Koha-US The Terrific Every-Other-Thursday Training Videos, 20 Jul 2023

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From YouTube: Limit Unregulated Values | S3E23

Description

Here's an idea that won't break the bank - and it will help you to prevent people from breaking Koha. Yes, despite all the hard work the community puts in to Koha, there are still ways we can accidently cause ourselves a headache or two. Hopefully this pill is easy to swallow. Specifically we will show how to set a limit on creating multiple copies at once in a bibliographic record.

Contents:
0:00 - Title
0:27 - Intros
0:59 - 2023 koha-US Conference
3:19 - A Problem that Cropped Up
9:44 - A Simple Solutions
14:44 - Another Possible Approach

Additional Resources:
https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/JQuery_Library#Put_limit_on_.22Add_multiple_copies_of_this_item.22_button_on_additem.pl

Music: https://bensound.com/
Text -to-speech: https://wideo.co/text-to-speech/
Audio Effects: https://zapsplat.com/
Visual Effects: https://flexclip.com/

A

A

Welcome back everyone, uh we've got another, exciting video, this one's going to be actually short. This week, we are going to be talking about limiting uh your and I already lost it.

B

We're going to talk about how to put a limit on the number of multiple copies you can add to a bibliographic record by pressing the add multiple copies button. There.

A

We go okay uh before before we do that. Two things uh just a reminder: we are gearing up for our conference. That's coming up in September of September 20th through the 23rd, which is going to be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and we are about ready to unleash the rough schedule and then take registrations for that. So hopefully, by the time you see this video all that will be in place. uh So we hope to see most of you and more there at the conference uh so uh be ready for that.

A

And uh now, let's talk about koha us this.

C

Video is sponsored by Kohan us your place to look for all things, whether you're, just starting out with poha or you've, been with Quahog for a while koha us is a great place to find resources, learn new tips and techniques or connect with other users and libraries.

C

Koha us provides excellent information, both original and curated from around the internet, including the terrific, every other day, training videos. You will also find several special interest groups to connect with, as well as our general monthly meeting Where We Gather, to talk about the latest Kohan news. You should also check out the koha U.S annual conference held at various locations around the U.S. This is a great opportunity to meet with other users face to face and build your Kohan Network, as well as new friendships and, of course, don't forget about the great presentations koha.

C

Us is also actively involved in the koha community by contributing towards new developments. If you are interested in contributing towards koha U.S funded developments join the koha U.S memberships. Your annual membership builds the funds to sponsor new developments in the community and, as a member, you also help shape koha us with your membership votes and receive a discount on the annual conference. You can also contribute towards developments through a direct donation or by purchasing some great koha us merchandise, through our threadless accounts visit us at kohaus.org to find out more.

A

All right George, this is yours, so take it away so.

B

This is hot off the presses. um You know, I, don't know what day this is going to air, but today is the 28th of June here in our world, the magic of video recording. uh This is going to be sometime in July when you guys see this so today on the koha, uh the koha mailing list. um This is one of those things that it was a combination of uh I laughed when I read it and I also thought holy crap.

B

That could happen to my library and I'm glad it hasn't so Victor, Oliveira and I'm not sure where Victor's from uh sent out a me an email today saying. Is it possible uh to add an instance or choose to add multiple, comma, multiple copies simultaneously to a record um so.

C

He says in cohort's.

B

Able to do that every Everybody, probably that does cataloging- probably knows that when you're adding items to a record there's a button there that says add multiple copies and uh if so, if you get it, the whole thing set up for one you put in a barcode number and then tell it you're, adding five of those. When you scan that barcode number, it will actually add the one-year scanning plus four more and it will give them sequential barcode numbers um just to speed up the adding the process of adding those items right.

B

So Victor's question is: is there a way you can limit the number of additions?

B

You can add to an item because he had a staff member at his library that accidentally added uh made a typo in that input, box and added 800 000 copies um to one bibliographic record and of course what happened is those got added and then koha tried to index them all and then the server crashed um and then what he found is that after he got the server restarted, he had 800 000 items that he needed to delete and he every time he tried to delete that many.

B

It was too many for koha to delete all at once and he ended up having to delete them in batches of 5000 each, which is not a good situation. It sounds like a lot of work just for a typo, um so what I recommended on the list server was to open a bug in bugzilla saying you know there ought to be a limit. There ought to be a way. You know it'd be awesome. If there was a system preference where you could set.

B

You know, what's the maximum number of copies that you can add uh just by pressing that button once and then I said, but in the meantime, um until that gets patched, we could add some uh some jQuery uh to prevent that from happening. So let me actually show you what happens uh when you try and do this so I'm gonna I'm on the kohai US demo and I'm going to go to edit and edit items and I've got one copy in here.

B

uh This is uh Topeka school. It's a book, that's in the uh test server and it's all uh there's one copy, and so, let's make sure we get a collection code and we'll give it a shelving location, we'll give it a date acquired um we'll give it a barcode number one up from the one that was already in there. It's got an item type for book and then add multiple copies. So this is where he had a staff member that put 800 000 in this box. Let's just do like 15.

A

How do you accidentally put in 800 000 next month.

B

You know I, don't know um when I worked for when I was a circulation manager at my previous library that I worked at at Lakeside County Library we had at the Moscow Public Library, there's a cash register and the most common overring in the cash register was a thousand dollars.

B

Now that sounds like a bad overrig, and you wonder how can somebody accidentally do an overring for a thousand dollars? There were a lot of times when there were a lot of things that the library had for sale, that it was one dollar and so here's the way it works.

B

Is you walk up to the desk um somebody's standing there and they're helping check somebody out and then somebody interrupts them and says you know: I just need to buy this thing and hands them a dollar, so they lean over and they take one zero zero and then somebody asks them a question and they turn their head over this way to answer the question and they've still got the dollar in their hand, so they lean down and they take one zero zero and then push the button and all of a sudden thousand dollar overring, because they've had one zero, zero and then one zero, zero you've got an overring, you've got you've entered a dollar and then you've entered another dollar and you end up with a thousand dollar overrate.

B

So the way that I fix that is I program, the cash register so that the maximum single sale that could be made on that cash register was 999.99 and that overring stopped happening. So did somebody type you know like eight and then lean on the keypad, I I, don't know. There's I can totally picture um situations where a typo like that can happen because.

C

I've seen it happen.

B

So many times so so you know I'm not going to put in 800 000, because I don't want to crash the test server. But let's say maybe you wanted to put in 10 and you accidentally hit 101 um I, don't think it had killed the test server if I put in 101, so you're about to add 101 continue.

B

This will take a minute or so so.

A

He blew through the confirmation, yeah.

B

Apparently well, and we don't know what version they were running I, don't know if there's a confirmation on every version, but.

D

B

101 copies of this title to this bibliographic record, ugh so um the jQuery that I wrote is pretty simple and if you go to the koha jQuery Library and look for the one titled uh put limit on, add multiple copies.

B

It's really simple: I mean it just yeah, it's one line, yeah and so I'm going to put it in the internet, user.js system, preference and all it's doing is it's saying. You know that number of copies input box has its own ID number of copies, and it's on the cat.

B

Add items page, so I've got whatever that uh whenever the you're on the Cat ad items page whenever this number of copies input box is there the first thing this jQuery does is it adds an attribute to the input box um for a type called number um it has to the max value uh attribute only works on an input box that has a type of number right, because you know if it's alphanumeric text, there's no Max doesn't work. So the first thing it does is Imagine an attribute to that little input box called number.

B

It makes the type of box number and then the second thing it does is just for the sake of having a number there. I said you know it I. In my libraries there are very few situations where somebody's going to add more than 10. things to a bibliographic record at once. So.

C

B

Max of 10., and so if I save that and then let's go to another book by the same author, uh Ben Lerner, local Kansas authors. So if I go to edit and to edit items now that I've got that jQuery on my system, I'm going to take that barcode, same barcode, number different barcode number and and it's got a collection code. It's got a shelving location.

B

And it's got all the things I need to have in it to add it and I'm going to click on, add multiple items. If I try to add 11 and click, add I'm going to get this warning.

B

That says, please select a value that is no more than 10., so I can add 10, but I can't add 800 000., and so there are my 10 and if you have situations like I said, I can't think of a situation where one of my libraries is going to have more than 10 items at once, but if you're in a maybe in a bigger Library, maybe in a weird weird situation where you need to add 100 things, there's no reason you can't um set that uh that max value to like 10 or 50 or 100 or 200 or whatever you want it to be.

A

B

Can I can't imagine.

A

Adding more than a few hundred items to a record because we we have a couple rec, we have a record that has um a couple hundred items on it, because it's it's archived newspapers, yeah! It's um we hit the limit on that and I actually had to create a second record to house the rest of those items so really that that limit should be set by the restrictions of koha in general. Well,.

B

Like I said, you know, I, don't know where Victor Victor Olivera is the person. That's submitted that uh email this morning, so um I know that Mark 21 standard there's a size limit to the mark record. But I don't know if that's true in other Mark in other versions of Mark yeah, so maybe they're a unimark library or um you know it's if they're outside the US, if they're using a different version Mark, they might not have the same limits that U.S Mark has.

A

I I know that too, if you add too many items, the record just will not show you. Sometimes you get some Oddball results too, but sometimes that record just will not show if it's got too much information in it. Well,.

B

And I think if you had 800 000 to to one item there to one record, um that's gonna cause problems, no matter what you do. So that's almost as many items uh on that one record as we have in our entire 50 50 Library Consortium. So so.

A

You you changed your your input box to a type number um and in doing that it does change the the look of that box. Yeah.

B

A

A little with the little scroll bars on there arrows. um There is a way to to get around that. If you don't like that, um you could instead of doing a type number and then uh the Max Max number you could try an input, Max link, the tribute, um then you can, you know I, don't want any more than two digits, so it's or two characters that that could limit it. You know it's not as fine-tuned as this and doesn't give you that feedback the same way.

A

But if you wanted to do that that way, you could do it that way. um So, there's there are a couple different ways you could go about it, but I. Your your method makes a lot of sense and gives you good feedback. So.

B

Yeah- and it actually gives you that warning when you try to put more than 10 in there, it says that this number must be lower than must be lower than 10. And when you try, when you try to go over 11 right.

A

So so good solution and uh a quick turnaround to give him a a safety event for the next time. Something like that occurs. Yeah.

B

I hope so I hope uh you know, like I, said I, don't think it's ever happened to us. um It's certainly we've never had somebody add so many items to a record that crashed the system.

D

B

Could see that as a potential, so I mean that we thought there ought to be a limit there so and- and it was nice that I knew um I mean I had this on our server within five minutes. That I had a message back to the let's syrup with them.

A

A

our past response, so all right well, George! Thank you for that uh helpful tip, and hopefully people will put that into place because um man I could see if you're an admin and knew about that that bug and you were retiring- that might be a fun little prank. Yes, I'm just going to add 800 000 items and Say Goodbye them sort that out. No, that would be bad that'd, be bad yeah, so get that safety in place quickly before somebody retires.

A

All right, we'll see you later everybody again in two weeks.

D

C