RE: [IUG] Patron self-registration (what happens upon error)

["Yung, Shirley" <shirley dot yung at mountainview dot gov>]

When we set up the self registration module a year ago, we were told
that there won't be any error messages.  We even had to supply our own
client-side validation codes to check the data entry.  I don't know if
any further work has been done by Innovative to make this module more
'friendly' and 'professional'.   

We ask our patron if he or she has received an acknowledgement message,
'Thank you...'.  If no acknowledgement, then the application is not
successful.  Staff will then have to locate the problem, which is
usually duplicate record.  Unfortunately, some patrons do not pay
attention to the screen!

I would also like to know if any other libraries have come up with a
better solution.   

Shirley Yung
Circulation Supervisor
Mountain View Public Library
585 Franklin Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
650-526-7027
650-962-0438 (fax)
shirley dot yung at mountainview dot gov

-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Philip Youngholm
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 3:14 PM
To: innopac at innopacusers dot org
Subject: [IUG] Patron self-registration (what happens upon error)

We're about to implement patron self-registration in Release 2006.

We've found that if the form is rejected by the server (for instance, 
because it fails the server-side email address validation, or the system

finds a duplicate patron record), the patron receives no indication of 
that.  The form is just re-displayed, and there is no error message.

Obviously, in this circumstance, we'd like some kind of message, such as

"We're sorry, but we can't complete your registration online.  Please 
contact the library for assistance."  A more specific message or an 
error code that the patron could give staff indicating the exact reason 
for rejection would be nice too, but we're not foolish enough to expect 
that.

Do other libraries with patron self-registration experience this, or did

we miss something while setting it up?

I have had a call open with Innovative for three months on this.

Note that this doesn't have anything to do with client-side (JavaScript)

validation, or (apparently) the known issue that is being fixed in 
Release 2006 1.3.

Phil Youngholm
MARINet
www.marinet.info
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