[Koha-bugs] [Bug 3714] New: holdCancelLength syspref doesn't seem to be used

[bugzilla-daemon at kohaorg.ec2.liblime.com]

http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=3714

           Summary: holdCancelLength syspref doesn't seem to be used
           Product: Koha
           Version: rel_3_0
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows 2000
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5
         Component: Hold requests
        AssignedTo: gmcharlt at gmail.com
        ReportedBy: jwagner at ptfs.com
   Estimated Hours: 0.0
 Change sponsored?: ---


The Koha manual for two sysprefs has similar wording:

holdCancelLength

Specify how many days after a hold has been confirmed, pulled from the shelf
and patron contacted before a hold is canceled. 
Default Value: no value

The number you enter represents 'days'.  For instance, if you enter '14', then
Koha will cancel a hold and change the item's status to 'available' 14 days
after the patron has been contacted to pick up the hold.
IMPORTANT: This does not take into account a person's place in the hold queue,
if they're 200th on the list of holds, and this limit is reached, their hold
will be dropped.  If you have a big library with a lot of holds, you may want
to set this to an insanely high number of days.



ReservesMaxPickUpDelay

Define the maximum number of days that a user gets to pick up an item on hold
before Koha changes the item's status to 'available' (or assigns the hold to
the next patron on the holds list)
Default Value: 7

Enter a number (the number represents 'days')
TIP: If you don't want Koha to automatically 'do' something to items on hold
that haven't been picked up, set the value to '0' or leave blank. 



However, my understanding is that the first one (holdCancelLength) is meant to
apply to holds that have NOT been triggered and pulled from the shelf -- it's
meant to cancel holds that have been around for a long time without ever
getting triggered (such as for on-order items that never come in).  See the
manual reference to setting it to an "insanely high number of days."  The
second one is the one that applies after the hold has been triggered, giving
the patron X days to come and pick it up.

When I did a quick grep on the Koha code, I don't find holdCancelLength
anywhere but in the installer files.  Can anyone confirm if they've seen it in
action?

ReservesMaxPickUpDelay is in the various installer scripts, but also used in
circ/waitingreserves.pl and it is functional.  We've also been doing
development with it (see Bug 3474) that is still in process.

I would suggest that the holdCancelLength syspref either be removed or
implemented.  I think the functionality would be useful, and it shouldn't be
too hard to write a script that would run as a nightly cron to check through
all the existing holds each night, look at the date the hold was placed, run a
calculation based on the holdCancelLength syspref, and cancel any that are
older than that time period (moving them to the old_reserves table).

We may look at doing that when time permits, but if someone else wants to do it
earlier, that would be great.


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