Manage Item Returns: Send one Return Receipt Letter for all returned items per user
Returning items via "Manage Item Returns" generates one Return Receipt Letter per returned item. This means if one user returns several items he will get several e-mails, one for each item. This is annoying for users. The problem arises especially when the drop box for returns is used and the staff scans in lots of unsorted returned items from different users.
Scanned-in returns should be collected in a cache and allocated to the users who loaned them. After pressing "Exit" and closing the scan-in-session one return receipt per user containing all returns belonging to this user should be send.
Thanks and best regards,
Falk Hartwig
Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg
Falk Hartwig
shared this idea
There is no user session in Return Items, which is designed to enable returning items of multiple user. It is therefore technically not possible to aggregate notices for a specific user
-
Anonymous
commented
I support Roland: The suggestion by C. Havely of having a daily aggregation of returns (or both loans and returns, while we are at it) seems like an elegant solution. Surely such an aggregation would be possible with Alma analytics, but a genuine solution would be far preferrable.
There's still some time left for posting to NERS (13th January). Worth a shot?
-
Roland Fabritius
commented
Hello,
having this suggestion close as "not possible" after 2.5 years is very disappointing. As the other commentators have pointed out, bombarding users who use the book drop with e-mails is poor customer service. This is all the more relevant in times of ever increasing spam mail volumes and stricter e-mail filtering blocking "identical" e-mails.The suggestion by C. Havely of having a daily aggregation of returns (or both loans and returns, while we are at it) seems like an elegant solution. Surely such an aggregation would be possible with Alma analytics, but a genuine solution would be far preferrable.
Best regards
Roland Fabritius -
C Havely commented
Is it possible for Alma to allow us to configure it so the "return receipts" letters can also be aggregated like the overdue notices? See this link re: how the overdue notices work: https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Knowledge_Articles/Enabling_Aggregate_Lost%2F%2FOverdue_Notifications
I agree with Katie, there should not be a "work around" for this process. There should be a standard configuration that would allow libraries to set it up so a returned receipt would reflect all of the items returned at the same time for a given borrower on one "returned" receipt.
Thanks, C Havely
Hawkeye Community College -
Katie Wheeler
commented
Cannot overstate this one. I realize the current work around is to go into the user's account and return via their account, but in reality most of the time we do not either know which account checked out the items and do not want or have time to look it up.
Return Items receipts should be batched when the Exit button is pressed or after ~5 minutes, whichever comes first. The other day a student worker returned 50 items checked out from one user, and the user received 50 return receipt emails. That is not good customer service, when it comes down to it.