Patron self-registration form

[Bill Erickson]

Support for a TPAC-based web form which allows patrons to self-register for library accounts. The form will collect patron information and, once submitted, will create a pending (staged) user account. From here, using the existing pending patrons functionality within the Evergreen staff client, staff may approve or deny pending users.

Additionally, the plan is to implement automated pending patron data expiration via an org unit setting. With this, pending accounts which have been in the database too long will be deleted.

Here is my full development proposal:

http://yeti.esilibrary.com/dev/pub/techspecs/patron-self-reg.html

[Kathy Lussier (klussier)]

Hi Bill,

This looks great! I have a couple of questions.

Are pending patrons able to perform functions like placing holds on materials?

Will the self-registration immediately give the patron a barcode so that it can be used to access other library resources? Of course, this could be a sticky issue given licensing concerns, but I know of other libraries that have been able to allow this as long as the patron accounts expires if not subsequently verified. It might be a nice feature to have, but maybe it would need to be optional.

Looking forward to seeing it in action!

Kathy

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Hi Kathy,

Pending patrons will not be able to log in or access any (authenticated) library resources. The goal is only to make the registration process more efficient. The pending accounts will have to be approved and completed by staff before the patron can do anything.

Similarly, I was not planning to generate barcodes, since a barcode will be issued when staff finalize the patron in the staff patron registration form.

-b

[Bill Ott (bott)]

Coincidentally, GRPL is planning to put this into production within the next week. In our case, we chose to include the ident_type and ident_value as well.

Worth noting, there are two bug fixes from Jeff Godin (1104516 & 1104517 ) that are required for the process to complete normally.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Thanks, Bill. I'll take a look those bugs.

Note to self: my tech specs suggest a new column staging.user_stage.create_date. I just noticed the row_date column, though, which serves the same purpose. No 'create_date' column is needed.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

I'm hoping to get this wrapped up before the 2.5 cut-off. Adding 2.5-alpha milestone as suggested by our fearless leader dbwells. I've also added a blurb to the 2.5 roadmap.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Though I neglected to mention this in my dev proposal, the UI will also display the example strings stored in the ui.patron.edit.*.example org unit settings next to each field as appropriate.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Code pushed to working => user/berick/lp1207396-patron-self-reg

To activate the feature, set the opac.allow_pending_user org unit setting to true wherever you wish to allow pending patrons. Once set, the "Request Library Card" link will appear along the bottom of the TPAC.

There's a fair amount of new patron-facing verbiage in this feature. Suggestions on changes to text (or anything else) welcome and appreciated.

[Dan Wells (dbw2)]

This was tested with at *least* an alpha's worth of rigor, pushed with conflicts resolved (and a few trivial changes). Thanks, Bill!

[Tanya Prokrym (tanya-prokrym-deactivatedaccount)]

Just a note on testing -- I did more than an alpha's worth of rigor.

I tested this feature pretty thoroughly via the OPAC and the staff client. Within the OPAC, I tested incorrect data entry via the OPAC, reviewed error messages, and tried to ensure the OPAC window was patron-friendly.

Within the staff client, I tested numerous scenarios to ensure patron requests were deleted properly if patrons never "finished" their registration, information was transferred correctly when they did "complete" their request by coming into the library, and that the new library settings associated with this feature worked properly.

This is the first development project that NC Cardinal has paid for and I hope that we are able to fund many more in the future!
Thank you, Tanya