Koha-US The Terrific Every-Other-Thursday Training Videos, 10 Sep 2020

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From YouTube: TTEOT Training Video - S1E3 - Slip Logic

Description

This frightening episode highlights the magical code that can add logic to your slips, making them smarter, powerful, and maybe even a little more attractive - much like the hosts.

Referenced code: https://koha-us.org/2020/09/09/slip-logic/

Additional Resource: https://kohathings.hopperdietzel.org/2017/08/modifying-holdslip-receipt-in-koha.html

Music: https://www.bensound.com

A

Welcome to the third installment of the terrific every other thursday training, video for kohai us, I'm christopher brannon, for the quarterly public library and.

B

I'm george williams from the northeast kansas library system. How are you doing I'm.

A

Getting by good that's an interesting office. You've got there. I'm going to point this out.

B

Yeah, our offices are closed for uh the next couple of months for uh some work, some remodeling, but I like my office. So this is a picture of my office cast. Is the green screen background in zoom, so.

A

You're awesome: I love this all right, so today we're going to talk about something other than jquery. Today we're going to be actually talking about modifying slips. This is something that we did early on. I don't know about you, but it was something that we decided. We were going to play around with and found that you not only can change the content of the slips, but you can add some logic to the slips to do some pretty interesting things.

B

Yes- and uh I know that uh you used some well, you are using some jquery or some javascript for this right.

A

Yes, we're using some. I can't remember: I'd- have to look at the code a little bit, but I think it's mostly it's mostly just javascript. I don't think I can't remember if jquery is active for uh the slips itself, but I use it. Oh, do you yeah.

B

Awesome- and I know that uh with template toolkit there's some even cooler things you can do with there's some other cool ways. You can do this with template. Toolkit too.

A

And you know, I believe somebody.

B

Is going to be doing a presentation about that at the upcoming quahog us conference online? That is correct, yeah somebody's going to be talking about this at the conference, so that'll be interesting. Just.

A

You know I did this a while back and uh I'm sure there are ways to make this code a lot cleaner, but this is simply an example, a launching pad to help inspire people to do more with their slips.

A

So if you find mistakes, if you find something that wasn't coded very well feel free to improve on it, but uh um I'm gonna show you an example of what we did and walk walk everybody through this a little bit so that you have a an understanding of how this is structured and works, and maybe you can do something better or do something different in a different slip.

A

So cool to begin with, uh my example- is going to be on the hold slip. One of the reasons that we modified the whole slip was because the hold slip looked like this. It was just kind of basic, uh vanilla out of the box.

A

This is, this is what it looks like and I'm familiar with that slip and if you have a hole that is being transferred to another branch, that slip looks just like this you'll notice that there is not much difference between the two slips and for our library it was a matter of identifying these slips quickly.

A

You know people are processing, books, left and right and not paying attention as much as they would like to, and these slips look almost identical and if you're just doing a transfer, if an item is just going back home, that slip looks completely different. I didn't I didn't print up an example of this, but we wanted our transfers to look very different from things that are staying in house.

A

So we decided that we were going to make some modifications, I'm going to show you what that slip's going to look like when we get finished with it and I'll talk about how we did that and we'll go from there. So this is what our hold slip actually looks like.

A

We wanted to have the expiration at the top. We wanted to have a partial name and we wanted to have a partial card number on there. We also wanted it to say not checked out so that the patron didn't pull it off of the shelves, because our our books are actually out for the public to grab.

A

So we wanted to make sure that they knew these weren't checked out yet so we put those that terminology there and the slip is long because we wanted it to stay in the book. We didn't want it to fall out easily. So that's why we added some length and we were doing some problematic checking at one point and so at the bottom. I always put where this book was coming from. This really helped us to track.

A

You know if a book showed up at the wrong place, we could track down easily by looking at the slip where it came from. So that's the explanation of this. This is very different from our transfers. If we have a hold, not just not just something, that's going back home but a hold that is being transferred to another library instead of it. Looking like this, it's going to look like this. This is what we also model our uh for our uh transfer slips, so our transfer slip and our holds uh that are being transferred.

A

Those slips look almost identical. The thing is, the transfer is being transferred from one of two different slips: it's either being transferred from the transfer slip or it's being transferred from the hold slip, and so the whole slip is doing a dual function, so we had to give some more logic so that slip looked differently. We wanted it to look more like the transfer.

B

A

B

A

Perfect sense, anyways we're going to go into our slip, so I went into the the tools, notices uh and slips modify notice, I'm actually modifying the slip called hold slip, so hold slip will handle the slips for holds and it will also handle the slips for holds that are being transferred.

A

So this is just the basic out of the box information that is in the hold slip I'm going to copy some information grab this real quick here and I'm going to do this in chunks. So let me get rid of everything that's in there and we're gonna do this bit by bit.

A

So here is the first part of what I put in there. First of all, um I put everything within a uh a font face of veranda. We wanted to change the the font to be more readable, so I just put a font in there. So I'm doing this in sections. This first section is going to be the structure, the basic layout for the for an item that is on hold at your library. It's not going anywhere, it's just on hold, and so this is I'm adding divs to define these sections.

A

I define this section as localhold and I'm adding your just your basic html to dress things up, and I have sections that I give labels to that, I'm going to go and insert information into so right now. These are empty.

A

Sections like this is an empty header, uh for uh the patron id up here is the uh the div with an id of expiration. This is where the expiration is going to be placed.

A

This is where the card information is going to be to go and right now I I've put in some static information in there. That is says last two digits of the card. This could be anything that you want. You just have to make sure that you update the logic to match that right.

A

Then I have our information that says it's not checked out. Please check out this item before leaving and then another section. uh Oh I've got another section in there that I didn't want to put in there that early, but um this section is for the homebound if, if we have patrons that are that are homebound.

A

uh If, if we choose to use this, I have a little uh variable that I can turn on to match our homebound uh category and it would make the slip. Look a little bit different, have a bunch of information on it that our outreach coordinator would want on the slip and we can easily see. Oh, this is for the outreach coordinator to handle and they would they would take that from there. So we can identify that type of hold for homebound patrons from regular patrons.

A

So that is one section that we've defined.

A

Okay, the next section.

A

This section I call transfer hold so any hold that is going to another library, is going to be laid out in this style. So I have it say it's going to be transferred to and it's going to have the branch name right at the top. So, instead of an expiration and the patron name, it's going to have the branch name up there and saying that it's being transferred and then all the basic information about the book, you'll notice. I didn't have book information on the hold section right.

B

Because that's about who it's for not what it is exactly.

A

So this is more about the item that's being transferred and if the slip kit gets pulled out, we know what book it goes to and we have other information on there that that we want to see. um Oh one thing that I did not point out in both sections I have at the very bottom. I have a header or heading uh of three and it has a margin set. This is this is what gives the the slip the length so the 400 uh px?

A

Okay, that's what I used in order to give that that longer slip so that we had more of a slip holding on into the book and then the information at the bottom. What branch it's coming from- and I have that at the bottom, slightly different in the the transfer- holds because.

B

Here you don't need to know where it's going. You need to know where it's from right, yeah.

A

So that's that section- and I have another section, the final section and then we'll close our font element as well. This is for expired holds um one other thing.

A

This was a section that I added recently and this one I won't have a demo slip for because I can't mimic an expired hold uh on the fly, but um this section uh was an idea that I had a while back when we noticed that, because we have our holds out on a publicly accessible shelf, people will grab their holds and usually they'll check them out, sometimes not always not always sometimes you'll get a patron.

A

That will grab the hold and forget to check it out and they take it home and we're looking everywhere for it and then, when they're done with it, they put it back in the book, drop, we'll check it in and it triggers the same hold again.

A

uh So we've modified the the check-in screen to to get our staff's attention. So they know that this is an expired hold. This is uh this has already been triggered once, but if they, for some reason, are too busy and uh miss that information on the screen, the whole slip is not going to print out. Normally, it's going to say that this is a an expired hold it'll put book information in there.

A

It will not put patron information on the on the slip, and that is another eye-opener to the staff saying you don't need to put this back out on the shelf. Somehow they already took it and they put it in the book draw. So we get their attention on that.

A

Hopefully, hopefully, and I've seen a huge improvement since we've we've done this with the slips I have not seen expired, holds that are really old and have already been picked up out on the whole shelf again. So this has made a huge improvement on that.

A

So, though, that is the structure of the different sections that we've defined, so we've got three sections, there's a subsection and that first one for the homebound patrons, but I have three sections laid out for the slip, so it it will print one of these three.

B

Right, you just need now you need the logic to tell which one to print.

A

Now we need the logic, and this is where you throw in your html elements with the script.

A

That defines all of your information now I am not going to go through in great detail about this, because there's a lot to it, it's it can get overwhelming. Plus. You know your logic. What you're gonna do can be something completely different, but I will break down some of the the basic parts of this so that we have some basic understanding of what's going on here.

A

I start off my script with that uh some variables, I need to define some variables by the way. I'll tell you one thing about setting up a script. If you don't get an element right in the script. What's going to happen, is it's going to show all of your html?

A

It's very easy to break if you don't code, something right in the script, so you want to make sure that you test it before you throw it out there, because otherwise you're going to get this weird uh slip with all of the different sections that are not filled in and people are going to be wondering what's going on. So this is where the it gets tricky and you have to make sure that you do it right.

B

Testing is good, yes,.

A

So I have a variable for a mask where I'm replacing characters, if I'm masking out part of a name or a bar code. This is where I define the character. You can have it whatever you want this little character right here I had it be an asterisk.

A

I define a variable for the last name. I also in fact this. I don't know why I do that. A little uh old coding there I have a variable for the variable for first name- is going to equal that particular field. So the the bar up here, it's the borrower's surname and we define a variable for the card number, and this was important here, because um I would get some.

A

Some uh patrons that didn't have a card number, yet you know if they were of each name. That's in the first name field. You know we put our first name and middle in that first name field, and so this does very good at being just the first letter of each name in that field.

A

uh So you know if they had passed the date information here, the transformation uh I'm checking where this item is going. If it matches the current bar, it's really important. It's going to find out whether this is being this is a local hole or if this is a hole, that's being transferred to another branch.

A

So if it's not being transferred so that that first section, if it's not being transferred, it's going to show this first section if it is being transferred. You're going to show this section, the middle right, so.

B

Essentially, the framework you've got two things up here, and the logic is saying: show this one or show this one.

A

A

uh Let me get my highlight here, so this section right here is everything except for the last two numbers in the in the card. So if you want the last three, you would just uh so it's it's basically replacing a thing until the last two or three or however many you set there, it's replacing that with that asterisk and then this is where you add, on the last two or three or however,.

B

The one that you, the ones that you do want.

A

To show the ones that you want to show exactly so.

B

Those numbers really ought to match, yes, and if they don't match it's going to be kind of a pain.

A

Well, if they don't match, I mean I'm a stickler. I I wanted. You know the card number and the masking to be the exact amount. So that's why I did that. I mean you put five asterisks in there and then tacked on. However many you wanted yeah, you don't have to be that much of a stickler on that. I just wanted it to be accurate. So that's why I did it that way.

A

Okay, I do have a section in here that looks at patron category. This is where it's going to look at that local hold and find out. If this is a homebound patron or not right now I have a category that does not exist in there called not home. We don't use this currently, but if we did, I would change this to match the category that that's our homebound patron.

A

So I would do this and if the patron that I'm, if I'm checking in an item- and if this hold is for a homebound patron, that is going to make a slip that looks like this, so here it has its uh expiration date, but it says homebound patron hole, and it gives me more information than I would have in a normal slip that was going in on the the whole shelf for a patron, so makes it very different makes it it's very different from our transfer very different from uh right hold.

A

Again, you want to make sure that those look very different so that you can easily tell.

B

Right so they can easily be captured by the outreach people.

A

And it's not this yeah. It is this, so that's that's what that's there for so we don't use that. So I just turn that off with putting in a category that does not.

A

Exist so basically, it's just turning those those divs, those sections that are wrapping those whole whole sections. It's it's changing the display status of those divs.

B

A

This section down here where I had to do some comparison of our our expiration dates if it finds that the expiration date is old, it's going to turn off those first, two sections it's going to display. I had to.

A

To format the the expiration date, the way I wanted it to be, so that's why it's broken up into pieces separated by slashes rather than hyphens, uh and it will display that ex that expired section with the expiration date.

A

So that's basically.

A

This slip, in a nutshell, cool um I did want to show one section, one one other section I I did talk about. You could do your patron names differently. um Here is the area that that you can modify this uh partial name.

B

Right and that's important for you guys, because you have a self-service, hold pickup counter yeah.

A

So if you didn't have a self-service.

B

Hold pick up counter you, probably maybe you don't need that at all, because this can really.

A

B

For whatever you need the library situation you have to to do, for you.

A

Exactly so, I'm going to replace this section here.

A

This is slightly different, where it's taking it's not just putting and throwing in the whole last name in this case it's doing the first three letters of the last name and then it's masking the rest. It's a little bit different. I don't use a. I don't use a slice for this because I'm doing the first set part of the the name, not the last part, with those slicing off the last few letters I use slice. If I'm doing the first few letters of a string, then I'm using the sub string instead easier.

A

So I'm doing a mask of part of the last name and then if the first name exists, I'm adding on a mask to that as well. I'm doing the first three letters in this case and then masking the rest, and in that case, that would give you a result like this right, and so you can do this all different ways if you wanted to kind of mash it together. If you just wanted letters and you didn't want any masking, you could do the first three letters of the first or the last name.

A

First, three letters of the first name and the last two digits of the patron card number three or three or four or however, you want you can mash it all into one code that the patron has to decipher. I know that some libraries like to do that so there's.

B

A

Different ways you can display this.

B

Yeah and I've I've encountered quite a few libraries now with self-service for pick up and everybody seems to have a different way of deciding how they're going to do it at the library. I go to it's alphabetized by the first three letters in your last name and then by the last four digits, your card number, that's how you find your stuff on the shelf. So it's a little bit different everywhere.

A

We've come a long way with coho in in doing this, because uh before coha we didn't have the luxury of this. We were handwriting slips to put in books on the hold shelf, and when we got our hands on coho, it's like wow, we can do so much more and we were able to create these slips. So this was this was my attempt at replacing that so staff didn't have to hand write slips for each hole that was going out on the whole shelf.

B

For me, it was important at the first library I worked out with quahog, where we got the patron names off of the slips, because we ship things through a courier system and we didn't want to be shipping patron information through the courier system. We wanted to make sure that you know all we're sending essentially we're giving this driver the names and addresses and phone numbers of uh hundreds of people throughout our area. So we didn't. We trusted our drivers, but you know it's it's better, not to have to trust people.

B

It's better to just you know, come up with a system that doesn't require uh trust to be honest, yeah yeah. It keeps everybody honest when they don't have a chips.

A

Well, that that is it for this example of modifying slips um again, you can do this. You can modify lots of your a lot of your slips. uh Your heart's content, it's just a matter of you, know fulfilling the need of your library.

B

um One so when you were talking, let me say this: when you were talking, I looked up the schedule for the uh coha online together 2020 conference and on tuesday, the 22nd at 9, 30 uh pacific daylight time. uh Joe sickowitz from the fenway library organization is going to be talking about. uh The title of this presentation is making slips your own and it's from 9 30 to 10 pacific time.

A

So we had a little bit of a malfunction at the end of our recording. We chopped off the end, but the part you missed, george was talking about his uh presentation that he did uh a couple years back on same topic. He had a little bit different approach in his modifications, but along the same lines, uh we're gonna put a link to that on the quahog us website next to the video link.

A

So if you go to our video link, if you aren't there already under the learn, section, get the right one here and next to videos. uh When we add this video you'll see our video we'll put a link to that example, and to the example that you saw in the video today there as well. So you have a place to refer to.

A

You can see those examples in full and do with them as you may, and if you can improve on them, go for it and let us know about your improvements, we'd love, to hear back.

A

Our next video is going to be uh presented by george and he is going to be talking about enhancing uh the notes in uh reports with html. So we'll see you next time, thank you for joining.