We recently upgraded from Polaris 7.3 to 7.4. Soon afterward, we had a patron call and report that when he called our automated phone system to check the status of his holds, it only told him about items that were in Held status, not items that were in Active or Pending. Our phone system (iTiva) pulls account information via SIP2, so we tried replicating the issue on other third-party services that connect with SIP and found that the same was true. On our self-checkout machines’ “account management” screen, held items show up, but holds in Active or Pending status do not.
We placed a ticket for this in the Supportal and the response we got was that this is a SIP2 limitation that’s always been the case and patrons have never been able to get information about their not-yet-filled holds through any system that interfaces with an ILS through SIP.
I’m not 100% convinced that this is correct. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to match the SIP documentation here: https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/alma/integrations/selfcheck/sip2/, for a product that is also owned by Clarivate. But I don’t have any concrete proof. Can someone give me a reality check on this? Is this a limitation you see in your system?
I also see these few enhancement requests from 2019 which would indicate that it’s been this way for awhile:
Enhancement: SIP service to provide data on requested holds
We’d love for the SIP service to list all requested holds for a current patron.
Perhaps this information could be passed in the AS field.
Enhancement: Ability to have patrons see a list of all their Polaris hold requests and where they are in the queue while in the EnvisionWare OneStop interface .
Ability to have patrons see a list of all their Polaris hold requests and where they are in the queue while in the OneStop interface .
Just for reference, if you need to test different SIP messages, we have a GUI test tool that can sometimes help.