I can’t find a way to do this but figured I would check - is anyone aware of a way to set blocks (or notes, or messages) on a patron account to expire automatically? That is, a date can be set during block creation when the block would automatically be removed from the patron account instead of the block remaining forever/until someone deletes it.
If all else fails, I suppose I can get staff to write the expiration date of the block in the text and then we can use SQL/search to identify and manually remove them. With the number of times jobs are failing to run lately, that might be the safest method anyway…
However, from a SQL perspective, tables like: PatronFreeTextBlocks & PatronStops (library assigned blocks) already have a CreationDate column, so you would be able to key off of that rather than having staff manually enter in dates.
What are you trying to achieve with the expiration dates? Maybe there is another solution from the community.
We are trying to move away from using patron codes to indicate that patrons are barred from the library, because they weren’t being applied (or removed) consistently. But some staff still want some of the functions of the patron code change - so we have been working on getting the block to work like the patron code currently does with some of our third-party software, with the additional thought that having a built-in field to enter notes (e.g. barred from city libraries from 11/1/24 to 12/1/24) could be helpful in preventing patrons from lingering in barred status long past the actual end of their barring.
When chatting with our admin for library operations, she wondered if there was any way to get the block to expire on a schedule to further streamline this process. I don’t think it would change our decision-making one way or the other, but I wanted to confirm whether it’s an option.