[Koha-devel] 3 RFCs for Koha 3.4

[Nicolas Morin]

Hello,
There's a feature freeze for Koha 3.2, but BibLibre just won a
development contract for Koha 3.4 with a university library here in
France.
I'll be updating the wiki during the next few days, with the details
of the developments we plan to do as part of this contract. Most of
them have to do with the Circulation module.

The entry point for RFCs for Koha 3.4 is thus:
http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:rfcs3.4

I started out with 3 RFCs:

Ergonomics of smart-rules and circulation parameters
A lot of development is intended to allow for more refined parameters
as far as circulation is concerned: see other RFCs for 3.4. There's
going to be many more options and many more toggles / choices / more
possibilities. It's doubtful this can be accommodated within the
current smart-rules.pl page. So a new way to deal with the UI aspect
of managing rules is in order. (to be continued with actual proposals:
feel free to chime in)
(http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:ergonomics_of_smart-rules_and_circulation_parameters)

Flagged patrons: enhancements
In 3.2 when a patron is manually flagged using gonenoaddress, lost or
debarred, it's just managed as a toggle choice.
Enhancements proposed are:
    * add a comment field to the current 3 choices: e.g. debarred_comment
    * add a hidden timestamp to the choices: e.g. debarred_timestamp
    * add a timestamp, entered through the UI, to put an end date to
the flag: e.g. debarred_enddate or some such
    * add a script which lifts the flags based on the myflag_enddate
    * display the myflag_comment when the record is pulled in circulation.pl
(http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:enhancements_to_debarred_patron)

Enhancements to the display of extended patron attributes in circulation
Extended patron attributes are a great tool, which provides nice
flexibility in the information one wants to manage in the patron's
record. But as of version 3.2 we don't have any way to manage how this
information will be displayed once entered.
For some extended attributes, it might be useful to have them display
in circ/circulation.pl, in the Check Out tab, which is arguably the
most important tab in this page.
This RFC proposes:
    * to make the Check Out tab rather than Details the default tab
called in the UI when the librarian scans the card's barcode and calls
the patron's record from the checkout box at circulation-home.pl or at
circulation.pl
    * to add a field to
admin/patron-att-types.pl?op=edit|add_attribute_type → labeled
“display in check out”, with a checkbox
    * manage the display of those selected attribute types in the
display of the patron's information in the checkout tab on
circulation.pl
(http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:enhancements_to_the_display_of_extended_patron_attributes_in_circ)

Feel free to add your thoughts in the wiki. Again: more RFCs
pertaining to circulation to be added in the coming days.

Cheers,
Nicolas


-- 
Nicolas Morin
Mobile: +33(0)633 19 11 36
http://www.biblibre.com