Borrowing Request Sent Twice
Why was my Rapido borrowing request sent to the same lender twice?
Keywords: Rapido, borrowing request, sent, send, twice, lender, partner, same, lending request, external ID
Sometimes, Rapido requests are sent to the same lender twice. This is problematic as the communication with the lender can be tricky - updating any one of the lending requests updates the original borrowing request, which leaves the second lending request out of sync. When this happens with RapidILL - this causes each update from RapidILL to update the External ID of the request.
You may also experience this issue as a lender - when you received two identical lending requests with the same external ID. If you experience this scenario, please contact the borrower directly about the relevant request and link them to this page so they can address the issue.
This may be due to a technical error in Rapido, but it's much more likely that it's a human or workflow error. Read below to find out how to determine what happened, and what to do to prevent this from occurring in the future.
Analysis
- Find the request in your borrowing task list.
- Edit the request (or View it if it's completed), and go to the Attachments tab.
- Every time a borrowing request is sent to a partner, we expect to see a REQUEST_SENT line, which contains the message sent to the lender. This will appear as ILL_XXXX_REQUEST_SENT, where the X's are the type of partner (NGRS/ISO/RAPIDILL...).
- If there is only one REQUEST_SENT line, but you are confident the request was sent twice, please contact support.
- If there are two REQUEST_SENT lines, and their time stamps are up to one second apart, this would usually indicate a technical failure. Note the time stamps and continue to step 4 to confirm.
- If there are two REQUEST_SENT lines, and their time stamps are more than one second apart, this would usually indicate a human or workflow error. Note the time stamps and continue to step 4 to confirm.
- Next, go to the History tab, and check what actions were preformed on the request for the time stamps you found in step 3. Note that not all actions generate a new row in the History tab, so you may only see one relevant line in the request history.
- If the second time the request was sent, the Operator was 'System', please contact support.
- If the second time the request was sent, the Operator was not 'System' - this most likely a human or workflow error.
How do we avoid this in the future?
Rapido always attempts to send a borrowing request if it's in a "Created borrowing request" or "Ready to be sent" status. This happens upon creating or saving a request. Usually, a request is sent twice to the same lender because Rapido sent the request the first time, and then a staff member used the "Send" button shortly after.
To avoid this in the future, please instruct your staff:
- The Send button is generally not needed - most Rapido requests send themselves upon save.
- If you think the Send button is needed for a request that is stuck and not sending when it should, only use it:
- After refreshing the Rapido borrowing tasklist...
- And confirming that the request wasn't already sent to the lender automatically by Rapido.