MnLINK VDX Blog

I've heard occasionally that some libraries aren't responding to questions in a timely manner. When you don't respond to messages or perform a responsive action you may be putting people at another library in a tough situation. For example, when your Lender Cancel Pending queue has requests in the file it is very important to respond. If you do not give a responsive action, the end user can't request another item.

It's also very important to respond to Borrower Conditional requests. Make sure to perform the responsive action Conditional Reply-Yes or No. Do not just send a Message or the other party will not be able to update the request. If you are contacting your patron for more information you may want to change the Authorization to Acknowledged for the request as a way to let yourself know that something has been done. You can do this by selecting the Acknowledge button on the results display. Do something to move the request along, because someone has taken the time to ask you a question and they are now waiting for a response.

Renewals are a similar matter. As I explain in detail with my Sept. 26 blog posting http://blogs.minitex.umn.edu/mnlink/2006/09/renewals.html if you don't respond to a renewal request it is common practice to assume that the renewal has been granted.

The Messages at the bottom of the Lender and Borrower queues may also require a response. When one party chooses the Message option it will show up here. At the very least there will be some communication that will need to be followed up on with these Messages.

If you have any questions about this posting or any others, don't hesitate to contact me. If you find that you are always struggling to catch up on your workload, please let me know. I'll try to help in any way I can.

Posted by Nick at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Luckily it doesn't happen very often, but when it does what a pain it is to deal with. You know what i mean, the user who accidentally chose the wrong Pickup Location. There is no easy way to deal with this one because even though you can change information in the request with the action Local Change Request Details the information on the Lender's Pick Slip does not change. When the material arrives the only way to know the changed Pickup Location is to select Details and look under the Borrower tab. Who wants to do that on every request? So what is the best way to handle these changes?

With the introduction of the Cancel button on ZPortal we can always tell our users to Cancel a request that has the wrong Pickup Location and place another request. This option works best if the request is not Shipped. Once the item is already Shipped by the Lender and another request is created that copy is unavailable to fill the new request.

Another option is to wait for the request to arrive and the patron is notified that their request is available. You can have your patron contact their library and have them ship it to another location for pick-up.

Of course you can always use my old tried and true method of sticking Post-it note reminders around the edge of your computer monitor to remind you of the many important changes that need to be made and things that need to be done.

The reason I bring this issue up is I am asked this question occasionally by our users and I don't have a real good answer for this one. I refer these questions back to your library and you're the people who need to know what to do with the information. If someone has a good way to handle this type of problem let us all know. Somebody out there must certainly have a better suggestions than mine.

Posted by Nick at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Has anyone else notice the rise in Cancelled requests since the introduction of the Cancel option on the ZPortal? These requests need to be manually completed out of the Borrower Work Queue. Unless you are planning on sending a notification about these Cancelled requests, the process is very easy. The vast majority of these Cancelled requests had the process initiated by the requester.

To start, click on the corresponding number for Cancelled in the Borrower Work Queue. The patron initiated cancellations are usually the ones which have the red note "Request No Longer Required". Select the Bulk Action option of Select all at the top of the page. On the right hand side of the screen you can uncheck any Bulk box that you do not want to Bulk Action. If you have more than one page of results, go to the next page and repeat these steps. You can easily Complete more than a hundred requests at once. When you have selected all of the requests you want to Complete, click Submit. When the Bulk Action screen appears, select the Complete button on the lower left side of the screen. Completing requests does not take as long to process as performing an Action on more that 100 requests. If you do this every couple of days, it should only take you a couple of minutes.

Posted by Nick at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Occasionally we will have patrons who choose to Terminate a request that has already been Shipped. This request will not be responded to by the Lender because the item is already in transit. How do you avoid wasting time processing a request that your patron no longer wants?

If you Receive requests one at a time this is easy. You just have to notice the red wording: Request No Longer Required. This tells you the patron has attempted to Cancel the request.

When you Receive items by Bulk Action you aren't going to see the note in red. You can do the following even after the request has been Received to isolate requests that your patron has chosen to Cancel. First under Your Library's Role choose the radio button for Borrower. Then check the box Display Terminated requests only. Finally choose the Sort by option of Last Action Date. If you Received something today, those requests will appear first in the list.

Posted by Nick at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just a reminder about the Terminate Request/Cancel Request functions.

The Terminate Request function is initiated when a user chooses the Cancel option in their ZPORTAL account. It is also a possible Action in VDX. When this occurs while the request is Pending in the Borrower Work Queue the request will move to the Cancel Pending file with the addition of a line of text in the body of the bibliographic information which says “Request No Longer Required”. This note appears in a red font and is hard to miss. When the user chooses the Cancel option in their ZPORTAL account after the request is shipped the request will stay in the Shipped file. The Lender will have the request appear in their Cancel Pending file. The Lender will have the responsibility of responding Cancel Reply-Yes or Cancel Reply-No.

• If the Lender chooses Cancel Reply-Yes, this will cause the request to be automatically Completed on their end. On the Borrower end the request moves from their Cancel Pending file to their Cancelled file. The Borrower will then need to manually Complete the request. This request will continue to count against the user’s Request Limit until the request has been Completed.

• If the Lender chooses Cancel Reply-No, the request remains active and goes back to the Lender file it was in at the time that the Action was initiated. The Borrower will also have the request restored to its previous Status file, and the note “Request No Longer Required” will continue to appear.
  

If the user chooses to Cancel a request that is still in the New file, you should just Complete the request. The request will appear with the note “Request No Longer Required” in the New file, but it has not gone out to any Lender. Because no lender has been contacted you should Complete the request.

The Cancel option in VDX will respond the way it did before the upgrade.

If anything doesn’t seem clear or if you have more questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Posted by Nick at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Remember that when you want to cancel a request you will first need to open up the request with Local Change Request Details. Then you select the Rota tab, highlight everything in the Preliminary Rota box, and then click on Delete Selection. When you are finished, click on Submit. Then you can cancel the request. If you just select Cancel without removing the rota first, the request will just move on to the next lender in the rota.

There is an upgrade with the new version of the system that will take care of all of these steps for you. This new feature is called Terminate Request. Cancel will still exist as an option. If all goes as planned you will all get a chance to use this feature in the live system within 2 weeks.

Posted by Nick at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)