Staff catalog place hold for patron could be more durable

[Bill Erickson]

Evergreen 3.8 / Effects 3.6 and up.

Here's the gist of what I hope to fix:

1. Search for a patron
2. Select a patron and navigate to the Holds tab.
3. Click the Place Hold button
4. Search the catalog
5. Middle click / control-click a title in the search results to open a new tab.
6. Click the Place Hold button on the title.

Note that even though a patron was selected as the hold recipient, the holds placement interface is no longer aware of which patron the hold is for. The patron's barcode has to be re-entered.

This is the result of how the patron barcode is propagated via URL parameters and stored within the Angular catalog service. I propose we make his data more durable by storing the hold recipient barcode in local storage instead of passing the value via URL param.

[Bill Erickson (berick)]

Here's a patch:

https://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/user/berick/lp1949226-hold-for-patron-more-durable

[John Amundson (jamundson)]

I just tested this as part of Feedback Fest.

I can confirm that the patron data persists when opening records in a new tab.

There is a side effect of this, though. The patron data will continue to persist even through fresh catalog searches from new tabs.

To test:

1. Search for a patron
2. Select a patron and navigate to the Holds tab.
3. Click the Place Hold button
4. The catalog will open. Note the patron's name at the top of the screen.
5. Return home or even open up a new tab.
6. Open up or search the catalog. Note that the patron's name persists.

This is true even if you place a hold for a patron. The only way to clear the patron's name is by hitting the Clear button or by pulling up another patron's record and clicking to place a hold.

This has the potential to get really confusing and lead to undesired holds.

I do not know if there would be way that allows the patron's data to persist through opening results in new tabs while not persisting through a brand new, unrelated catalog search.

Ideally:
- same search > patron's data persists during the session.
- new search (i.e. going to Cataloging/Search>Search the Catalog or navigating to a non-catalog related page) > patron's data would no longer persist.

[Jennifer Weston (jweston)]

Seeing same side effect John documented. I agree that this could cause confusion leading to undesired holds.

I tested against current 3.7 and 3.6 behavior. Currently, the patron data persists only until you interact with a non-catalog search screen. Example: after initiating hold for a patron following the steps listed above, go to Patron Search, previous patron is cleared -- then go to Search Catalog and no patron data is reserved. If you follow the same steps using this patch on terran-textbox, the patron is very durable across all of the screens and can only be cleared following the methods John noted.

+1 to ideal paths suggested

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

See bug 1996818

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

Marking this one as a duplicate of bug 1996818 since that one has working code.