It is possible to create ILLiad Borrowing web pages that are specifically intended only for certain patron types. This will allow you to give certain customer groups, based on patron type, specific request options or information on those type-specific pages that other customer groups will not be able to see or use. These special versions of the ILLiad web pages might contain additional information or they could contain significant functional differences, such as additional request buttons for specific types of requests that others neither know about nor have access to.
For example, if you wanted to set up an Express Document Delivery request option (to be filled from your own collection) to be accessible ONLY to Faculty customers, you could create a new Faculty version of the Main Menu page containing that special request button. Or, you could create a Thesis Request option for Faculty customers only. The ILLiad DLL then routes customers to the correct Main Menu Page based on their assigned patron types. This new Faculty-specific Main Menu page would display only for users with the "Faculty" patron type. Other patron types would see the default version of the Main Menu page without that additional special request option.
Creating the New Page
To create the Faculty-specific Thesis Request example mentioned above, you will copy, rename and save the default ILLiad web page that you wish to display differently based on patron type. In this case, it is the include_menu.html, embedded in the ILLiadMainMenu.html, that we are changing, to add a new request type. Rename the web page with a patron type suffix in the following format:
- ILLiadWebPageName-PatronType.html
So for the Faculty-specific Thesis Request example, you would copy the existing include_menu.html page and save it as include_menu-Faculty.html.
The hyphen between the page name and the patron type is important. For multi-word patron types separated by spaces, like "Graduate Assistant", the suffix would be "-Graduate_Assistant.html", with the hyphen ( - ) in front and any spaces in the patron type replaced by underscores ( _ ).
Edit the New Patron Type-Specific Page
Once you have the new page saved with the correct patron type extension, edit the web page(s) to reflect the changes you want to make for that particular patron type. In our example, you would add the Thesis Request button to the include_menu-Faculty.html page. If the request option that you are making Faculty-specific is one that already exists on the default .html page, you would need to edit that page to no longer contain the request option so that it would no longer show. You may also need to create new request pages for your new request type (in the case of request-specific pages such as a Thesis Request option for Faculty customers only).
Placing the New Patron Type-Specific Page
The ILLiad DLL knows to look for pages based on customer status, so you do not need to insert the include_menu-Faculty.html page into the ILLiadMainMenu.html web page. Simply place the new page in the directory for the DLL to find (default directory is: c\Inetpub\wwwroot\illiad).
Customer Use of the New Pages
When customers access the web pages, the ILLiad DLL looks at the patron type assigned to the customer and determines which of the pages to display. In the example for Faculty users, the ILLiad DLL displays ILLiadMainMenu.html with the include_menu-Faculty.html page. For all other users, the DLL displays the ILLiadMainMenu.html with the include_menu.html page. This would work the same way for any other patron type-specific pages. Each time it accesses ANY ILLiad Borrowing web page, the ILLiad DLL looks for a -PatronType version of that same page to display, so you can have as many or as few patron type-specific pages as you wish.
Possible Uses/Enhancements of this Feature
- In addition to allowing certain requests types to be used only by certain users, there are several other possible uses and enhancements for this feature. These might include:
- Adding Custom Queues and Routing rules to expedite certain request types through processing.
- Adding Billing information to the request pages in order to offer different service levels, billable at different rates (or free to certain patron types).
- Using Patron-type-specific versions of the Add Billing Accounts page to require SOME customers to register a Billing Account, but not others. This is especially useful if you bill certain patron types for services, but not others.