Emailing Hold Available Letters

Update on Hold Available Letters

Taken from an email by Jamie Bush describing the New Process dated 9/25/2007

"Hold available letters are produced in the circulation client (online), as opposed to other notices that are produced in the overnights (batch or offline). A process has been developed that allows campuses to process their hold available letters and emails at the same time that the offline/batch notices are processed.

When a letter or notice is produced online in the client it is possible to configure the client (print.ini) so that the letter/notice is actually saved to the server instead of being printed. This is the method that is used for producing hold available emails. When an item that has a hold request is returned the client will generally produce two letters, a hold available letter and a hold slip.

This new method will print the hold slip as usual and save the hold available letter to the server as a single letter with a special printid and format number that is specific to each campus. The overnight process collects all the hold letters produced and creates a single print file containing all the hold available letters from the previous day. The campus can then include that print file in their normal daily notice and letter processing.

The overnight process will also insert into those letters with email addresses the admin email address that is used in your other notices. When the hold available file is processed, all letters with email addresses will be emailed and those without will be printed. The advantage to this method is that the campus will get a copy of the email. The disadvantage is that the printed hold letters will be going out a day later that usual. Considering that most of these notices will be emails, this usually is not a concern. "

I have been testing the emailing of the hold available notice. As I have stated to many of you before, the emailing of the hold available notice will be very different from the process used to produce the other email notices. I think I should outline the differences and options at this point so that you may consider your holds processing workflow and how the emailing of the holds available notice will or could change this.

Background on printed hold letters:

Hold available notices are produced when an item is checked in at your workstation which is a valid hold pickup location. Currently two printouts are produced, a hold slip and a hold available letter. The letter informs the user that the holds is available for pickup at the location. One change that we made to this letter very early in the Aleph implemenation was on the return address. Originally the return address of this letter was the owning sublibrary of the item. We changed the template so that the return address was based on the pickup location. This will be important when we work on the email templates. Back to the holds processing, once the hold available letter is printed it is stuffed and mailed by the pickup location. This is my understanding of the hold shelf processing, your's could be different.

Background on email notice processing:

Overdue/lost/recall/fine email notices are produced by an overnight process. The sending of the actual email is done locally by either a print daemon or using the print file option in task manager. The part that is important here is that the sending of the email is done at a time and place (PC) chosen by the local library.

Producing hold available emails:

There are two options for the production of hold available letter which I will refer to as synchronous (at the time of check in) and asynchronous (not at the time of check in).

Synchronous production of hold available emails:

• item is checked in as normal
• hold slip is printed
• PC where item is checked produces email
• email is produced at the time of item goes on hold shelf
• if patron has no email a letter is printed as usual
• copy of email notice can be printed at the time the email is sent
• copy of email cannot be sent to admin email box
• configuration of PC where holds are processed is required for email to be produced
• From address in email can be configured to local PC. This means that email From "name and address" can be different from one branch to another, or from one PC to another.

Asynchronous production of hold available emails:

• item is checked in as normal
• hold slip is printed
• hold available letter is sent to server for processing by print daemon
• if patron has no email address letter will be printed when processed by print daemon
• copy of email cannot be sent to admin email box
• copy of email notice can be printed at the time the print daemon is run
• print daemon can run at a later time to send email and print letters (similar to other email notices)
• the From "address and name" of the email will not be from the local PC where the holds were processed.

Some considerations:

• is the PC where you process holds a stand-alone or networked installation? If it is a networked installation there may some problems using either of the methods described above due to the use of configuration files for these setups. Testing may reveal this is not an issue.
• if your campus has mutltiple pickup locations/hold shelves, using the asynchronous method may not be an option. This has to do with how and where you would run a print daemon. If a centralized print daemon is used then processing of the printed hold letters would need to be examined. For example, if one location is running the print daemon how would the letters then get distributed to the pickup locations for distribution to the patron?

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