New Due Date option for lenders

A new option allowing lenders to extend the Due Date without needing a renewal request submitted by the borrower is one of the enhancements being installed to the NHAIS ILL System tonight (Thursday, Oct. 21). The system will be offline for up to 15 minutes starting at 10 p.m. to allow installation of the program update.

Until now, once the Due Date was established when the lender marked a request Shipped, the date couldn't be changed unless the borrower requested a renewal. After tonight's update, lenders will be able to change the Due Date without a renewal request under certain circumstances. While this is helpful where an extended due date was requested (as for a book group) but not applied initially, note that the new option is not available while the request is in Shipped status. The loan has to have made it to the borrower and be in Received, Accepted Renewal, or Overdue status. The lender would see these categories on the right-hand side of the Request Manager under "Items awaiting trading partner response."

The new option will be available for requests in eligible statuses on the Lender's Full Record Display...

...as well as on the Lender's Received List, Lender's Accepted Renewal List, or Lender's Overdue List pages. The list views give you the option of batch changes which may be handy if an unexpected building closure is necessary and you won't be able to accept any returned ILLs until later than originally thought. For the three statuses with the new Renewed by Lender option, the new Due Date is specified in the Extend Due Date field in the upper left of list pages. Renewed by Lender can be applied to all requests in an eligible status, the visible requests (eye icon), or selected requests.

Items that have been Renewed by Lender will display on the borrower's Request Manager under "Action items" with the same options as for Received, Accepted Renewal, and Overdue requests: Returned, Renewal, or Lost. On the lender's Request Manager, Renewed by Lender will display under "Items awaiting trading partner response."

The request History Information will show the status change:

NOTES:
1.    A new date must be specified. If not, you'll see a message stating “Please select a new due date for Renewed by Lender status.”
2.    The new Due Date must be after the current Due Date. In a batch update, if any requests have a Due Date later than the new date, the message “Some requests could not be updated” will display and those requests will not be updated.
3.    Because two deliberate actions must be taken (changing the status and selecting a new date) an “undo” option will not be available.

It's still best to get the Due Date right the first time so please remember to check those notes on incoming requests (look for the push pin icon) before changing the status to Shipped.


Another enhancement coming tonight is the addition of the year in notes about ILL vacations. Currently you might see a note in a request history that says something like "Notes: Lender NHHSXX closed -- skipped. Try again after Nov. 15." Following tonight's update, the end of that example would read "Try again after November 15, 2021."