Kim,
Thank you for your kind offer, and apologies for taking so long to
reply. Life has been very busy of late.
I took a look at your repo on GitHub, and it all seems pretty
straightforward for paying library fines. We may take a look at
implementing that.
The specific use case I have here is somewhat different, however. Our
CIO has asked if the IT department can use Alma to check out laptops to
people. And that's fine. But she also wants to make each checkout
contingent on the patron providing a credit card number, up front, to
cover potential loss or damage to the laptop. Basically, she wants to
take the credit card number, stick it in the record somewhere, and sit
on it. If the laptop comes back fine, then the card number gets erased
and no charge occurs. If the laptop comes back damaged, or is never
returned at all, then the patron is charged for repair or replacement.
I've been struggling with this because I don't think it's wise (or
legal) to store people's credit card data in Alma itself. Do you happen
to know if Touchnet supports scenarios like this, where all that really
happens is the card is taken down in case of loss?
Will Martin
P.S. My parents graduated from DU, so I'm fond of the institution even
though I didn't attend it myself.
On 2021-03-18 01:38, Kim Pham wrote:
Hi Will,
We worked with Ex Libris and Touchnet to set up credit card payments -
https://github.com/ExLibrisGroup/exl-touchnet-connector. Feel free to
get in touch with me if you'd like us to go through how we set it up.
Kim Pham, IT Librarian
University of Denver
On Mar. 18, 2021 06:26, Will Martin <[email protected]> wrote:
[External Email From]: [email protected]
We're in the process of helping our IT department get their inventory
of
check-out-able laptops entered into our instance of Alma so that they
can use it for tracking who's got what. Our CIO has asked if there is
some way we could get a credit card attached to the record of each
check-out, which could be charged in the event that someone fails to
return a laptop or it comes back broken.
Is that something Alma can do? We've only just switched to it last
July
and are still learning its idiosyncrasies.
Will Martin
Head of Digital Initiatives, Systems and Services
Chester Fritz Library
University of North Dakota
701.777.4638
