Angular Holdings View: Active Date and Create Date should be separate columns

[Tiffany Little]

In the new Angular Holdings View, there is one column called "Active/Create Date." Those can be different dates. They should be in two separate columns.

[Jennifer Weston (jweston)]

+1 agree and confirmed

[Jennifer Pringle (jpringle-u)]

Agree and confirmed this is still an issue in 3.7

[Tiffany Little (tslittle)]

Here's a patch for this: https://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/tlittle/lp1916600_holdingsview_createdate

[Mary Llewellyn (mllewell)]

I have tested this code and consent to signing off on it with my name, Mary Llewellyn and my email address, <email address hidden>.

[Galen Charlton (gmc)]

Noting that that OPAC intentionally combines the Active and Create date; for some background, see bug 1366026.

I'm not sure that we necessarily need to replicate that, but I note that copy.active_date in the template is not *just* the active date, it's currently set as follows:

  copy.active_date = copy.active_date || copy.create_date;

(Also, the Angular logic ignores the circ.holds.age_protect.active_date library setting, while the OPAC uses it)

I've no objection to the notion of splitting the columns, particularly for staff use, but if we do that, shouldn't active_date be brought over as is? It can be NULL if the copy isn't active yet. And if so, do we want to somehow highlight copies that are not yet active?

Setting to "needsdiscussion"

[Elaine Hardy (ehardy)]

I don't know that this needs further discussion. As catalogers, we need to be able to see in holdings view the create date and the active date so having a second column is beneficial for troubleshooting.

Having no date in the column is fine and no need to be highlighted since the empty column would be our clue, in my opinion.

[Tiffany Little (tslittle)]

Galen (or anyone else who reads this comment), can you point me to where this part is:

  copy.active_date = copy.active_date || copy.create_date;

? I don't see it in that template or in the holdings.ts file. I'm not sure if I'm just missing it somewhere. When I worked on the patch, the column for active date was null whenever there was no active date on the copy, which seems like the desired behavior?

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

Tiffany, that string appears in:

Open-ILS/src/eg2/src/app/staff/catalog/record/copies.component.ts

[Tiffany Little (tslittle)]

Awesome, thanks Michele! The one that I *didn't* look at. Will take a look. Thanks!

[Tiffany Little (tslittle)]

Ah, okay, I figured out why I wasn't looking at that one. Unless I'm mistaken, copies.component.html/ts is for the Item Table tab. Where indeed, active/create date are combined. But this bug is for splitting out Active vs Create Date in the Holdings tab, which is governed by holdings.ts/html and where the patch is for.

I see the Item Table tab as more for Circ staff, whereas Holdings View is more for catalogers who might need the specificity of having those two dates completely separate.

[Galen Charlton (gmc)]

Noted re copies.component.ts vs. holdings.component.ts.

Seems like we effectively have three fields, then:

Active/Create Date (circ use?)
Active Date
Create Date

I think that's a tenable state of affairs, but in that case I would want to rename the field on the copies.component.ts side so that we avoid conflating active+create and create date fields. I'll write a follow-up patch.

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

I don't mean to muddy the waters further here, but I always wished the Active/Create Date, which indicates the start time for Age Hold Protection, was a little smarter.

Instead of showing the start time, it would be more helpful to show the time that Age Hold Protection expires, so staff wouldn't have to do the math.

[Chrisy Schroth (cschroth)]

+1 for Elaine's comments. We just upgraded to 3.7.1 late last week and I now understand this bug (as I didn't when I looked at it during Bug Squashing Week).

I only had 2 orders, one on 9/9 and one on 9/21, and 2 items on the bib, and couldn't figure out where on earth the "extra" item that was created on 10/1 came from. I was imagining all sorts of error scenarios and how I was going to fix the problem until I finally realized the active date was trumping the create date.

[Tiffany Little (tslittle)]

Some discussion having been had, I'm going to remove the needsdiscussion tag and re-add the signedoff tag since Mary signed off on it on 8/9/21.

Michele, I agree that being able to actually see when age protection expires without having to do the math would be super useful. I went ahead and created bug 1946814, if you want to add more heat/comments on there too?

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

In master ca 3.8, there is no way to see an item's create date in a column in Holdings View.

The Active/Create Date column displays only the Active Date from the item. If the item's Active Date is null, then no date is displayed in the Active/Create Date column.

An item's create date is vital to catalogers, as is when (or if) an item became active. Having the two distinct columns in Holdings View restores gives catalogers all the info they need.

Pushed to rel_3_8, and master. There was a conflict in rel_3_7, so it hasn't been pushed there.

Thanks Tiffany, Mary, and all who weighed in!