Wishlist: Quick Way to Place and Capture Holds for Available Items

[Jennifer Pringle]

Evergreen 3.9.1

One of our libraries has requested there be a way to quickly place and capture a hold when you already have the item in hand and the patron's barcode.

The scenario is a patron has called the library looking for an item or items, library staff pull the items to put aside for the patron to come and get but want to have them on hold so that other patrons can't place a hold and the items are linked to the requesting patron.

Currently the quickest way to accomplish this is:
- Retrieve the patron
- Click on the Holds tab
- Click Place Hold
- Do a Numeric Search by Item Barcode (which is two additional clicks if not your default search)
- Click Place Hold on the search result
- Click Place Hold on the Place Holds screen
- Check the item in (to capture the hold)
(repeat for each item requested by the patron)

From our library "It would be nice if there was a quick hold workflow, for times when you have grabbed a book off the shelf for a patron and want to put it on hold until they get here in a couple of days so that it doesn't get requested by someone else. I think ideally it would be from the item status screen where you scan the item barcode in, then have a click down option that links to the patron search to pick the right person, and if it could have a way to capture the hold through that as soon as you make it so you don't have to do all those steps too.

Currently it's about 8 steps to do it through placing a hold by searching the catalogue and capturing the hold, and I feel like when you have the book in your hand there should be almost an instant way to do it."

[John Amundson (jamundson)]

Tested in 3.7 and 3.10, and there should already be a way to do roughly 90% of this.

- Scan the item in Item Status
- Go to Actions > Request Items
- Enter the patron's barcode (no Patron Search)
- Choose hold type (e.g. copy hold or title hold) and preferences/pickup
- Click OK
- Go to Actions > Check In to capture the hold

Seems like this functionality could be improved to do a little more.
- Add Patron Search button to the modal
- Add option to place a hold and immediately capture the item (this could be complicated)

[Benjamin Kalish (bkalish)]

This would be nice. In response to John's comment, staff will often be on the patron record when they start this, and they will often have several books for the same patron, so if our goal is to streamline the process then the solution is unlikely to be from the Item Status screen.

[Elizabeth Thomsen (et-8)]

I like this -- I know in these situations it can be tempting to staff to skip placing the hold and just put the item on the holds shelf or elsewhere behind the desk, especially when the patron says they're on their way, but that's just wrong. Sounds like it would be good to have a quick way to do this starting from either the patron or the item.

[Mike Rylander (mrylander)]

Oh, this is interesting. How about this:

Starting from a patron record (either from patron search or the patron record following the Circulation -> Check Out menu option), you have a [Quick hold] button above the Open Hold Requests grid. Clicking that brings up a modal where you scan the item barcode. Doing that retrieves bib info, etc, to crosscheck. At this point a Hold Type selector of some sort (radio group, dropdown?) becomes available. There's either a Capture Immediately checkbox, or maybe a separate (secondary) submit button, to capture right there or just place the hold without capture.

[Elizabeth Thomsen (et-8)]

Just confirming this should still be an active wishlist item through Release 3.11. I like this idea and assuming I'm following the workflow Mike describes, this could streamline things for this common holds situation.