RE: autonotices, statistics & printing

["Seeman, Corey Glenn" <CSeeman at UTNet dot UToledo dot Edu>]

I am late on this thread, but I have two thoughts.
 
First, the ability to provide custom email subject lines is part of Millennium Silver.  (Please see Users Manual pages # 105793 & 105688).  This can only be done when sending notices via Millennium, but does not require that you send them via autonotices.
 
When you setup your notice parameters in Milcirc, then you have the option of identifying the email subject line.  This will allow us great options and can vary what we do insofar as sending information out to our patrons.  For example, we traditionally send out hold pickups and cancellations at the same time.  Now that we have custom email subject lines, we split them into two different saved notices.  However, since they both run on autonotices, we are doing less work that ever before.
 
This is a good segway to talk about the second point.  We have established a clear policy that students and faculty need to enter their    email into their patron record to get any notice.  The only notice that we print and mail are the bills.  We did this for a few reasons, but all were financial.  While some people complained at first, but simultaniously offering new notices for hold pickups (previously we asked that they check their patron record), we felt that we were improving services.  This is something that we constantly remind people at the circ desk and when doing library instruction.
We used to keep counts of notices sent out, but since autonotices does not generate that information, we have stopped keeping it.  Turns out that it was not very useful information for us anyway.
 
Best -- Corey
 
Corey Seeman
Asst. Dean for Resource and Systems Management
University of Toledo
 
corey dot seeman at utoledo dot edu
http://library.utoledo.edu/userhomes/cseeman/
(419) 530-2333
 

________________________________

From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org on behalf of McGranahan, Jamen
Sent: Fri 12/17/2004 9:40 AM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: RE: autonotices, statistics & printing



I get a copy of every notice that is sent out, and so I know how many
notices are "delivered" via e-mail.  However, since the subject line is all
the same for the different kinds of notices, what I have had to do is create
an Excel spreadsheet and each morning, when I come to work, look at the
notices and basically fill in the spreadsheet for that day on the types of
notices that were sent (Overdues, Fines, Holds, Courtesy).  Since we are a
small institution, it hasn't become overwhelming - yet.  However, I can see
how this would be a pain if a large institution wanted to keep statistics on
the notices that were sent.  I checked the Statistics part of Millennium and
couldn't find a way to generate a report on this (hence, the reason why I'm
doing it by hand).  Maybe this could be an enhancement??

As for the other issue of undeliverable e-mails, we too have several a day
that we have to print out and send via snail mail.  Basically, since these
undeliverables are sent via e-mail to the default e-mail address, we have to
copy and paste from the e-mail message into Word and then print it out from
Word.  It really is a pain and we wish the undeliverables would stay in the
queue to be printed from Millennium, but we've not figured a way to do it.
If anyone has any bright ideas, I'd love to hear from you!

Oh, and everyone -- MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Jamen McGranahan
Systems Services Librarian
Waggoner Library/Trevecca Nazarene University

"Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and
whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me." - Mark
9:37 NIV

-----Original Message-----
From: Carolyn McDonald [mailto:C dot McDonald at murdoch dot edu dot au]
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:26 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: RE: autonotices, statistics & printing

Jim,

We are also using autonotices, and we are manually handling those that
haven't been emailed. I initially thought that this must be an error, as
we certainly don't want the un-emailed notices to be sent in a batch to
us by email, or to pick them up by ftp - we want them to be queued so
that we can print them when we come to work (autonotices run at 5am).

I initially opened a call with the helpdesk, thinking we must have done
something wrong in the setup, and the call is still open. But the
consultant working on it said he couldn't replicate our problem on
another server, so I don't quite know what that means. But one of the
III trainers tell me that this is how the system was designed, so people
can batch them and therefore use other sorts of email packages to batch
send them. This isn't the way we want to use it, and it is a real
problem. We want those notices to stay on the system, and be picked up
later in the day in our print run (we print bills, and print for some
locations whose patrons don't have email).

Fortunately, the vast majority of our location's notices go by email, so
we are only left with 10 or so a day to handle manually (and I mean
manually - we are cutting up bits of paper and putting them in
envelopes, which is a real backward step). But it does take the shine
off what is otherwise a really useful function. If you get any further
information, I would be very pleased to find out what else we can do.

Regards

Carolyn


-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Mann, James H.
Sent: 16 December 2004 10:10 PM
To: innopac at innopacusers dot org
Subject: autonotices, statistics & printing


I have been following the thread on autonotices, and I'm confused.
I'm using autonotices for courtesy notices and everyone is happy. But,
each day I get an email with a few hundred undelivered courtesy notices,
and no indication of how many notices were emailed. If I were to print
the failed notice email, I don't see how I could parse it to fit on
notice paper.
I'd like to use autonotices for holds and overdues, but each morning we
end up printing a number of notices, and since the beginning of time we
have been logging the number of notices we send.
So, if you use autonotices how do you send a job to the print queue, and
are any statistics generated?

Jim Mann
Technology Coordinator
Greene County Public Library
Xenia Ohio 45385
(937) 376-2996 x210
mailto: jmann at gcpl dot lib dot oh dot us



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