Improve Close Lost Loans Job
The existing close lost loans job is a great idea. However, it doesn't perform as described here: http://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Knowledge_Articles/Create_a_set_to_close_lost_loans
To improve this job please, make it possible to detach lost loans from patrons accounts AND withdraw those items in the same job. Also, please make it possible to use a field such as due date or checkout date to set the criteria.
Thanks!
Background: The close lost loans job removes items that have been lost for a long time from the patron's record. The fines remain, but the items no longer show up as checked out to that patron. This allows the items to be deleted from Alma, and cleans up the patron's record.
The knowledge article says that the job it will also delete the items that have been lost for a long time. Actually, it only removes them from the patron's account, and then marks them as missing. This is problematic if you often run a missing report and send your pages out for shelf checks. They will be checking for items that are known to have been lost while checked out to a patron!
Another problem with the job as described in the knowledge article is that the article suggests using the "modification date" field to set your criteria for how old the lost items should be before they are removed. When I run queries using it, they don't return any results. This may be because our migration was not too long ago, so perhaps the modification date for all our records is the date of migration?
My work around has been to extract a set of bar codes using Analytics, which allows me to use the Due Date field in my criteria. After I have created an itemized the set from the barcodes I extracted from Alma and run the close lost loans job, I then have to run a second withdraw job to get the items all the way out of the system.
Dana M
shared this idea
Hello All,
This idea has been closed as part of a cleanup process for ideas older than two years with fewer than 20 votes.
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Alma Product Team
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Martin I Patrick
commented
I agree with adding more customization like due date when running the job. However some institutions use a location for withdrawn items rather than the withdrawal job so that would need to be an option rather than a default.
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Jung Ah Lee commented
Hi, has there been any progress or changes to made to the Close Lost Loans job? I have just tested it out and am seeing that after the job runs, the item's process type remains as Lost. It does not turn to Missing. I've filed a ticket but is this the behavior that you are seeing?
Recently, our shelf-checks of Missing items have been somewhat infrequent and I don't know how frequent they were before covid but we do shelf-checks before sending the items to be considered for reordering. So I think it actually works out better if the item's process type would be set to Missing after this job runs but when I tested just now, the item's process type remained at Lost.
It would be nice if Alma had a "Lost and Closed" status kind of like "Lost and Paid" so that we'd know exactly what happened to the loan after the Close Lost Loans job (which actually closes all kinds of loans) is run.