Hide recent patrons in drop-down menu and make available only upon request.
Hide recent patrons in drop-down menu and make available only upon request. Although it is convenient to be able to access recent patrons' records, exposed names can lead to fulfillment errors (staff works in wrong patron account) and breach of confidentiality.
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The March 2018 Release made a change such that the user's previous selections history now displays the list of previous selections only when you click the clock icon
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Ann-Louise commented
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Carol Banks commented
Two issues here:
1. The list of most recent patrons are visible. I would like to see a drop down option, like we used to have, to see those recent patrons please. This would be private, but give us the knowledge that we sometimes need to help a recent patron.
2. When patron types in their library card number and then presses enter, on the check out screen it then defaults to, not the current patron but to the patron at the top of the list. This is not good. We do not want to check material out to the wrong patron. Yes, I can correct it, but it is way too easy to make that mistake. Please I want to check out material to the correct patron only. This will cause a huge issue down the line when books are due back, and that patron says they've never checked that item before. And guess what, they would be correct. This is not acceptable library process. -
Gemma Bayliss commented
It is far too easy to end up selecting a recent user instead of a current one. Please allow this to be an optional feature so that we can turn it off to avoid potential errors with this.
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Jonas Enberg commented
This may be a very important issue in view of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will be enforced in all EU countries from the 25th of May.
One could well argue that a feature such as this does not sufficiently protect personal data (in relation to the GDPR), especially if a national identification number is used as the primary identifier in Alma (the primary id is shown in the drop-down).
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Kelly Nelson commented
I would like to hide recent patron names in the drop-down menu to prevent errors and items being checked out to the wrong patron accidentally due to the drop down menu. The wrong name could too easily be selected. Please make it a priority for libraries to be able to disable or hide the names of recent patrons in the drop-down menu. Thank you.
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K Floyd commented
This happens to us! Here's the SalesForce case I created describing how errors happen:
Recent history in Manage Patron Services causing problems, please enable disabling it
Description--The new recent history feature in the Manage Patron Services screen has caused more problems than it helps with. Here's what has been happening for us:
1) The student worker opens Manage Patron Services. Because she has served several other patrons before, when the cursor is in the Look-up or select box, a list of up to 5 of those names appears below the search box automatically.
2) Sometimes, the mouse on the screen is just below the look-up box, causing one of those names to be "selected" even though the student worker didn't intentionally select a name--that's just where the mouse happened to be or where it got bumped to.
3) Then the patron is directed to tap his ID on the HID card reader -- that submits the patron's ID number + an automatic return. The return comes soooo quickly, that instead of letting Alma look up the correct name by ID, the return functions as selecting whichever name was highlighted.
4) Here's where the student worker makes an error (though what can you expect from busy undergrads during finals week?): she sees a name in the box and just presses enter again to bring up the patron account, even though that is NOT the correct patron.Here's the response I got on January 3, 2018: "The ability to disable this feature is an enhancement request that is currently part of the Alma road map, and is being handled internally by our Development team and Product Managers. As a result, a target timeline and other release related information is not available at this time. Our current enhancement workflow is to set these Cases to Closing; upon release of the new funtionality, furhter information regarding this improvement will be available in the appropriate Release Notes. If you have any questions, please let me know!"