Comment 5 for bug 1839862

Hello, we enable the feature from bug #1694058, and have received feedback from staff about missing the warning also.

The majority of the time our staff are just placing a single hold, and they were used to relying on the warning to not place duplicate holds. I think the work flow is that a customer asks about a title, so the first step is to search the catalog to see if we have that title at all, then place a hold for them. In the past they could just try and place the hold and were informed of duplicates. It doubles the work for staff to stop once they know the title exists, go to the patron's record and check the patron's holds for duplicates. I think it is frustrating to staff also to have to check 100% of the time for the 1 in 20 time that there is already a duplicate. And it also requires that staff visually parse the patrons list of hold, which can be difficult when a customer has a large number of holds.

I've also heard reports of staff using a workflow that involves using the back button after placing a hold, which now results in duplicate holds being placed, but used to just result in the override dialog.

I would like the system to act like it previously did, if the num holds dropdown is left at 1, show a warning and override if duplicate holds already exist. If the setting is set to >1, then don't show the warning and override.

We don't allow customers to place duplicate holds, so we haven't heard this complaint from customers.

Another solution to this issue would be to give the user another indication that holds already exist. Maybe the place a hold screen could check for duplicate holds when the patron info is loaded, and give a warning up front "Patron already has x holds on this title".

Josh