Some time ago, an idea was submitted to enhance the Sierra API to provide statistical group information, so that circulation transactions in third party applications could be credited to a statistical group other than 0 None.

The idea won the "Let's Connect Sierra API Challenge."

With the release of Sierra 6.0, it then became possible to include a new optional data parameter to specify the statistical group that should be used when recording a transaction performed using the APIs.

My library was excited to hear this, as we'd recently begun using the self-checkout feature in the Bibliocommons' app not long before this & found it frustrating that credit for the transactions wasn't being assigned to a dedicated statistical group & just lumped into the default of 0 None. That Bibliocommons requires separate statistical groups for checkouts & renewals made it all the more frustrating.

After some back & forth involving both Bibliocommons & III support & developers, we began seeing these transactions assigned the desired statistical group in Web Management Reports (see stat groups 908 & 909 in image bibstat1). This is enough to help those keeping track of metrics.

However, this does not address the need of frontline staff who may need to see where an item was checked out. Normally, they'd do this in the SDA, by looking at the Checkout Location field in the item record.

Unfortunately, this still displays the 0 None value (see image bibstat2).

Apparently, this is because Bibliocommons does not currently support the username field in the API coding for their checkouts, which Sierra currently requires. In order for our library to take full advantage of our chosen app from its use to the resultant metrics, we're hoping that the stat group functionality could work without necessarily specifying the username.