[Koha-bugs] [Bug 33932] Why multiple statuses on item record

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=33932

--- Comment #10 from David Cook <dcook at prosentient.com.au> ---
(In reply to Christopher Brannon from comment #9)
> I guess, if it helps to have it all separated out, then that isn't really
> the issue.  It probably has more to do with how staff interact with it. 
> IMO, as status is a status.  I shouldn't have to look in 4 different places
> to address an item status.  Maybe the way it is displayed in the item
> editing could be changed to checkboxes with a date next to each, and a
> single update button?  That would seem a little less clunky.

I think that I hear what you're saying. It would be nice just to have one field
that can be either "withdrawn", "lost", "damaged", "restricted", or "not for
loan". 

One of the tricky things is there can be multiple user-defined statuses for
each of those categories. Uniting those together into one would be quite
problematic in a number of ways.

Another thing about those statuses is that they're not all treated equally.
While most of those categories cause an item to no longer be "available", the
item is still "available" when it's restricted. 

There's also "Not for loan" at the item type level, which is something you
won't see in the item editor, and isn't obvious when doing SQL reports.

If all the possible statuses were in one 1 database column, you'd also need to
take into account all possible codes when writing your SQL reports. That would
either mean a lot of maintenance, or eliminating user-entered codes for
statuses, which many would see as a feature regression.

That said, perhaps "Status" could just be "withdrawn", "lost", "damaged",
"restricted", or "not for loan" and then there could be a second column with
the more precise code. But that would probably take a fair bit of UI
refactoring.

There are also recalls, holds, on order, and in transit statuses, although
perhaps those should be marked under "Availability".

> However, it still makes reporting more complicated - You simply need a
> status, and you are having to get information from multiple fields.

In theory, we or your Koha support folk could add a database "view" that unites
the different columns into 1 status field to simplify your reporting.

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