Subscription service renewal

Learn how to automate renewal reminders for subscriptions in OLIB.

It is possible to configure OLIB to send a subscription renewal alert to warn a user or an organisation’s representative that their subscription to one of your services is due to expire.

This uses OLIB's alerting feature and the Notice Type that should be used is the Subscription Service Renewal Alert. An example notice is supplied as standard.

  1. Go to Alerting> Notices
  2. Search for the Example User Subs Service Renewal Alert.
  3. Select the Example notice and in Other Actions choose Create Close Copy.
  4. Click on the copy to display full details and Modify Record. (Pre-supplied notices have a Notice Number pre-fixed by 'OP'.)
  5. The Notice Type should already be set to Subscription Service Renewal Alert.
  6. Enter a Brief and Full Description to identify this notice.
  7. In Notice Text use the <SUBSDETAILS> tag to specify the position of the subscription details in the email.

The USS[X]LD and USS[X]NOCOPIES OLSTF tags can also be used, so that service long description and the number of copies covered by the subscription can be included in the alert.

Replace [X] with the user subs. service number. The respective hash tag set is as follows:

#USS9NOCOPIESNN#...#/USS9NOCOPIESNN#

  1. Set From Address to a valid email address, e.g. a generic address for your library, so that if the user clicks the Reply button, the reply email will be delivered to the appropriate member of staff who deals with user responses to subscription renewal notices.
  2. Configure the recipients of the email:

To List: used to specify who the notice should be sent to if it is not to be sent to the user, e.g. a member of staff.

CC List: enter an email address to which a copy of the notice should be sent.

BCC List: enter an email address to which a blind copy of the notice should be sent.

 Note: in all three of the above fields, multiple email addresses can be entered. Multiple addresses should be separated with a semi-colon.

  1. In Subject Line enter the text to be used as the subject line of the notice.
  2. Set Enabled to Yes for OLIB to start sending recall notices in daystart, using the above settings. If Enabled is set to No or is null, loan reminder notices will not be sent.
  3. At the foot of the page use the Days Before Expiry field to define how far in advance of the subscription renewal date, the alert should be sent (Note: the value in the subscription record’s Warn Before Expiry field will override this parameter for individual subscriptions).
     

The SMTP server name for your organisation must also be configured for alerting to work.

The subscription renewal alerts are sent during daystart, so it is important to ensure that the Enabled flag is set to Yes in the notice record, otherwise the alerts will not be sent.