[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Potential development project to consolidate patron notes, messages and alerts

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

MassLNC is exploring the possibility of funding a project to consolidate 
patron notes, messages, and alerts into one entity. Most likely, this 
would mean moving notes and alerts functionality to the existing 
messages/penalty feature, since it currently provides the most 
flexibility for adding messages to a patron record.

We have draft requirements available here - 
http://masslnc.org/node/3403. I would like to get broader feedback from 
the community on these requirements before moving forward with this 
project. Also, if anyone is already working on a similar project, let us 
know so that we don't duplicate efforts.

We have three goals with this project:

- Consolidate the different methods for adding notes about or to a 
patron into one method that supports all of the functionality currently 
offered through notes, alerts and messages.

- Make some user interface changes when adding a note. Rather than 
asking the user to start by selecting a note/penalty type, the user 
would select the main options (publicly-visible, alert, block, display 
depth) at the time the note is added. We felt like this would be a bit 
more intuitive for staff. The ability to select a specific note or 
penalty is still available for sites that want to configure some canned 
note configurations for their staff.

- Add a link between a publicly-visible note and its corresponding 
message in the Message Center so that edits to that note (if the message 
is unread) or deletions can propagate to the Message Center message.

Our requirements also include a section on how to migrate existing 
notes, alerts and messages.

If you have any questions or feedback on the project, please let us know!

Kathy

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