Prior to Sierra 5.3, when placing a series of holds for a patron in the Sierra Desktop App, the search terms would be retained from one title to the next. For example, if a patron wants holds placed for all seasons of the TV show How I Met Your Mother, a staff member with the patron's record open will click Add Holds, type the search terms "how i met your mother" in the Browse dialog and click Search. A suitable title is located and a hold is placed on it. All good so far.

The undesirable behavior is observed when the staff member attempts to place a hold on another season in the series: When the Browse dialog reopens, the search term "how i met your mother" is not retained and the staff member must retype the search terms; prior to Sierra 5.3 the search terms would have been retained, pre-populating the search field. I propose that retention of the search terms be opt-in behavior chosen in Settings or Options or even a Y/N field in Admin Corner.

Idea Value
The loss of search term retention has been a major pain point for my Public Services coworkers. My suggestion to use copy/paste as a workaround to reduce retyping of the search terms was met with a surprising degree of hostility. I took the matter to iii Support and this was the response:

Yes, this behavior did change in Sierra 5.3. The reason this behavior was changed is that the "remembering" behavior applies not just when searching for holds but also in the Check Out tab, so it could potentially result in staff checking out items unintentionally. We didn't publish this in the fixes for 5.3 because the steps are a little bit involved, but the problem scenario went like this:Open a patron recordFrom the Holds tab, Add Holds and search for an item barcode
(place a hold, or not, it doesn't matter)Close the search window and the patron recordOpen a patron recordIn the Checkout tab, hit the Enter key (bringing up the search window)
The search would be pre-populated with the previously searched item barcode
If staff hit Enter again (to perform the search), that item will be checked out. probably unintentionally.

While this is a decent explanation of why the behavior was problematic, I don't see why the search terms can't be cleared when the current patron record is closed instead. As I mentioned above, it would be fine if the search terms are only retained on an opt-in basis; just give us a checkbox somewhere, please.

After voting (thanks in advance), please see my other opt-in Idea Lab entry.