[Koha-devel] Alternative Holds Targeting Workflow

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi folks,

Just a heads up that I've just added a new table, cron utility,
and  report that is a temporary solution to a much needed
holds targeting workflow for the larger Koha libraries. I've
documented it in my commit message which I'll reproduce
here:

This patch adds a cron script to be run periodically that
populates the tmp_holdsqueue table. This is an alternative
holds targeting workflow that is more suitable for multi-location
libraries than the default holds picklist report.

Note to documentation writers: this summary should be
added to any holds documentation as an overview of
the available methods for holds fulfillment.

This alternative holds workflow assumes an
expectation that the system should target a specific
available item at one location for a given hold request,
attempt to fulfill the hold with that item, and if unable to
fulfill, select an available item at another location to
fulfill the hold.

This is quite different than the default Koha workflow
assumption, which is that holds are 'broadcast' to all
locations and the first to retrieve it is used to fulfill the
hold.

How it works:

This script weights available items at locations for holds
based on options specified in two system preferences:

StaticHoldsQueueWeight
	Allows the library to specify a list of library
	location codes -- if used alone, it will rank the
	list statically, selecting the top-ranking, left-most available
	location to be added to the picklist.

RandomizeHoldsQueueWeight

	If RandomizeHoldsQueueWeight and StaticHoldsQueueWeight
	are set, the list of library codes in the
	StaticHoldsQueueWeight syspref are randomized rather
	than statically ranked. If RandomizeHoldsQueueWeight
	alone is set, the list of all available library codes
	is used to randomize the weight.

If neither syspref is set, the list is statically
ranked according to how they are pulled out of the system
database.

NOTE: This has not yet been tested with item-level holds

Cheers,

-- 
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