[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Feature Proposal: Enhancements to Patron Statistical Categories

[Thomas Berezansky]

Quick comments:

On disallowing of setting "disallow free text" when you have no entries:

I would argue that would go against the current interface, which  
allows you to create asset statistical categories without entries (and  
asset statistical categories have no free text option to begin with).  
This is at least in part because there is no way to add entries until  
the statistical category has been created.

Also, individual org units can have entries, so a consortia-wide  
statistical category may not have any entries at the level you are  
looking at, for example. Or you may want to provide the category, but  
allow libraries to create the entries to fill it. Especially as  
creating stat cats and creating stat cat entries are different  
permissions, so the person creating the entries may not have rights to  
make the stat cat itself.

On the "one default entry" stuff:

This may be best done as an inherited mapping of org unit, stat cat,  
and default. This would allow different org units to have different  
default entries, but still allowing a general consortium-level default  
if a library hasn't picked one. This may also be best done for both  
actor and asset stat cats, for multiple reasons.

My reasoning for org unit level defaults is that as each org unit can  
have different entries. With no guarantee of consortia-wide entries  
available, there may not be a single entry that *can* be the default  
globally.

Other considerations:

In addition to providing a "disallow free text" option, a regex  
validator for the free text might be useful. You could then say that  
an existing entry has to be selected OR the free text has to match the  
regex. This would allow, say, date entry in a specifically decided  
upon format, say a "Friend of Library Until" category. The entries  
could then include a "Permanent" or "Board Member" type option that  
isn't subject to the date regex.


Finally, I have worked with both the statistical categories and editor  
for them (adding the SIP Export options, for example) as well as the  
patron editor (dynamic required fields and multiple validation  
options) to be of help in getting this going. If you need assistance,  
let me know.

Thomas Berezansky
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium


Quoting Scott Prater <sprater at gmail.com>:

> I've created a proposal on the wiki to enhance Patron Statistical Categories:
>
> http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:proposal:patron_statistical_categories
>
> And a corresponding blueprint:
>
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/evergreen/+spec/enhanced-patron-stistical-categories
>
> In summary, these enhancements are as follows:
>
>     * Allow administrators to set Patron Statistical Categories as
> required fields;
>     * Allow administrators to set a flag that prevents users from
> entering free text in a Patron Statistical Category;
>     * Allow administrators to set a default entry from the list of
> fixed entries available in the Patron Statistical Category
>
> Basically, the purpose of these enhancements is to improve the quality
> of data entered in the categories.  Reports generated from this data
> may be used to inform funding decisions, so there's a great deal of
> interest in making sure that the data is both comprehensive and
> consistent.
>
> I'm working with Bibliomation to implement these changes; our hope is
> to have something working and ready to roll into the codebase by the
> end of the calendar year.  I'm new to Evergreen and the Evergreen
> development community, and would appreciate any comments, pointers,
> criticisms, etc. more experienced developers may have.  In particular,
> I understand that changes to the database schema are adopted very
> cautiously.  These enhancements entail the addition of three new
> fields to the table actor.stat_cat  -- if anyone has any questions
> about those additions, or sees some potential problems with adding the
> new fields, I'd love to discuss it.
>
> thanks!
>
> -- Scott
>