Common NCIP Issues with Polaris

I’m copying a conversation from the Discord over here where I shared some of the issues we ran into when implementing NCIP with AutoGraphics SHAREit. If you have other NCIP experiences to add, please share them too and we can compile them together.

  • When lending items to another library, the checkout location defaults to the system level, which can impact stats and requires using the default loan period in SA (Parameters – Patron Services – Undefined Loan Period). There is currently not a supported way to fix this, but it could potentially be changed by modifying the Stored Procedure in Polaris (Circ_Ncip_CheckOutItem).
  • Giving an extended due date in the ShareIt software doesn’t seem to do anything to Polaris. Polaris still calculates its own due date.
  • In addition to the NCIP tables in SA, there’s another table called NCIPMediumTypes that is only viewable via SQL Server. Some older stored procedures reference this table, so it also needs to be configured.
  • Requests don’t show up on the patron’s account until they are “received” in ShareIt. Some info does get added to SysHoldRequests when the request is placed, but this doesn’t show up in Client/Leap until it’s marked as “received” in ShareIt.
  • If a request for another library takes too long to fill, ShareIt will move on to find another lender and send a delete hold request to Polaris. However, if the hold request is already in a “Shipped” status, Polaris will not delete the request.
  • Items with a free-text block or library assigned block cannot be checked out via NCIP, even if they can via SIP. Support says submit an enhancement.
  • Server errors/downtime can break the NCIP service. It’s a good idea to have Support restart NCIP after any period of downtime.
  • For the initial setup, the “To agency” is generally the branch’s abbreviation.
  • The checkbox for “Loanable outside of system” doesn’t always prevent requests by default. Auto-Graphics will need to configure this using the item record’s 852 field. (Potentially ‡7)
  • The ShareIt software will roll up bibs that are similar enough to one another. We’ve had a few instances where we have 2 separate bibs for essentially the same thing that ShareIt rolled up. When placing the request on these, ShareIt occasionally gets confused and places a hold request on a bib where the library doesn’t own a copy.
  • When a patron logs in to ShareIt, the system seems to check Polaris’ Patron Loan Limits table (SA – Policy Tables – Patron / Material Type Loan Limits). If the patron’s registered branch/Patron Code combination has “Total Holds” set to 0, ShareIt will prevent the patron from logging in.
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Thanks for posting @mhammermeister!

I made this a Wiki post in case others have contributions, clarifications or updates they’d like to make to this topic.