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VDX FAQ for ILL Staff

 

Questions? Contact Resource Sharing Team

How do I set up Calendars for Holiday closures?

1. If all campus libraries have the same holiday closure hours.

Setting up your Calendar for holiday closures ensures that new requests will come into your “In Process” queue from UC requesters with a delayed expiration date according to your calendar settings.

For example, if your library is closing from 21-DEC-2010 to 01-JAN-2011, the expiration date would be 9 Jan 2011.

This avoids the unwelcome condition where requests would be automatically routing out to OCLC rather than waiting for a UC location to be open. Editing the “Local Holidays” on the bureau level Calendar causes the same edits to be made to all lower level Calendars. This is all you need to do; you do not need to update the calendar for each unit.

2. If some campus library units have different holiday hours

First update the bureau calendar. Next go to the Calendar for the unit that has different holiday hours and update that Calendar with the unit specific hours.

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How do I set a VDX suspension date?

A requesting library will always be able to add your location to the Rota of a new request, even when it is suspended. The system will automatically skip your location if it is suspended and it will be moved to the end of the Rota. Your location will automatically be retried if your suspension finishes before the request reaches the end of its life.

There are two types of suspension, “Requests OK” and “No requesting”. Do not use “suspended No Requesting”. This will prevent your campus end users from making requests during your suspension.

If DocFind-Requester is on for your location, and the only location in the rota is suspended or not available, then the request will go to status Check Manual. There is also an error message on the audit page:

Location XXX rejected: Location is suspended

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How are dates and times are handled by ISO? Why does the request have tomorrow’s date?

ISO ILL requires Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for all date–time fields. VDX uses Eastern Time time internally. VDX ISO messages sent outside of VDX follow the ISO rules and the date-time data is converted to GMT. This means that any requests going out from VDX after 4pm California time will be dated the following day! The audit trail is sorted by audit number so the messages appear in the order they occurred. The time sort may not match due to the shift of time zones.

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What actions set the expiry date?

  • Items that are processed within VDX: the expiry date is set by the responder
  • Items that come into VDX from WSILL: the expiry date is set by OCLC
    • Outgoing actions that set expiry date:
      • Hold
      • Will-supply
      • conditional response
    • Incoming action that sets expiry date:
      • conditional response
    • Most common reason for short expiry date
      • Items that come in over the weekend may not have the full five days, e.g. expiry is five days but two are weekend days.

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What scripts are run on the VDX database?

Scripts for patron privacy, auto-completion, expired user deletion, and date correction.

  • Patron Privacy script: The patron privacy script runs nightly, and selects items completed 30 days before the current date and then breaks the link between the patron record and the ILL record. Completed items appear in My ILL Requests (Zportal) only for 30 days.
  • Copy non-returnable auto-complete script: This script automatically completes ILL transactions for non-returnable items received 30 days before the current date.
  • Expired user record deletion script: Expired user record deletion script: The expired user script runs nightly. It checks for patron records that have an expiry date more than 90 days in the past, and that have no active ILL items associated with the user record. Patron records that meet those conditions are deleted.
  • Reset bad shipped and received dates script: This script resets the incorrect dates created during a batch process to the correct dates. It runs every night, after 10pm.

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What circumstances send items to the VDX idle queue?

  • This will only happen when IVEA (the Alma to VDX connector) cannot obtain patron info.

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What do the different notes types in VDX do?

VDX Note Type Meaning
Client Instruction This is a note from the end user made at the time of request creation.
Item Note Send this note on the first action to each responder the request is sent to.
Public Note This message is a local note. It is never sent to the other party in the transaction.
Private note Transmit this note with every message for this request from the requester.
Patron note This note is created by IL:L staff to send directly to the patron making the request.

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What are the ISO statuses and see how they are used?

ISO ILL Statuses for ISO 10161

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How can I add locations to the rota using the OCLC symbol?

Enter “OCLC:” followed by the OCLC symbol. For example:OCLC:B2Q

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For OCLC WSILL locations we list the location multiple times to allow them more time to fill the request. Should I list the location for one of UC’s ISO partners multiple times?

Multiple listing of OCLC locations is no longer necessary; the response by time is set in the lenders OCLC Policy Directory record.

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When I sent a Conditional-Reply-No to OCLC WSILL, why did the WSILL request get canceled?

The ISO-ILL protocol requires VDX to cancel the WSILL request when you send a conditional-no. From the ISO protocol: (ISO 10161 section 8.3.2):

“A Conditional-Reply with the Answer ‘NO’ is to be mapped onto the subtransaction (ED: ie must be relayed to the supplier). Note that in this case the intermediary may not initiate a new sub-transaction with another responder.”

This means that if a brokered-to supplier sends an answer:conditional to the broker, the Broker is mandated to relay the answer conditional to the requester. The Broker is also mandated to relay any response to this conditional to the current supplier. If the requester responds NO – then the broker must relay this to the current supplier, thus in one go both the sub-transaction and the requester/broker transaction have to go to Not-Supplied. AND the broker is explicitly forbidden from starting a new sub-transaction.

When OCLC are brokering as part of an ISO transaction they should NOT continue through their lending string if one of their suppliers gets a NO in response to an Answer:Conditional.

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How are OCLC locations handled in VDX?

Currently, there are three ways that OCLC locations are handled in VDX:

  1. only one lender in the WSILL request
  2. multiple lenders added in VDX, each lender will have single WSILL request number.
  3. direct to profile, up to five lenders identified in custom holdings will be added to single WSILL request.

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Why is there no payment type on this OCLC WSILL request?

According to the OCLC WorldShare® Interlibrary Loan documentation for Lending charges the payment type is supposed to be left blank if they enter the word “free”, which is why there is no payment type in the parent VDX request. Any time a payment type is blank on the picklist or in the request, the max cost (if any) should be ignored and assumed to be $0.

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Why isn’t the item brokering?

If you tried brokering it over to another location but the request won’t move, check to see if you changed the “Auth status” on the item to “Authorized” when you did the brokering action. If you did not, then try again but changing the Auth Status.

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We received a Conditional because we forgot to pick CCL/CCG, can we fix this?

For VDX/OCLC borrowing requests you can’t directly change the CCL/CCG, maxcost, or shipping address fields once has gone out to OCLC WSILL. Doing a local change does not modify the current request.

Once a Borrowing request has gone out to OCLC WSILL just about every field on the OCLC request is “frozen” as it was originally transmitted for the life of that request string.

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How are the Work queue dates set?

  • Borrower Pending > 2 weeks: The time span is calculated from Entry date to Current date
  • Borrower Shipped > 2 weeks: The time span is calculated from Date Shipped to Current date
  • Lender Overdue sent > 4 weeks: Actual service date

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How are the entry dates set? WSILL entry dates and VDX dates seem different

  • For a UC to UC Lending request: The Entry Date is the date the request entered the Borrower’s queue.
  • For an incoming OCLC request: The Entry Date is the date the request entered the Lender’s queue.

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