# Auto Suggest a Purchase Code
**URL:** https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894
**Category:** Polaris
**Created:** [April 21, 2026, 6:10pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894 "2026-04-21T18:10:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2026, 6:10pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/1 "2026-04-21T18:10:24Z")
Hello All!
I presented during the IUG 2026 Hackathon on Auto Suggest a Purchase, a project leveraging PAPI to manage material suggestions and then automatically place holds for patrons once a suggestion is purchased.
The code lives in the github repo linked below - it is available as a docker as well for easy implementation. I would love to collaborate with other libraries to get it running in your environment - please reach out. Perhaps we can start a working group on auto suggest a purchase.
Best,
Somalia
> **[GitHub - SomaliaJamall/Auto-Suggest-a-Purchase](https://github.com/SomaliaJamall/Auto-Suggest-a-Purchase)**
>
> Contribute to SomaliaJamall/Auto-Suggest-a-Purchase development by creating an account on GitHub.
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### Author:  [@ebrondermajor](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/ebrondermajor)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/2 "2026-04-22T14:57:11Z")
Hello Somalia,
This is really cool! Does it run in hosted environments as well as self-hosted? Do you have any screenshots or preview I could send to my acquisitions team to see if they’d be interested in implementing it?
Thanks,
Eleanor
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### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 5:14pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/3 "2026-04-22T17:14:08Z")
Hello Eleanor!
Here is a link to a short demo video =).
https://www.loom.com/embed/5bc44ec657c04a8d9487a125cb634c40
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### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2026, 5:15pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/4 "2026-04-22T17:15:02Z")
Also, it works well in self hosted and cloud environments.
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### Author:  [@CyberpunkLibrarian](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/CyberpunkLibrarian)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2026, 11:01am UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/5 "2026-04-23T11:01:19Z")
This is legitimately brilliant and I’m gonna show it to my boss and the CMT folks to see if they might be interested too!
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### Author:  [@mlacoste](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/mlacoste)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2026, 3:12pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/6 "2026-04-23T15:12:26Z")
Love this! We use a web-based form already, but the responding and hold placing are done manually. This would be a big timesaver.
A couple of questions:
Is there a way for the system to detect if the library already owns a book that is being suggested?
I assume this would have to be a manual process, but would it be possible to tag the suggestions with a specific selector?
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### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 12:49pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/7 "2026-04-29T12:49:06Z")
Hello All,
I am making some security improvements based on an analysis by @wesochuck (Thanks wes!) I don’t think anyone else is rushing to implement but please hold off until I update the repo.
Warmly,
Somalia
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### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 12:49pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/8 "2026-04-29T12:49:55Z")
Hello!
The staff dashboard has a way to mark a book already owned. Its manual but sends an email updating the patron AND places the hold for them!
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### Author:  [@Judyshan](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/Judyshan)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 1:07pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/9 "2026-04-29T13:07:52Z")
This is incredible! If a patron suggestion will not be purchased, is there a way for staff to create/select customized reasons for a no and that message informs the patron within their account? Similar to the Suggest a Purchase module offered by Bibliocommons?
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### Author:  [@somaliajamall](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/somaliajamall)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 5:18pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/10 "2026-04-29T17:18:12Z")
I am not familiar with Bibliocommons but I will look into it! Currently there is just one message that is sent when a purchase is rejected (it’s generic enough to apply to all cases) but I do see this getting built out and I will add it to the app idea bank =)
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### Author:  [@wesochuck](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/u/wesochuck)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:19pm UTC](https://forum.innovativeusers.org/t/auto-suggest-a-purchase-code/2894/11 "2026-04-29T18:19:32Z")
I have a version of this service that I’ve been building on another platform that does support multiple rejection templates: [GitHub - clcdpc/asap-pocketbase: A pocketbased version of auto suggest a purchase · GitHub](https://github.com/clcdpc/asap-pocketbase) and supports consortia.
**WARNING**! My version has not been tested in a live environment yet. And it might not have all the features of the original since we don’t have PHP I couldn’t fully test it.
We have simulated most of the workflow, but it isn’t as battle-tested as @somaliajamall version would be. I hope to have one of our member libraries starting using it in the next few weeks.
To be clear all credit to @somaliajamall for the original concept that ours is riffing off of.