Add policy to prevent Booking requests over closed days
On behalf of the Product management team we would like to understand the need and use cases of the following 'Planned' feature - any comment is welcome.
Currently, Alma users and Primo patrons can create booking requests in Alma which span over several days, if user tries to book items on closed library days, and the time frame is under the max length policy - Alma will adjust the book start and end time, without checking if the resulting time-span is more than the max length.
This means that patrons can create booking requests that span an entire period a library is closed for (for example, an entire weekend), and there is currently no workaround to make sure such requests are not created.
Customer expects booking requests to be blocked when submitted for a day that the library is closed. When a patron submits via Primo/VE a booking request, or when a staff members submits via Alma, on a day that the library is closed, the start and end date are adjusted to the closing time of the last open day before the booking and the opening time of the first open day after the booking.
Instead of the time being adjusted, they expect these requests to be blocked, or at least some pop-up should appear, since the patron specifically requested a certain day, without knowing the library was closed.
The suggested solution is to Allow institutions to configure a new policy which will block Alma user/Primo/VE patron from booking over days when the library is closed.
New assertions are now available for the Closed Library Booking Management policy to allow institutions to prevent seats being booked for time periods when the library is closed.
For more information please see Alma November Release Notes:
https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Release_Notes/2020/Alma_2020_Release_Notes