Evergreen needs a way to completely hide closed/defunct library units

[Chris Sharp]

Currently in Evergreen, organizational units that have been closed can be marked "OPAC visible = false" so they don't show up in the OPAC. However, closed org units continue to be visible in the staff client, most notably in cataloging interfaces and in patron registration. I would not want to truly delete these libraries, but it would be desirable to be able to hide them completely from staff view. Possibly a "deleted" flag on the actor.org_unit object would suffice for this?

[Jason Boyer (jboyer)]

I wonder if this should be made more generic. There is already a wishlist item along this same line for copy locations, and I imagine if we looked hard enough there may be a couple other things that are important enough to keep, but not show in the client any longer. If a developer gets "in the groove" maybe it would be quicker to knock out all of the related changes than it would be to change ous now, locations later, and then possibly other types?

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

+1 to adding a "deleted" flag to actor.org_unit. Time permitting, I may look into this fairly soon.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Thinking about this a little more... implementing a true "this thing does not exist" deleted flag for org units, considering how ubiquitous they are, would be a considerable undertaking. If the only goal is to hide them from a few staff selector widgets, it might make more sense to simply support a "staff_visible" (or similar) field. That way we're not modifying 100 SQL functions.

[Chris Sharp (chrissharp123)]

Hitting this again this morning. Right now I'm thinking of an "active" boolean flag (default "true") that when marked false would remove the unit from staff and patron views (overriding whether or not opac_visible is set to true). Less final than "deleted" and more generic than "staff_visible".

[Jason Boyer (jboyer)]

I don't think there's much benefit to an active flag and worst case we end up with another biblio.record_entry (active AND deleted, who knows what code cares about each...) Since there's nothing *actually* final about deleting most things in Evergreen we may as well stick with it. It could also be used in a less enthusiastic way than most other deleted flags if need be (similar to Bill's comment in #3) That could be expanded into a more thorough deleted flag later without messing with the schema any further.

[Chris Sharp (chrissharp123)]

Okay, since I'm seeing this again today, I'm going to agree with Bill on Comment #3. Let's add a "staff_visible" column and corresponding checkbox in the org_unit UIs so that staff no longer have to see defunct units. Adding to Hack-A-Way 2018 agenda!

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

Adding to this - I like the staff_visible option for use with libraries that are new and not yet open to the public yet, or closed temporarily for renovations. The only place I can think of right now that would likely still need to see org units that are truly closed would be in reports.

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

Another option would be to append "(Hidden from OPAC)" or something like that to the org unit in the staff client selectors.

[Chris Sharp (chrissharp123)]

I have an in-progress branch for this here:

https://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/csharp/lp1277194_staff_visible_org_unit_flag

It works with the Org Unit editor fine, but I'm not successfully filtering out the staff-invisible orgs from the lists. I may need Angular/AngJS experienced eyes on it.

[Christopher Burton (cburton)]

Any push on this 7 years in the making? We just had a branch close for a remodel and can't get the location to not show up in the staff catalogue. The old catalogue would have had it removed, but the new and improved staff cat keeps them in view and allows holds to still be made at that branch if not careful

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

I agree it's still a problem. However, in current Evergreen if you have the Skip for Hold Targeting library setting enabled for the branch then it should prevent holds from being placed with a "circ.holds.target_skip_me" message.

As a workaround until there is a better solution, we have changed the names and codes of our branches to indicate to staff that they are closed. For example, ARL-BKM becomes ZZZ-ARL-BKM and "Athens Bookmobile" to "ZZZ-Athens Bookmobile." (This has the added benefit of pushing those to the bottom of the selection lists, too.)