Do notices go out from Polaris on the dates closed specified in the policy tables? Thanks!
For us at least, yes. I just checked summary reports from our latest two days closed (11/27 and 11/28) and those show emails and texts were sent. And I found an overdue notice or two sent to me on both days (yes, I am a bad patron!).
For that closure, no one was on site here to print out queued mailed notices, so those stayed unprinted and unsent until our next day open (11/29).
Kristen
p.s. We are hosted and on 7.8, not sure either/both of those things matter though.
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I agree that we typically see email/text notices go out. I know in some version of the Polaris Telephony system there was a do-not-call schedule. I don’t know if that is present in some versions of the new phone service product or not.
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Good to know. Our phone/txt notices go out with Vega Interact (Cirrius Impact) and when we set that up this year I did give them our closed schedule so I can do that again for 2026. Our email notices go out with LX Starter and I’ve never set up any kind of schedule with them. I don’t even know if that’s possible. I don’t really care about people getting overdue notices, but I do care about them getting hold pickup notices on days closed. Which brings up another question. Will holds trigger on days closed? And if they do, does the closed day count in the 7 day pickup window we give our patrons?
Can I ask where you check your summary reports? We are also 7.8 and hosted. I know where to check my LX Starter notices and my SMS/TXT notices but not what actually goes out from Polaris. And we have a couple notices that just don’t look/work nicely in LX Starter so those just go out straight from Polaris. Thanks.
Hi Colleen, I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea why we get the summary reports - we migrated in 2019 and have always been hosted so I assume it was something set up at that point? You could reach out to your site manager and see if it’s a special ask. I can’t find anything in our SA that is a setting to turn these on, fyi. They are very helpful, though, as they show when notices have failed (which I now see happened with our reminder emails on 11/28 and 11/29 so…make a habit of checking them every day if you do get them!).
Regarding hold notices, those also go out but Polaris should always take days off into account when figuring out how long to hold items so I think you’ll be ok. I will say that a hold triggered on 11/26 (the day before our latest closure) had an expiration date of 12/5 (7 days/usual period + 2 days closed), but I can’t say what the expiration date was for the 4 holds actually triggered on 11/27 or the 2 holds from 11/28. Sorry!
We have an automated sorter, so holds get triggered any time during a closure by patrons returning items. However, if you do not have this type of set up and no one is coming in to empty a dropbox/check in returned items, then holds notices would only go out the first day of a closure (i.e. notices for holds triggered the last day you were open). Hope this makes sense!
Kristen
p.s. Here’s a snip of the top of our summary and the start emails (we get both once a day and then b/c our hold notices go out every 4 hours we get more start emails throughout the day). The summary report covers all of our email/text notices. FYI, we only use LX Starter for our reminder emails right now, Polaris sends everything else for us.
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Thank you for giving me the snip of the report. We do get those and I totally ignore them lol. They aren’t exactly accurate for us now. I used to get the start and summary for every branch every day, but once we switched to LX Starter all our notices I wouldn’t get them. It was explained to me that only if a notice goes out from Polaris only (and not LX Starter) will those reports get emailed. But if notices do go out from Polaris only, the report will include all notices including LX Starter (if that makes sense). So if there was a day when at least 1 notice went out only from Polaris I would get the emailed report showing all notices. Now that we consistently send out from both I do receive more of the report emails. Anyway, I had a look at the last couple closed days and notices definitely went out. We also have automated book drops that will trigger a hold at any time an item is returned. As a test I’m going to trigger a hold on Christmas Day when we’re closed (if I remember) and see if I have 9 days to pickup my item instead of just 7. Thanks again.
I may have missed it… As far as WHERE it is set up
Page 463 and following in the 7.6 PolarisPatronServicesAdminGuide explains it, but depending on if you do at System level or Branch level it’s similar
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The “it” in this case being the email summary report shown earlier - not anything with closed dates specifically. Enable the summary report by supplying an email address here:
For more details, refer to the admin guide @Willard_Peeples mentioned.