How to setup ALEPH to deny the display of non active courses in WEB OPAC

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
The active dates entered for each course appear to be for information only. Is there anyway to make these dates hide inactive courses in the OPAC?

Resolution:
The field "Ending Date" is used by the procedure "Report of Course Reading records that are linked to inactive course" (course-03) to deactivate courses.

Please, do the following procedures to use this "deactivate" function to deny the display of the respective course and bibliographic records in ALEPH WEB OPAC:

1) SSH connection to your ALEPH server. Login with your aleph username/password

2) Connect to your Course Reading Library (dlib XXX30)

3) Go to the table directory (dt) of this library. You need to edit the following files related to indexing:

tab00.eng - Please add the following line:

H WNA W-013 00 00 W-Not active

tab11_word - Please add the following line:

CNO-6 2 NA 01 WNA

tab_expand - Make sure that tab_expand has the following lines:

WORD expand_doc_course
WORD expand_doc_type tab_type_config
WORD expand_doc_bib_loc_usm

Note: these changes will create the index WNA (based in field CN0-6$2 filled as NA - Not active) that will be used to deny the display of the bibliographic records from inactive courses in the WEB OPAC

4) Go to the $alephe_tab directory and add the following line to the tab_base.eng file:

READING_LISTS Reading Lists XXX30 XXX01 XXX30 N alldocuments not wna=na

Note: from now you will not search the entire XXX30 database in the WEB OPAC. You will search a logical base (READING_LISTS) composed of all records except those that have the course status "not active"

5) Go to the $alephe_root/www_f_eng directory and edit the following file:

base-list

From:

<td class=text3>
<img src="&icon_path/f-small-dot.gif" border="0" alt="">
<a href="&server_f?func=find-b-0&local_base=XXX30">
Course Reading List (XXX30) </a>
</td>

To:

<td class=text3>
<img src="&icon_path/f-small-dot.gif" border="0" alt="">
<a href="&server_f?func=find-b-0&local_base=READING_LISTS">
Course Reading List (USM30) </a>
</td>

Note: these changes will make the ALEPH WEB OPAC use the new READING_LIST logical base

6) Restart both pc_server and www_server

7) Open the Catalog module and connect to the XXX30 library. After that, go to menu Services > Build Indexes to the Catalog > Update Word Index (manage-01) and re-index the XXX30 library.

8) To finish you need to go back to SSH and run util e/1 to "Start Update Doc Index" for the XXX30 library

After all these steps your system is ready to use the field "Not active" field of the Course Reading record to deny the display of bibliographic records that are linked to these inactive courses.

To help you with setting up the courses to "Not active" when the "Ending Date" of the course has passed, there is the procedure "Report of Course Reading records that are linked to inactive course" (course-03) in the Course Reading Management screen. So, here are the procedures to turn the expired courses to "Not active" and deny the display of the bibliographic records in ALEPH:

1) Open the ALEPH Staff Menu

2) Click in "Course Reading Management" function and login with your staff username/password

3) In the main screen, click the option "Report of Course Reading records that are linked to inactive course"

4) Fill the form as you like but don't forget to fill the field "Enter 'NA' status or leave blank to avoid course update" with value "NA". This will update all expired courses (based in the "Ending Date" field) to "Not active"

5) After the end of this procedure you need to re-index the XXX30 database to reflect the changes in the ALEPH indexes. To do that, Open the Catalog module and connect to the XXX30 library. After that, go to menu Services > Build Indexes to the Catalog > Update Word Index (manage-01) and re-index the XXX30 library.

6) After running manage-01 you need to go back to SSH and run util e/1 to "Start Update Doc Index" for the XXX30 library

7) If you want to "re-activate" the courses and display the bibliographic records again in the next year/semester you will need to update the Course Reading records and untick the "Not active" field from them.
Note: after this procedure you don't need to re-index the XXX30 again, ALEPH takes care of updating the indexes of the respective bibliographic records.