Monday Minutes: Patron Attributes

by Kelly McElligott on Dec 14, 2020

Jessie and Kelly walk through setting up a Patron Attribute in Koha. Patron attributes can be used to define custom fields to associate with your patron records.

Setting up Patron Attributes

There is a system preference that is associated with Patron Attributes, ExtendedPatronAttributes. This system preference will need to be set to Enabled to set up Patron Attributes.

The top half of the Patron Attribute form is to identify the Code (remember 10 digits or less and no spaces or special characters) and the description.

Then there are some questions that will need to be marked yes/no to identify how Koha should handle this particular patron attribute.

Repeatable: Can a patron have more than one of these Patron Attributes?

Unique Identifier: If this a unique number and no one else should have the same value in this patron attribute?

Display in OPAC: Is this a patron attribute that the library would like to be seen on the OPAC?

Editable in the OPAC: If a library is allowing patrons to send modifications to the library, is this one of them? Can a patron change the value or add a value to this patron attribute in the OPAC?

Searchable: Is this a value that you would like staff to be able to search for?

Display in Patron's Brief Information: Would this patron attribute be helpful to staff to be seen in the patron's snapshot of details?

The bottom half of the Patron Attribute setup form will allow libraries to customize what values will be used in this attribute, what patron categories will this be used for and what branches use this particular attribute.

Authorized Value Category: If a library would like this Patron Attribute to be a drop-down of values, then an Authorized Value can be created to correspond with this patron attribute. If a library would like this to be a YES/NO option, then the Authorized Category YES_NO can be chosen.

More about Authorized Values can be found here:

Monday Minutes: Authorized Values

Branch Limitation: If a specific branch will only be using this patron attribute, that branch would be highlighted.

Category: If a specific patron category will use this patron attribute- that category will be chosen here. If this applies to all categories, then this would be left blank.

Class: Libraries that create a lot of patron attributes, may opt to group them into categories, this option allows for this to be grouped in an existing class.

Reporting on Patron Attributes

Jessie and Kelly didn't touch upon this during the recording, but here is a report that libraries can use/customize for reporting on their patron attributes. In this particular report, the 'where' statement is calling for a specific Patron Attribute and using the code that was created in the Patron Attribute setup.

SELECT a.borrowernumber, a.code, a.attribute AS DateSeen, p.surname, p.firstname, p.cardnumber
FROM borrower_attributes a
LEFT JOIN borrowers p USING (borrowernumber)
WHERE a.code = 'NEW'