We have been considering enabling the display of the free text Message field in patron records in the WebPac (& a corresponding tab in Bibliocommons). It seems like an easy & useful way to quickly & effectively communicate with customers on issues related to their account.

For example, we might want to create a list of patron records at a library location that is closing for renovation to let them know that for the duration of the closing, their holds will be routed to another nearby branch. We'd apply the message to impacted patron records for as long as it's relevant, & then delete it.

Currently, when a Message is applied to a patron record, in addition to being possible to display when a customer logs into their account online, it also pops up anytime their record is accessed in the SDA.

Historically, our library has not displayed the content in the Message field to patrons & in some cases, it's not necessarily content we'd want them to see, or it might be a means of referring staff to something added as a Note field on the same patron record.

What we'd like to see is the Message field continue to be able to be configured to be viewable by patrons when they login to their account online, so we can create, apply, & remove them to relevant records as needed. In this scenario, the Message field is meant to communicate directly to the customer & would be applied in batch by ILS admin staff.

But we'd also like a new message field that is viewable only by staff. This would be the one that would pop up when the patron's record is accessed & could be applied to a record by frontline staff (for example: "Patron left their wallet at service desk. It's being held by the Branch Manager.") The fact that it still pop up when the record is important, as this information might be overlooked if it's in a Note field with nothing more to draw attention to it.