Manually Generating Group Reminders

The instructions below demonstrate how to generate group reminders manually.

·Open Current Loans from the management page.

·Next, ensure that showing in the list are the groups of borrowers the reminders are to be generated for. For example, if group reminders are only to be sent to a single Tutor group, ensure that only borrowers of that group display on the screen. Normally this is achieved through Quick Search, Advanced Search or Flagging.

In this example, group reminders are only being generated for members of the "Staff" group so these are selected first.

·Once the desired borrowers are selected on screen, click Reminders from the right tool bar.

·The reminder options box will display. First, select the type of reminders to generate from the Type drop down menu. (in this instance, group reminders are used).

·Select a single group reminder template to be used when generating. For more information about creating templates, click here.

·Under the Records heading choose from one of the two options by clicking in the radial buttons. Choosing Process Selected Record means that a reminder for the tutor group of the borrower that was highlighted in the grid is generated. If Process All Records is selected, this means that all groups present in the grid are to have reminders generated.

·Under Options, check or un-check the box labelled Create reminders for overdue items only. If this box is checked then the group reminder will only include borrowers that have books on loan which are overdue. Note that some options such as Reprint last reminder when limit reached and are not displayed under this area. This is because in this example group reminders are being generated and that option is only applicable to individual reminders.

·Next, under the Output Options heading, choose whether to output the reminders using their default method or force a specific one by un-checking this box and checking all applicable boxes. For example, to print a reminder that is normally set to email by default, un-check Use the reminders default output and tick Print. All reminders will then print on this run of reminders.

For details on changing the output, see the topic entitled Output, Orientation and the Recipient, here but note that when manually running reminders, all options selected override the defaults.

·Once all parameters have been chosen click the button labelled Generate to start creating the reminders. A progress bar will display before the reminders are output.

Note that if the "Email" output option was chosen or is the default then a message advising the "Reminders have been sent to their targets" will display. This is because as they are being emailed there is no PDF to generate.