[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] ERROR when trying to "bill a patron"

Tue Oct 20 15:07:30 EDT 2015

Hi Jennifer,

On 10/20/2015 02:46 PM, Walz, Jennifer wrote:
>
> All –
>
> Ok. So even if I (global administrator) can’t see the billing types 
> for the whole consortium, I need to make this ALSO available for the 
> particular staff persons who will be adding bills?    That seems a bit 
> odd, I have to say.   Why are not all billing types available to all 
> staff logins? Isn’t that rather logical?     I CAN understand that 
> certain staff levels would not be able to ADD a billing to a patron, 
> but if they have permission to do that, why restrict them to the TYPES 
> of billing that they can see.
>
What seems odd to you seems perfectly natural to me, but maybe that's 
just a sign that I've been working in Evergreen for too long. I will say 
that Evergreen tends to be built for maximum flexibility. While it makes 
sense that you want your staff to see all the billing types, it may not 
make sense for another Evergreen site. There may be sites out there that 
do have different billing types for different branches, and they only 
want their staff to see the billing types that should be used at their 
branch. In those situations, the permission only being set at the branch 
or system depth makes perfect sense.

> And it seems to me that a global admin should be able to blanket do 
> everything right?   Why are some things still individually needing to 
> be selected.     Just a pet peeve of mine. J
>

I have no idea what your global admin role looks like. I will say that 
the global admin stock role that is available when you install Evergreen 
has the permission set to Everything for the entire consortium. 
Therefore, that role should have the ability to do everything unless a) 
the permission isn't listed in the database or b) there is some other 
bug that we're not aware of. But just because the stock global admin 
group should have permission to do everything, it doesn't mean that 
yours hasn't been changed along the way.

I will say that the stock permissions are meant to be a starter. Every 
Evergreen site has different ideas of what should be allowed / 
disallowed at their libraries and will want to handle permissions 
differently. The three sites I work with have all adapted their 
permissions over time and continue to adapt them as they evolve and 
learn more about Evergreen. It's not one size fits all.
>
> In addition to that, the error message that it generated in this 
> instance was completely NOT helpful.    In future updates, would it be 
> possible to have a more helpful error come up?   That would be very nice.
>
I totally agree that we need more helpful error messages in the client. 
It's something our users always say too. What it really takes is a 
champion to lead the charge, to identify places where better error 
messages are needed and what they should say, and to ultimately find a 
developer who will do the work to change those errors. I'll support any 
champion who takes on that challenge because it would make our users 
happy too. It's not something I could devote my time to at the moment 
because I have other enhancements / bug fixes I'll be championing this 
year. I'm sure others are in the same boat.

Kathy

> Thanks!
>
> Jennifer
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Jennifer Walz, MLS - Head of Research & Distance Services
> Kinlaw Library - *Asbury University*
> One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
> 859-858-3511 ext. 2269
> jlwalz at asbury.edu
>
> *From:*Open-ils-general 
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] *On Behalf 
> Of *Ben Shum
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 20, 2015 2:33 PM
> *To:* Evergreen Discussion Group
> *Subject:* Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] ERROR when trying to "bill a patron"
>
> Hi Jennifer,
>
> Your description of the issue definitely sounds like some sort of 
> permission error to me. Like maybe the staff user account / group has 
> a permission for view billing type but at the wrong depth, like 
> library (2) instead of CONS (0). Something like that would possibly 
> prevent you from seeing billing types for other org units in your 
> setup over only seeing the ones set locally.
>
> In our consortium setup, we do not define billing types per library, 
> so I believe it may be presumptuous to assume that redundancy is 
> normal behavior.
>
> -- Ben
>
> Sent from my Nexus 6
>
> On Oct 20, 2015 2:20 PM, "Walz, Jennifer" <jlwalz at asbury.edu 
> <mailto:jlwalz at asbury.edu>> wrote:
>
> All -
>
>   Jason,  thank you very much for this info.  Very cool.  I'll 
> remember to play with this another time.  :-)
>
>   However, it appears that it was not needed.
>
>   I had created a billing type SPECIFICALLY for our OU.  Logged out 
> and closed Evergreen.   Opened it back up to try your suggestion.  
>  Didn't need it.   NOW our billing type shows up AND the Library name 
> is populated in the "Library" field.   Interesting.
>
>  So, the answer to my question:   Do you need billing types for EACH 
> OU looks to be - yes.      NONE of the other billing types for the 
> consortium level OR the other library show up.  Just the two that I 
> created for our OU as dummies.      Why is that?    So, now do we need 
> to make each of the ones at the consortium level ALSO duplicated at 
> each of the OU levels?    That seems really redundant.
>
>   Thanks!
>
> Jennifer
> --------------------------------------------------
> Jennifer Walz, MLS - Head of Research & Distance Services
> Kinlaw Library -  Asbury University
> One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
> 859-858-3511 ext. 2269 <tel:859-858-3511%20ext.%202269>
> jlwalz at asbury.edu <mailto:jlwalz at asbury.edu>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Open-ils-general 
> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org 
> <mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org>] On Behalf 
> Of Jason Etheridge
> Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 2:06 PM
> To: Evergreen Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] ERROR when trying to "bill a patron"
>
> Jennifer,
>
> Here's another troubleshooting strategy:
>
> In the staff client, use File -> New Window to open a second window, 
> and then within that window use Admin -> For Developers -> JavaScript 
> Console
>
> Then go back to the first window and go all the way through your 
> workflow but stop just _before_ clicking the Bill Patron button.
>
> In the second window, click Clear within the javascript console.
>
> Now back in the first window, click Bill Patron and stop there.
>
> In the second window, note if any errors show up in the console.  You 
> should see at least one "SyntaxError: missing = in XML attribute" and 
> several "not well-formed" errors, but you can ignore those.  You may 
> need to scroll the list to see all the entries.  If anything else 
> shows up, right click on the entry and select Copy.  That'll put it in 
> your clipboard and you can then paste and share it with us. Repeat for 
> additional entries.
>
> If nothing shows up that, that could be useful information as well.
>
> --
> Jason Etheridge
> | Community and Migration Manager
> | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
> | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> | email: jason at esilibrary.com <mailto:jason at esilibrary.com>
> | web: http://www.esilibrary.com
>

-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

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