P-Type Table

Owned by Ashley Sneesby, created
Jan 07, 2023
4 min read

This documentation describes how to access, edit, and load the P-Type table in Pika.

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P-Types and Pika

Pika uses the P-type (patron type) table to enforce holds limits for p-types, determine if p-types are staff patron types, and capture Masquerade Mode settings.

Every ILS that Pika connects to should have p-types mapped in the p-types table, though some might not use the Masquerade Mode settings.

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Accessing P-Type Table

The P-Type table is located in the Pika Configuration menu when logged into Pika with an account with the appropriate role.

 

Only patrons with the opacAdmin role have access to the P-Type table in Pika. If you do not have this permission and need to edit settings with a particular p-type, please submit a ticket in the Marmot Help Desk.

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Add New PType

To add a new p-type individually, click on the Add New PType button. This will open a new page with a form with several values to fulfill. After values are set appropriately, remember to save your changes.

Label

The label for the p-type. This is not required but is useful to distinguish different p-types in a large list.

P-Type

The coded value of the p-type in the ILS

Max Holds

The maximum amount of holds users with the entered p-type can have. The default is 300.

Staff P-Type

This toggle sets a p-type as a staff p-type. If a p-type has this set, users with this p-type will have access to some basic staff functions in Pika when logged in, even if their account doesn’t have any specific roles set. Find more detailed information here.

Masquerade Level

There are several Masquerade Levels to choose from.

No Masquerade

There are no Masquerade Mode options allowed for this Ptype. This is the default option.

Masquerade as Patrons of home branch

Staff Ptype can only Masquerade as patrons that have the same home branch library as the given Ptype.

Masquerade as Patrons of home library

Staff Ptype can only Masquerade as patrons that have the same home library system as the given Ptype.

Masquerade as any user

Staff Ptype can Masquerade as any user or patron, regardless of the given Ptype’s home library or branch.

There are other settings required to enable the Masquerade Mode for libraries in the Library System Configuration page.

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Load Patron Types

The Load Patron Types function is only available for Sierra sites. Other ILSs do not have the same kind of API connection with Pika to support this function.

Clicking on the Load Patron Types button will display a popup confirming the action. Click Okay to proceed. Click Close to cancel.

Loading patron types from Sierra has a few effects. It will completely override the existing table in Pika, including overriding all settings. Any labels from Sierra will be loaded as well as the Max Holds value.

The Load Patron Types function overrides and clears all Staff Patron Type and Masquerade Level settings previously in the table. If you Load Patron Types to override the existing table, you will need to edit the appropriate loaded p-types to have desired Masquerade Levels and Staff Patron Type settings.

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Editing and Other Navigation

Use the Search bar in the top left hand corner to search by p-type value, label, Masquerade Level, or ID.

Example search for the phrase 15:

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Editing

Click on either the Edit option under the Actions column or the ID hyperlink to open up the form page for the corresponding p-type. You can make any necessary edits to a p-type entry in the table.

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Resort the table by column

You can resort the table by column to bring table entries with specific settings to the top of the list. Click on the arrows next to the table heading to sort alphanumerically descending by value.

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