Request Manager enhancements 3/31 and more...

The latest from NHAIS Notes... Request Manager enhancements 3/31 No NC Van Mon 3/30 Your Preferences New Request Manager views Public Library Survey UPDATE

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Tonight's the night the Request Manager page in the NHAIS ILL System gets a new look. The system will be offline for the software update starting at 10 o'clock tonight (Tuesday, Mar. 31). The outage should last no more than 15 minutes.

Key Changes:
•    Borrower Action Items and Lender Action Items will be displayed in a default set of groups of related statuses.
o    A count for the total number of requests in the Borrower Action Items and Lender Action Items sections is displayed.
•    Awaiting Lender Action and Awaiting Borrower Action sections replace “Items awaiting trading partner response” for borrowers and lenders, respectively.
o    A count for the total number of requests in the Awaiting Lender Action and Awaiting Borrower Action sections is displayed.
•    A Complete section, with a count, includes just those requests in “Complete” status – they have gone through the full ILL cycle and have been checked in by the lender.
•    There are three options for which statuses to display:
o    “All” – this is the default setting and includes all statuses, even those with 0 active requests
o    “Active” – includes only statuses with a count greater than 0 
o    “Unreviewed Notes” – includes only statuses with one or more requests with an unreviewed note
•    The displayed status selection (All, Active, or Unreviewed Notes) is sticky and will persist between sessions for individual logins.
o    The status selection remains available even when scrolling to the bottom of the Request Manager.
•    Active statuses with at least one request with an “Unreviewed Note” will display with a red dot next to the status to easily alert staff that there are notes to be reviewed.
•    The main sections (Borrower Action Items, Awaiting Lender Action, Complete, Lender Action Items, Awaiting Borrower Action, and Complete) can be individually collapsed or expanded.
•    Direct access to the ILL Administration User Guide section on the Request Manager is provided.
•    The Request Manager will automatically refresh every 30 seconds to display any updated statuses, e.g., new “Pending” requests in the Lender Action Items section.

The first two screenshots below are examples of the Request Manager with “All” statuses selected. These samples provided by Auto-Graphics include some spaces and statuses not used in the NHAIS ILL System. The order in which statuses are listed also varies from what you'll see in our system.

1.    “All” is the default selection.
a.    Click the 3-dot icon to access “Help” in the ILL Admin User Guide.
2.    There are 17 requests altogether in the Borrower Action Items grouping (4 Awaiting Approval + 2 Overdue + 5 Not Received/Overdue + 6 Expired).
a.    Click “^” to collapse the section.
3.    Requests for which the borrower is expected to take the next action are indicated with the count of requests in that status.
a.    Click in the row with a count to open that list of requests in that status. 
b.    Statuses with a count of 0 are displayed but grayed out.
4.    The red dot next to a status indicates there is at least one request in that status with an unreviewed note.
5.    When scrolling on the page, as shown below, the option to change the status selection remains available at the top of the page.

In the example below, the same Request Manager as shown above is limited to “Active” statuses.
•    “No Request” displays when there are no active requests in a section. 

In the example below, the same Request Manager as shown above is limited to “Unreviewed Notes.”

NOTE: Remember that the selection for All, Active, or Unreviewed Notes is sticky so it persists between logins. If “No Requests” is displayed for all sections, as above, check to be sure “Unreviewed Notes” isn’t selected as it will not display requests without an Unreviewed Note.

ALSO: The Request Manager has been added as an option for a staff user’s default opening page. To change the default opening page for your login, go to Your Account and select Your Preferences:

Select “Request Manager” from the drop-down menu in “Default Opening Page”: 

Did you know you can have the NHAIS ILL System go straight to the Staff Dashboard or Advanced Search or (coming soon) Request Manager whenever you log in? It's one of the settings on the Your Preferences page:

NHAIS ILL libraries are each assigned 3 different logins with different privileges. Each login can also store a preferred opening page, how search results are sorted, which indexes you'd like to see when you open the Advanced Search page, and a number of other settings. Go to Your Account > Your Preferences, make your selections from drop-down menus, click Save, and see how it works. If you're not sure, just leave settings at "Use Library Default."

As previously mentioned, there's a new look ahead for the Request Manager screen in the NHAIS ILL System. Here's an updated look at what you might see at the start of next month.

When you first open the new Request Manager, you'll see all request statuses listed but the ones with a count of zero will be grayed out. The total number of active requests in each grouping (such as Borrower Action Items) is displayed to the right of the grouping's label. You can hide all those grayed-out entries by selecting the Active tab in the upper right.

In this view, any grouping with all zeroes will display "No Requests." Note the red dot in the above example, next to Overdue on the borrower side. That indicates there's an unreviewed note in one or more of the requests in that status. If you just want to see requests with unreviewed notes, you can choose the Unreviewed Notes tab in the upper right.

Changes to request notes were introduced earlier this month. The red dot is one more feature to increase the chances a note will be seen.

How do you make the unreviewed note icon and the red dot go away? You'll need to view the full request record--the red dot on the Request Manager screen and the unreviewed note icon on the status list will guide you to the title(s) you need to click on. 

You could also choose the unreviewed notes icon near the top right of the status list to narrow the list down.

On the full record display screen, click on Review Notes (near the top left).

Once you've read the note in the pop-up window, click Acknowledge Notes to clear things--or choose Cancel if you want the request to continue to be flagged as having an unreviewed note.

CAUTION: Those All/Active/Unreviewed Notes choices on the Request Manager screen are "sticky" from session to session--whatever's selected when you log out will be in effect when you (or somebody else) next uses the same login. If you leave Request Manager with Unreviewed Notes chosen, you may be fooled by seeing a bunch of "No Requests" messages in each grouping the next time you use Request Manager. Choosing Active or All will reveal any requests waiting for your attention.

I’m here with an update on the 2025 Public Library Survey. 

As of 10:30 a.m. today [Friday, Mar. 20], fifty-seven (57), or roughly 25%, of all participating NH public libraries have submitted their surveys. Well done, folks! *cheers, applause, and cries of “huzzah!”* 

As for the rest of you, 😉 there are 42 days left to the April 30th submission deadline. You can do it! Please send me your data.

A note:

Edit Check problems
There have been some continued problems with a few of the edit checks popping up when they shouldn’t, most notably with the Young Adult Programs and General Interest Programs auto-filled totals (3.1c – Programming Totals). It is an added irritation that you don’t need. I’ve submitted a help ticket with Counting Opinions, the survey vendor, and I hope to have those problems corrected soon. In the meantime, if any of these edit checks appear while verifying your library’s survey, adding an explanatory note to the line where the error appears should clear them.  

Screenshots of examples of the annoying edit checks and where to enter a note: 

Please contact me if you’d like to talk through, walk through, or video-call through the survey and its idiosyncrasies. I’m here to help!

A Happy Vernal Equinox to you all,
Jen

Jennifer M. Finch (she/her)
Reference Librarian and State Data Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources
20 Park St.
Concord, NH 03301
Office: 603-271-2060
Ref Desk: 603-271-2144
Jennifer.M.Finch@dncr.nh.gov