But that's what I.

A

Mean I like your, I I think that it would be great yeah if you could set it so that homebound patrons it could just be turned on for them.

A

But until that happens, you could go in and when you're setting someone up as hope now go edit them to say yes, if the settings allow okay, instead of just having it off, um I think.

C

So on the check previous checkout system, preference mine mine, says, do do not unless overridden by a patron category, do not or unless overwritten by patreon category do.

A

Oh, does that mean the patron categories? Let you and you could set sounds like that's already working man.

C

Maybe it's not really clear yeah, because when you pull up the the patron categories, um there's a default privacy setting which I guess is what is taking into account. I'm not sure.

D

People, privacy.

D

Well, I can, I can experiment with that and see what happens so he went into system preferences.

D

Check what was that thing check.

C

Check pro checkout.

A

I don't think that's what that.

C

Is that not what that means.

A

Used to mean no, I think that changed because that's what ours is set on, but I don't think it's actually patron category. I think it's based on. If the patron it themselves goes in and turns it on.

A

But there is, there is an option for check previous checkout in the table.

A

Follow, let's see check for previous checkout in here from system preference, and you can say yes and try to override system preference no and try to overload system preference or inherit from system preference.

A

So where do you see that so here I can just share my screen, so here just editing a category down here. It says check for previous checkouts.

C

Oh, do not see that setting.

A

What do you have here.

C

My my system, preference is set to do not so that's probably why I don't see that maybe.

A

If you say by patron category, do not.

D

Oh so, everybody's not, but then we could set up a home bound. That says: yes, we do want it.

A

And then you'd need to have that patron set as the homebound category.

G

A

Which? Depending on how your circumfine rules are set up, might be annoying, but.

A

But it would be a way to let that work. Yeah, okay,.

A

um Though I do wonder if that bug that you talked about, uh might still be better because there are other system preferences that might also, you know donna specified the that. But I wonder if there's other things that other set settings you might want to change for specifically homebound patrons also. I know some people like having a homebound uh patron type because they can change the how like, if, if your circumfine rules are three weeks, but you only go out in your van once a week or once a month.

A

Oh then you could have a different rule for them, so that things would be checked out longer.

C

Oh yeah, that's that's. We do that. We also have it set so that um they don't charge fines, because we can't hold them responsible for things. They can't bring back for.

D

C

D

Showing up right, yeah.

A

Right, so you might decide that if you're turning it on that, you would want that function anyway.

C

A

C

Playing around with this, you were right was that if you switch the system preference, then that check previous checkout option shows up on the patron administration.

C

D

So we could turn it on for a whole month all right good deal thanks.

D

I got one other one question annoying, I'm just sitting here and also I'm like.

A

D

um Does anybody was anybody able to successfully add the bar code to the customer's record like when they log into their account and see the bar code? Did I tried to do that and I could not get it to work.

A

We turned it on our test server.

D

A

F

We have it working, and I think one thing I remember about it was: I had to go and change the um barcode type or whatever that coding or whatever that it's grabbing, because we use code 39 and whatever the original code that was written was using, maybe code bar or something like that. I do remember that, okay, so you might just check and see if that's got anything to do with it. Okay,.

A

Is it just not showing up.

D

Or is it just nothing, just nothing is showing up.

A

Okay, that wasn't our our problem right now is that some of the barcode scanners can read the barcode, but for other ones, that's too small, oh okay, um so like in moscow, we didn't have any problems, but some of the other branches had issues when we tested it.

D

Yeah, I just wasn't getting getting anything.

A

But we're considering that's actually one of the things we're talking about at our meeting today is if we want to turn it on on the regular side, so that the patrons whose libraries can scan it will have that option.

C

I'm confused about what we're talking about.

A

So lucas wrote some jquery and css to add this little button view your e-card to bring up a scannable e-card here.

C

A

The opec so patrons can like if they forgot their card or don't want to pull it out of their wallet or whatever they can just scan it.

C

So they can like pop it up on their phone yeah. Okay,.

A

And so um I haven't tested it with our self-check machine yet because that's only been I've only been in like two days since it's been fixed.

F

They worked with our self checks. Who do you have we're using tech logic, but we use a all-in-one.

F

Piece of equipment from a company called seapoint.

A

Okay, we have a bibliotech machine.

A

And I would say, the barcode scanners that we have at our desk are better quality, barcode scanners that are on the machine. So uh I'm skeptical that it'll work well. Unless we can make the barcode show up bigger on screens.

F

I did have to adjust the size. I remember when I was testing it with the self checks I did have to make it bigger for it to be seen.

A

Yeah, so maybe I'll try that when I'm in thursday.

A

Okay, I know we got started a little late, but I actually have another meeting at nine, so I can't stick around longer. um Our next meeting will be the 13th of april.

A

And I hopefully will not be on jury duty right before so. Can I actually send out an agenda in advance.

A

Well, I definitely won't be on jury duty because I'm out of the pool for a year now so, okay talk to everybody later.

G

Thanks everybody thanks. Everyone.

C

G