[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Running totals or report for checkin session or cart.

[Jason Etheridge]

On 10/12/06, Josh Stompro <stomproj at larl.org> wrote:
>     I was just thinking of how the checkin process could be made
> "better" for those using it and those managing it.  What if each time
> the check in session was started it prompted for a label, which could be
> anything that would help identify that session like.  "Book Drop
> Morning", "AV Cart 1", "Stacks Return Cart Afternoon", "Morning
> Delivery".  As items are checked in the client would keep track of and
> display on screen a running report of the items like.

I do think this could be useful, and I believe my thoughts mirror
Don's.  It'd be especially nice if I could mark/tag a check in that
happens to occur during the check out process (staff tries to checkout
a book that is already circulating, and we give them an option to
check it in on the spot without investigating the situation.  If the
item is overdue, they can also do a Forgiving--automatically
backdated--Check In).

[snip]
> The system could maybe log the label with the check in record so it is
> easy to track something down, "We can see that this item was checked in
> with the "Book Drop Morning" items on 10/10/2006 by Josh Stompro at
> station BackRoom-Check-In-1".

This would simply be an extra field on our circulation objects.

> One other question, I was looking at
> ILS/Open-ILS/xul/staff_client/server/circ/util.js, trying to see how the
> check in pop up messages could have some added format to make the
> information easier to read at a glance.  (Making "Transit","Shelve",
> "Hold Shelf" bold and larger so it is easier to glance at the screen a
> figure out where the item needs to go, maybe bolding other information
> like which location something is in transit to, adding colors that
> correspond with a type of action, etc.)  It looks like the same text
> that is displayed on the receipt is what is displayed in the message
> box.  Would there need to be 2 string variables, msg and msg_display,
> with the msg_display including some sort of markup?  Can the formatting
> just be removed from msg before printing to use just one variable?

The alert formatting during checkin is more or less hard coded, while
the printed receipts have user editable templates.  I could make those
alerts templatable as well.  I recently added support for images and
made the text larger, and that seems to be enough for now, for PINES
at least.  We have a proud turtle on the Item Now In Transit alert.
:-)  But full on templates would be nice.

Thanks Josh, Don!

-- 
Jason Etheridge
GPLS -- PINES Development
http://open-ils.org/