Purchase Suggestions

Purchase Suggestions in Acquisitions

Koha's purchase suggestion functions can help libraries manage suggestions, simplify ordering in Acquisitions, and keep patrons informed of the status of their suggestions. For an overview of the process from start to finish, watch Monday Minutes: Purchase Suggestions.

Creating Purchase Suggestions

The Koha manual discusses purchase suggestions in the OPAC, including the associated system preferences and display options.

Even if purchase suggestions are not enabled in the OPAC, staff can create them from the 'Purchase suggestion' tab in a patron's account or from Acquisitions > Purchase suggestions by clicking the '+ New purchase suggestion' button. Purchase suggestions created in the staff interface can be associated with a patron, but they do not have to be.

Note that the 'Document type' field on the purchase suggestion form is not linked to your item types set in Administration > Item types. Instead, it is populated by the SUGGEST_FORMAT authorized value category in Administration > Authorized values. You will most likely want to add values to this category to reflect the options from which patrons can select.

Add the Google Book API

A patron can add an ISBN to the purchase suggestion form, press the Search Google Book option, and the title and author will be prefilled for the patron making the suggestion. The system preference to enable this feature is OPACSuggestionAutoFill.



Managing Purchase Suggestions

The manual describes how and where staff can manage purchase suggestions, how to accept or reject them (including associated statuses), and how to edit, archive, and delete them.

Notices for Patrons

For purchase suggestions associated with a patron, changing a suggestion's status will automatically email the associated notice if it exists in Tools > Notices and slips.

If your library does not want to send these notices automatically, you will need to delete them from Tools > Notices and slips.

These are the default notices, along with details about how and when they will send:
  1. ACCEPTED: Sent to patrons if their suggestion is marked as Accepted.
  2. REJECTED: Sent to patrons if their suggestion is marked as Rejected. This notice will include the reason selected from the 'with this reason' menu, or staff can select 'Other' to type in a reason manually. The options in the menu are set in the SUGGEST authorized value group.
  3. ORDERED: Sent to patrons if their suggestion is either ordered from the Acquisitions module or manually marked as Ordered from the purchase suggestion management table.
  4. AVAILABLE: Sent to patrons when their suggestion is received in the Acquisitions module. This notice cannot be manually triggered from the purchase suggestion management table.

Notices for Staff

There are three default notices to assist with purchase management suggestion:
  1. NEW_SUGGESTION: If you would like a notification sent when new purchase suggestions are created, set the EmailPurchaseSuggestions system preference to send to the library's email address (in Administration > Libraries), the KohaAdminEmailAddress, or a separate EmailAddressForSuggestions.
  2. NOTIFY_MANAGER: This notice will send to the manager to whom a purchase suggestion is assigned if the 'Notify manager' checkbox is selected.
  3. TO_PROCESS: If a notice is assigned to a fund, this notice will send to the fund's owner. As this requires the notice_unprocessed_suggestions.pl cron job, please send us a support ticket if you are a ByWater Solutions partner and you would like to enable this functionality.

Placing Holds on Purchase Suggestions

Libraries have the ability to automatically place holds for patrons on their suggested purchases if they order those suggestions through the Acquisitions module. If the system preference PlaceHoldsOnOrdersFromSuggestions is set to "[Do] place a hold when ordering from a suggestion", holds will automatically be placed when the suggestion is ordered if items are created at the time of the order. If your library does not create items until orders are received or until cataloging the record, this function will not work. The system preference will be set to [Do] by default. If you choose to use this function and are sending the ORDERED notice, we recommend modifying the notice to include "A hold has been automatically placed on this item" (or similar) so that patrons know that they've been placed on the holds list.

To see this feature in action, watch Monday Minutes: Automatic Holds on Purchase Suggestions.

Purchase Suggestion System Configuration

These are the system preferences related to internal use of purchase suggestions. Configuration specific to purchase suggestions in the OPAC are discussed here.
  1. PurgeSuggestionsOlderThan: This allows Koha to automatically purge accepted and rejected suggestions after X days, which can help keep your suggestions table a manageable size without having to manually archive or delete. This system preference requires the purge_suggestions.pl cron job. If you are a ByWater Solutions partner, please send us a ticket to enable this cron.
  2. PlaceHoldsOnOrdersFromSuggestions: This will automatically place holds for patrons when their suggestions are ordered.
  3. EmailPurchaseSuggestions and EmailAddressForSuggestions: This will automatically send an email when a new purchase suggestion is made to the library's email address (in Administration > Libraries), the KohaAdminEmailAddress, or a separate EmailAddressForSuggestions.
  4. FallbackToSMSIfNoEmail: The notices described above send by email only. This system preference allows your library to send via SMS if the patron does not have an email address in their account.

Custom Statuses

A library can create additional Suggestion statuses. The authorized value category is called SUGGEST_STATUS:


The built in statuses (pending, accepted, checked, ordered, available, and rejected) will not be visible here. Click 'Add' to create a new suggestion status, and note that the code cannot be more than 10 characters, should be in all caps, and cannot have spaces or special characters. The example below is for an ILL status that libraries could use to flag suggestions that will be ordered via ILL instead of being purchased.


After this new status has been created, it can be applied to suggestions:

Custom Status Notices

Custom purchase suggestion statuses can be linked with custom suggestion notices so that patrons are alerted when a suggestion has been marked with a custom status. In Tools > Notices and slips, create a new notice as follows:
  1. Module: Suggestions
  2. Letter code: Match the authorized value code for your custom purchase suggestion status
For a notice linked to the custom InterLibrary Loan status example above, the notice code would be ILL to match the code 'ILL' of the custom purchase suggestion status.

Crons

Three cron jobs work with purchase suggestions:
  1. purge_suggestions: This cron purges suggestion older than X days whose status is not ASKED. 'X' is defined in the system preference PurgeSuggestionsOlderThan (most common), or by setting a number of days directly in the cron. The number of days is based on the ‘managed on’ date of the suggestion.
  2. archive_purchase_suggestions: Koha can automatically mark specific suggestions archived based on their status and age, where age is calculated from the original suggestion date, date last modified, or the date managed, accepted, or rejected.  For example, a suggestion could be archived a year after it was rejected (based on status Rejected and date of rejection), or 6 months after it became available (based on status Available and date last modified).

  3. notice_unprocessed_suggestions: If a purchase suggestion has been assigned to a fund, this will notify the fund owner that they have a suggestion to manage using the notice TO_PROCESS.
If you are a ByWater Solutions partner and would like to activate any of these crons, please submit a ticket.

Purchase Suggestions in the OPAC

The OPAC section of the Koha manual describes how patrons can make purchase suggestions, where in the OPAC suggestions are visible, and a selection of the system preferences for OPAC suggestion customization in Purchase suggestions. Note that the information in this section is specific to the Koha OPAC. For details on using Koha's purchase suggestions feature with Aspen, please see the Aspen Help Center. 

Libraries who wish to allow patrons to submit purchase suggestions through the OPAC can set the system preference Suggestion to "[Enable] purchase suggestions in the OPAC."

Setup

Once Suggestion is set to [Enable], your library will want to consider the following:
  1. If your library allows patrons to make purchase suggestions anonymously, set the system preference AnonSuggestions to "[Allow] patrons that aren't logged in to make purchase suggestions." If this is set to [Don't allow], patrons must be logged in to their accounts in order to make purchase suggestions.
  2. If your library wishes to exclude specific patron categories from making purchase suggestions via the OPAC, configure the system preference SuggestionPatronCategoryExceptions to select those categories. If you use this system preference, you will also want to have AnonSuggestions set to [Don't allow].
  3. If you wish to limit the number of open (pending) suggestions that a patron can have at one time, set MaxOpenSuggestions.
  4. To limit patrons to X suggestions over a Y day period, regardless of the suggestions' status, set MaxTotalSuggestions and NumberOfSuggestionDays.
  5. Choose the fields that should be mandatory for purchase suggestions with the system preference OPACSuggestionMandatoryFields, and the fields that should be hidden from the purchase suggestion form with OPACSuggestionUnwantedFields.
  6. To modify the list of reasons from which patrons can select as the reason for their suggestion, visit the OPAC_SUG authorized value category in Administration > Authorized values.
  7. Update the 'Document type' from which patrons can select in the SUGGEST_FORMAT authorized value category in Administration > Authorized values.
Be aware that the system preferences OPACSuggestionMandatoryFields and OPACSuggestionUnwantedFields refer to 'item type' as a field that can be made mandatory or hidden. However, this is misleading: they are referring to the 'Document type' field on the purchase suggestion form, which is not linked to your item types set in Administration > Item types. Instead, it is populated by the SUGGEST_FORMAT authorized value category in Administration > Authorized values.

NotesNote: that MaxOpenSuggestions and MaxTotalSuggestions only apply to purchase suggestions made via the OPAC. Purchase suggestions made in the staff interface linked to a patron's account do not count toward these totals.

Suggestion Instructions

Libraries can create custom purchase suggestion instructions using Koha's HTML customimzations tool. These can be for the entire library system or specific to an individual branch. To create instructions, start i Tools > HTML customizations:
  1. Choose 'New Entry'
  2. Display location: OpacSuggestionsInstructions
  3. Library: Leave at 'All libraries', or select a specific branc
  4. Publication date: Set start date for instructions to appear
  5. Expiration date: Set if applicable, but typically this will be blank for suggestion instructions
  6. Appear in position: This is optional and only needs to be set if your library has multiple sets of instructions, which is uncommon.


These instructions will appear when patrons view the suggestion form in the OPAC.

Purchase Suggestions in Patron Accounts

Once patrons have made purchase suggestions (unless made anonymously), they will populate a table in the 'Purchase suggestions' tab in their OPAC accounts. The Status column of the table will update when suggestions are accepted, rejected (including the reason), ordered, and received. Once a title is ordered, it will become a clickable link in the purchase suggestion table so that patrons can place a hold (if not done automatically) or view the bib.

Note that suggestions linked to a patron but made from the staff interface will not appear in the patron's OPAC account.

Patrons can delete purchase suggestions from their account in the OPAC. This will also delete it from the purchase suggestion management table in Acquisitions, even if it has been reviewed and its status has been changed. If the title has been ordered, the deletion does not affect the basket/order even though the title will no longer appear in the purchase suggestion management table.

Tutorial Video



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