Koha ILMS after COVID-19 lockdown

May - 04
2020

Solutions for the problems that affect Koha ILMS after reopening of unexpected long closing of the library

As we all know the majority libraries are closed for a long time due to the pandemic situation that affected the world. At the time of reopening of the library, Some of the major tasks to do librarians in Koha ILMS will be the following.
1. Bulk edit of Books due date that issued before the closing of the library.
2.Waive the book’s fine, which was due before the closing of the library.
3. Stop sending notifications (Email and SMS) before solving the above problems.
#Let’s go for the fix, the last one we’ll do as primarily,
Because before doing all the changes, we have to block sending overdue notices (Email, SMS) when server powered on. Otherwise, the system will automatically send notifications to users. Also, we need to delete the messages that already in queue.
To stop Email, put the command in the terminal with your instance name.
sudo koha-email-disable library
( library‘ is our instance’s name)
To stop SMS please disable your SMS SendDriver in global system preference.
Now we want to delete the messages that in queue from Koha’s table message_queue from a specific date. Open the terminal and put the following commands
sudo su
mysql -uroot -p

Enter mysql root password

use koha_library;

DELETE FROM message_queue WHERE time_queued >'2020-03-20';

quit;
Here it will deleted the messages that in queue from 20th march to the current day.Then enable email by follow command
sudo koha-email-enable library

2. Bulk edit of Books due date that issued before the closing of library.
The goal of this solution is to extend all the issued book’s due date, if it is a closed day of the library. So we want to fix two specific dates. One is the date that library was closed and other is the new common due date needs to change. In other way add a specific number of days to due dates of books.
a) Method One (By update)
Koha community started working on this this issue (Bug-24846) from 11-03-2020 onwards and added this feature in the newly released version of Koha (19.11.05, 19.11.04, 19.05.09, 18.11.16). So the change can easily do by updating Koha to any of the above versions. After updating Koha, on Tools menu under Patron and Circulation section you can see the Batch extend due dates option. Click the menu, you can select a specific patron category or all category to extend the due date. Next, put the books due date range that want to change, last you can put a new hard due date or add a specific number of days which will add to all due dates of books. By clicking continue a conformation will ask by displaying all the books that will modify. Click modify selected checkout and due date will change to the new date.
b) Method Two (Koha Plugin)
A Koha plugin was developed by the company Inlibro, it can use in Koha with a minimum version of 3.20. So first you need to enable the plugin in your server. The plugin can download by click here. Upload the plugin in Plugin Tools in Koha Tools menu. After uploading, enable the plugin and run the tool. Here you can see a similar options same as updated Koha version’s, which did earlier. Put the data and change the due date as you like.
c) Method Three (Command line)
The due date can also change by applying the MySQL command. Open your terminal and log in to MySQL by the following command
sudo su
mysql -uroot -p Enter the mysql root passwoed use koha_library; (Where koha_library is the DB name) UPDATE issues SET date_due="2020-06-01 23:59:00", lastreneweddate="2020-05-17 10:00:00" WHERE date_due >'2020-03-20';
quit;
This will extend the due date to 01 June 2020 for any books that have been due between 20 March and 17 May.
3.Waive the book’s fine, which was due before the closing of the library.
Here we want to waive the fine amount of library closed days to the patrons whose issued book’s due is before closing of the library. For doing this set the following Global system preference as follows
Under Circulation
Check-in Policy
CalculateFinesOnReturn        –   Do
Fine Policy –
finescalendarset                        – use the calendar (In Latest Version)
finescalendarset                        – not including days the library is close
                                                    (In old Versions)
finesMode                                  – Calculate and Charge
Then set the closed dates in calendar under Tools menu as library holiday.
Pic 3

Then apply following commands,
sudo su export PERL5LIB="/usr/share/koha/lib"

export KOHA_CONF="/etc/koha/sites/library/koha-conf.xml"

cd /etc/cron.daily/

./koha-common
Please note if you have already set some holidays before, the fine will calculate without of these days when the book will return.