This release is solely focused on the ILS, specifically on TIND ILS enhancements to circulation. New features and improvements included in 1.12.0 include:
This update will enable a library to set variable opening hours within a specific date period for different days of the week or over holidays. The main goal of this development is to provide for more granular configuration of when the library is open and closed for circulation loan rules to more accurately reflect when the library is actually open.
Library holidays are already configurable by TIND staff and this feature will provide an interface for TIND admin users to set their own holidays and exceptions to opening hours, e.g. shorter opening hours because of exams taking place in the library, special staff meetings, refurbishing; or even longer opening hours in the weekends when exams are approaching.
The interface uses a top down approach to calculating rule logic. The rules at the top of the list are exceptions and will be considered first when calculating open times, both in days of the week, dates, and hours. Exception prioritization can be rearranged as needed or deleted over time. For example, the Spring break hours from last year can be revisited to add new dates and a new description.
The tool also displays a weekly calendar to review the opening hours logic from start to close and view a description of what those hours are, whether core hours or an exception.
Opening Hours calendar displays opening hours on a weekly basis
For more information on this, please see the documentation.
This feature enables the library to accept partial financial payments from patrons towards individual fines and fees as well as the partial waiving of individual fines and fees. This is commonly used in the situation where a patron contributes a portion of the funds available to pay toward the fee, but not the entire balance. Instead of contributing funds towards a fee, this feature also allows library staff with sufficient system privileges to waive a portion of a fee.
The new feature appears within the Global LIsts in the Fees Action menu. Either Partial Pay or Partial Waive (or both) can be performed multiple times to the same fine/fee until it is completely settled. Each transaction is logged as a payment in Global Lists.
These actions cannot be used to partially pay or waive multiple fees as a bulk action.
For more information on this, please see the documentation.
This feature adds a new data field to more accurately track fines and fees in Global Lists.
Estimated fees added to the Patron menu in Global Lists
Estimated fees are now available in Global Lists. Estimated fees display the fee or fees that are currently accruing to that account with active loans in circulation. These fees have not yet committed to the account yet because the circulating item has not been returned.
Estimated fees are recalculated every 5 minutes.
For more information on this, please see the documentation.
A new feature has been added to circulation workflows providing the ability to add or waive fees as part of overdue workflows. Prior to this development there was no easy way to automatically reduce the fee for patrons after checking in books. While the current overdue workflows remain unchanged, new actions have been added to the workflows allowing fees to be added and then later waived after a period of time determined by the library. This can be added to existing workflows.
This graphic demonstrates the creation of fees and later partial waiving of fees in a workflow.
For more information on this, please see the documentation.
Along with enhanced tools for setting more granular opening hours, workflow for hourly loan rules now track to actual library opening hours and enabling overnight hourly loans to have more consistent behavior.