[OPEN-ILS-DEV] overdue and pre-due notice config

[Bill Erickson]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:00:48 -0400, Dan Scott <denials at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Bill:
>
> 2008/8/6 Bill Erickson <erickson at esilibrary.com>:
>>

[snip]

>
> Some general comments:
> It's not explicit, but I suspect this could be used/abused for items
> like laptops that might have a four hour circulation period, so that
> you could send an email 30 mins in advance to remind the user that
> it's due real soon now.

That should be feasible.  I'm thinking we need a command-line param to the  
notifier which tells it to generate notices for circs that have a  
notify_interval of >= 1 day.  That way, CRON can be set up to run the  
notifier every hour, but once a day it will set the switch to generate  
notices for >= 1 day notify_interval items.  In other words, if I'm  
supposed to get a notice today about an item due tomorrow, I won't get a  
notice every hour.


>
> For the pre-overdues, it would be nice to take advantage of the
> system's knowledge of the circ rule in play to offer a link to a
> renewal page (if applicable for each item) and specify the fines that
> will be accrued.

I like that.

>
> I'm also hoping that this will group items together in some way,
> rather than generating one email per item.

The current behavior for overdues and planned behavior for this next batch  
of code is to generate one email per type of notice.  E.g. 1 email for all  
items 7 days overdue, 1 email for all items 14 days overdue, etc.  This  
allows for separate templates for each type.  Is this grouped enough or do  
you think putting all notices into a single email is crucial?


>
> Specific comment on the configuration syntax:
> At first glance, I didn't find the circ_duration_range syntax
> particularly intuitive. "5 days, 13 days" looked like an OR set of
> items, and "14 days" on its own looked like, well, just 14 days, not
> 14 days or more. At the risk of making the XML even more verbose, but
> perhaps more intuitive, I would propose something more like the
> following:
>
> <!-- rather than "5 days, 13 days" notation -->
> <circ_duration_range>
>   <from>5 days</from>
>   <to>13 days</to>
> </circ_duration_range>
>
> <!-- for items with a circ duration of exactly 28 days, set <from> ==  
> <to> -->
> <circ_duration_range>
>   <from>28 days</from>
>   <to>28 days</to>
> </circ_duration_range>
>
> <!-- if <to> element is missing, then the range extends to the end of  
> time -->
> <circ_duration_range>
>   <from>14 days</from>
> </circ_duration_range>
>
> <!-- if <from> element is missing, then the range extends from the
> start (0 mins) to <to> -->
> <circ_duration_range>
>   <to>5 days</to>
> </circ_duration_range>
>
> <!-- and if circ_duration_range holds neither <from> nor <to>, then it
> encompasses all circ_duration ranges -->
> <circ_duration_range></circ_duration_range>
>


That works for me.

Thanks, Dan!

-b

-- 
Bill Erickson
| VP, Software Development & Integration
| Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
| phone: 877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| email: erickson at esilibrary.com
| web: http://esilibrary.com